 CHAPTER I One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Wade and Pryor's in Upper Wessex on foot. They were plainly but not ill-clad, though the thick whore of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey, went a disadvantageous shabbiness to their appearance just now. The man was a fine figure, swarthy and stern in aspect, and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rushed basket, from which he protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countrymen as distinct from the desultry shambles of the general laborer. While in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along. What was really peculiar, however, in this couple's progress, and would have attracted the attention of any casual observer otherwise disposed to overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked side by side in such a way as to suggest, afar off, the low, easy, confidential chat of people full of reciprocity, but on closer view it could be discerned that the man was reading, or pretending to read, a ballad sheet which he kept before his eyes with some difficulty by the hand that was passed through the basket-strap. Whether this apparent cause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape an intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself could have said precisely, but his taciturnity was unbroken, and the woman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence. Virtually she walked the highway alone, save for the child she bore. Sometimes the man's bent elbow almost touched her shoulder, for she kept as close to his side as was possible without actual contact, but she seemed to have no idea of taking his arm nor he of offering it, and far from exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it as a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little group, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child, a tiny girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn, and the murmured babble of the child in reply. The chief, almost the only, attraction of the young woman's face was its mobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught slant-wise the rays of the strongly colored sun which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips. When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge silently thinking, she had the hard half apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance except perhaps fair play. The first phase was the work of nature, the second probably of civilization. That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they moved down the road. The wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with little interest, the scene for that matter being one that might have been matched at almost any spot in any county in England at this time of the year. A road neither straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly, bordered by hedges, trees and other vegetation, which had entered the black and green stage of color that the doomed leaves passed through on their way to dingy and yellow and red. The grassy margin of the bank and the nearest hedge robes were powdered by the dust that had been stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on the road deadening their footfalls like a carpet. And this, with the aforesaid total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous sound to be heard. For a long time there was none beyond the voice of a weak bird singing a trite old evening song that might doubtless have been heard on the hill at the same hour and with the self-same trills, quavers, and briefs at any sunset of that season for centuries untold. But as they approached the village, sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Wade and Priers could just be described, the family group was met by a turnip whore with his hoe on his shoulder and his dinner bag suspended from it. The reader promptly glanced up. Any trade doing here, he asked fligmatically, designating the village in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the laborer did not understand him, he added, anything in the hay-tressing line? The turnip whore had already begun shaking his head. Why save the man? What wisdoms in him that should come to Wade and for a job of that sort this time of year? Then is there any house to let a little small new cottage just a build it or such like, asked the other? The pessimists still maintained a negative. Pulling down is more the native of Wade and there were five houses cleared away last year and three this and the Volk nowhere to go. No, not so much as a thatched hurdle. That's the way of Wade and Priers. The hay trusser, which he obviously was, knotted with some superciliousness, looking towards the village he continued. There is something going on here, however, is there not? Hey, just fair day. So what you hear now is little more than the clatter and scurry of getting away the money of children and fools for the real business is done earlier than this. I've been working within sound at all day, but I didn't go up, not I, it was no business of mine. The trusser and his family proceeded on their way and soon entered the Fairfield, which showed standing places and pens where many hundreds of horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but were now in great part taken away at present as their informant had observed, but little real business remained on hand. The chief being the sale by auction of a few inferior animals that could not otherwise be disposed of and had been absolutely refused by the better class of traders who came and went early. Yet the crowd was denser now than during the morning hours. The frivolous contingent of visitors, including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on furlough, village shop keepers and the like having laterally flocked in persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peep shows, toy stands, wax works, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who traveled for the public good, thimble riggers, knickknack vendors and readers of fate. Neither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things, and they looked around for a refreshment tent among the many which dotted the down. Two which stood nearest to them and their ochrous haze of expiring sunlight seemed almost equally inviting. One was formed of new milk-hued canvas and bore red flags on its summit. It announced good home brewed beer, ale and cider. The other was less new. A little iron stove pipe came out of it at the back, and in front appeared the placard, good firmity sold here. The man mentally weighed the two inscriptions and inclined to the former tent. No, no, the other one, said the woman. I always like firmity, and so does Elizabeth Jane, and so will you. It is nourishing after a long, hard day. I've never tasted it, said the man. However, he gave way to her representations, and they entered the firmity booth forthwith. A rather numerous company appeared within seated at the long narrow tables that ran down the tent on each side. At the upper end stood a stove containing a charcoal fire over which hung a large three-legged crock sufficiently polished round the rim to show that it was made of bell-metal. A haggish creature of about fifty presided in a white apron, which, as it threw an air of respectability over her as far as it extended, was made so wide as to reach nearly round her waist. She slowly stirred the contents of the pot. The dull scrape of her large spoon was audible throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the mixture of corn in the grain, flour, milk, raisins, currants, and whatnot that composed the antiquated slop in which she dealt. Vessels holding the separate ingredients stood on a white clothed table of boards and trestles close by. The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming hot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This was very well so far, for firmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper of food as could be obtained within the Four Seas, though, to those not accustomed to it, the grains of wheat, swollen as large as lemon-pips, which floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect at first. But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance, and the man, with the instinct of a perverse character, scented it quickly. After a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag's proceedings from the corner of his eye and saw the game she played. He winked to her and passed up his basin and replied to her nod. When she took a bottle from under the table, Slyly measured out a quantity of its contents and tipped the same into the man's firmity. The liquor poured in was rum. The man as Slyly sent back money and payment. He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his satisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His wife had observed the proceeding with much uneasiness, but he persuaded her to have hers laced also, and she agreed to a milder allowance after some misgiving. The man finished his basin and called for another, the rum being signaled for in yet stronger proportion. The effect of it was soon apparent in his manner, and his wife, but too sadly perceived, that in strenuously steering off the rocks of the licensed liquor tent, she had only got into maelstrom depths here amongst the smugglers. The child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once said to her husband, Michael, how about our lodging? You know we may have trouble in getting it if we don't go soon. But he turned a deaf ear to those bird-like chirpings. He talked loud to the company. The child's black eyes, after slow, round, ruminating gazes at the candles when they were lighted, fell together, then they opened, then shut again, and she slept. At the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity. At the second he was jovial. At the third argumentative. At the fourth, the qualities signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of his mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his conduct. He was overbearing, even brilliantly quarrelsome. The conversation took a high turn as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives, and more particularly the frustration of many a promising youth's high aims and hopes, and the extinction of his energies by an early, imprudent marriage, was the theme. I did for myself that way thoroughly, said the trusser, with a contemplative bitterness that was well nigh resentful. I married at eighteen, like the fool that I was, and this is the consequence of it. He pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the penuriousness of the exhibition. The young woman, his wife, who seemed accustomed to such remarks, acted as if she did not hear them, and continued her intermittent, private words of tender trifles to the sleeping and waking child, who was just big enough to be placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she wished to ease her arms. The man continued, I haven't more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a good experienced hand in my line. I'd challenge England to beat me in the fodder business, and if I were a free man again I'd be worth a thousand pound before I'd done it. But a fellow never knows these little things till all chance of acting upon him is passed. The auctioneer, selling the old horses in the field outside, could be heard saying, now this is the last lot. Now who will take the last lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? Just a very promising brood mare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with the horse at all, except that she's a little holler in the back and had her left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister coming along the road. For my part I don't see why men who have got wives and don't want them shouldn't get rid of them as these gypsy fellows do their old horses, said the man in the tent. Why shouldn't they put them up and sell them by auction to men who are in need of such articles? Hey, why begat I'd sell mine this minute if anybody would buy her. There's them that would do that, some of the guests replied, looking at the woman, who was by no means ill-favored. True, said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about the taller elbows, seams, and shoulder blades, that long continued friction with grimy surfaces will produce, and which is usually more desired on furniture than on clothes. From his appearance he had possibly been in former time, groom or coachman to some neighboring county family. I've had my greetings in as good circles, I may say, as any man he added, and I know true cultivation, or nobody do, and I can declare she's got it, in the bone, mind ye I say, as much as any female in the fair, though it may want a little bringing out. Then, crossing his legs, he resumed his pipe with a nicely adjusted gaze at a point in the air. The fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this unexpected praise of his wife, half in doubt of the wisdom of his own attitude towards the possessor of such qualities, but he speedily lapsed into his former conviction and said harshly, Well, then, now is your chance. I am open to an offer for this gem of creation. She turned to her husband and murmured, Michael, you have talked this nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it once too often, mind. I know I've said it before. I meant it. All I want is a buyer. At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season which had by chance found its way through an opening into the upper part of the tent, flew two and from quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes to follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape, the assembled company neglected to respond to the workman's offer, and the subject dropped. But a quarter of an hour later, the man who had gone on lacing his firmity more and more heavily, though he was either so strong-minded or such an intrepid toper that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to the old strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the original theme. Here I am waiting to know about this offer of mine. The woman is no good to me. Who'll have her? The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation. The woman whispered, she was imploring and anxious. Come, come, it is getting dark, and this nonsense won't do. If you don't come along, I shall go without you. Come. She waited and waited, yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man broke in upon the desultory conversation of the firmity drinkers with. I asked this question and nobody answered to it. Well, any Jack Rag or Tom Straw among you by my goods? The woman's manner changed and her face assumed the grim shape and color of which mention has been made. Mike, Mike, she said, this is getting serious. Oh, too serious. Well, anybody by her, said the man. I wish somebody would, said she firmly. Her present owner is not at all to her liking. Nor you to mine, said he, so we are agreed about that. Gentlemen, you hear? It's an agreement to part. She shall take the girl if she wants to and go her ways. I'll take my tools and go my ways, as simple as scripture history. Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself. Don't, my child, whispered a buxom stale ace dealer and voluminous petticoats who sat near the woman. Your good man don't know what he's saying. The woman, however, did stand up. Now, whose auctioneer cried the hay trusser? I be promptly answered a short man with a nose resembling a copper knob, a damp voice, and eyes like buttonholes. Who'll make an offer for this lady? The woman looked on the ground as if she maintained her position by a supreme effort of will. Five shillings, said someone, at which there was a laugh. No insults, said the husband. Who'll say a guinea? Nobody answered, and the female dealer in stale ace is interposed. Behave yourself moral good man for heaven's love. I want a cruelty as the poor soul married to. Bed and board is dear at some figures, upon my evasion, Tess. Said it higher, auctioneer, said the trusser. Two guineas, said the auctioneer, and no one replied. If they don't take her for that in ten seconds, I'll have to give more, said the husband. Very well. Now, auctioneer, add another. Three guineas, going for three guineas, said the roomy man. No bid, said the husband. Good lord, why she's cost me fifty times the money, if a penny. Go on. Four guineas, cried the auctioneer. I'll tell you what, I won't sell her for less than five, said the husband, bringing down his fists so that the basins danced. I'll sell her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money and treat her well, and he shall have her forever and never hear out of me. But she shan't go for less. Now then, five guineas and she's yours. Susan, you agree? She bowed her head with absolute indifference. Five guineas, said the auctioneer, or shall be withdrawn. Do anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no? Yes, said a loud voice from the doorway. All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed the door of the tent was a sailor who, unobserved by the rest, had arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence followed his affirmation. You say you do? asked the husband, staring at him. I say so, replied the sailor. Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where is the money? The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in, unfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and threw them down upon the tablecloth. There were Bank of England notes for five pounds. Upon the face of this he clinked down the shilling severally. One, two, three, four, five. The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the same till then deemed slightly hypothetical, had a great effect upon the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief actors, and then upon the notes as they lay weighted by the shillings on the table. Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest. The spectators had indeed taken the proceedings throughout as a piece of mirthful irony carried to extremes, and had assumed that being out of work he was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world and society and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash, the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid color seemed to fill the tent, and changed the aspect of all therein. The mirth wrinkles left the listeners' faces, and they waited with parting lips. Now, said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low, dry voice sounded quite loud. Before you go further, Michael, listen to me. If you touch that money, I and this girl go with the man. Mind it is a joke no longer. A joke? Of course it is not a joke, shouted her husband, his resentment rising at her suggestion. I take the money, the sailor takes you. That's plain enough. It has been done elsewhere, and why not here? Just quite on the understanding that the young woman is willing, said the sailor blandly, I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world. Faith nor I, said her husband, but she is willing, provided she can have the child. She said so only the other day when I talked to it. That you swear, said the sailor to her. I do, said she, after glancing at her husband's face and seeing no repentance there. Very well, she shall have the child and the bargains complete, said the trusser. He took the sailor's notes and deliberately folded them and put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket with an air of finality. The sailor looked at the woman and smiled. Come along, he said kindly, the little one too, the more the merrier. She paused for an instant with a close glance at him, then, dropping her eyes again and saying nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made towards the door. On reaching it she turned and pulling off her wedding ring flung it across the booth in the hay trusser's face. Mike, she said, I've lived with thee a couple of years and had nothing but temper. Now I'm no more, do we? I'll try my luck elsewhere. It will be better for me and Elizabeth Jane both, so good-bye. Seizing the sailor's arm with her right hand and mounting the little girl on her left, she went out of the tent sobbing bitterly. A stolid look of concern filled the husband's face, as if after all he had not quite anticipated this ending and some of the guests laughed. Is she gone, he said? Faith, eh, she's gone clean enough, said some rustics near the door. He rose and walked to the entrance with a careful tread of one conscious of his alcoholic load. Some others followed and they stood looking into the twilight. The difference between the peacefulness of inferior nature and the willful hostilities of mankind was very apparent at this place. In contrast with the harshness of the act just ended within the tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks and rubbing each other lovingly as they waited in patience to be harnessed for the homeward journey. Outside the fair and the valleys and woods all was quiet. The sun had recently set and the west heaven was hung with rosy cloud which seemed permanent yet slowly changed. To watch it was like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a darkened auditorium. In presence of this scene after the other there was a natural instinct to abjure man as the block on an otherwise kindly universe till it was remembered till it was remembered that all terrestrial conditions were intermittent and that mankind might some night be innocently sleeping when these quiet objects were raging loud. Where did the sailor live? asked the spectator when they had vainly gazed around. God knows that replied the man who had seen high life. He's without doubt a stranger here. He came in about five minutes ago said the firmity woman joining the rest with her hands on her hips and then a step back and then I looked in again. I'm not a penny the better for him. Serves the husband well be right said the stale ace vendor. A comely respectable body like her. What can a man want more? I glory in the woman's spirit. I had done it myself. I'd send if I wouldn't if a husband had behaved so to me. I'd go and a might call and call till his key corn was raw but I'd never come back. No not till the great trumpet would I. Well the woman will be better off said another of a more deliberative turn for seafaring natures be very good shelter for shorn lambs and the man do seem to have plenty of money which is what she's not been used to lately by all showings. Mark me I'll not go after her said the trusser returning doggedly to his seat. Let her go. If she's up to such vagaries she must suffer for him. She'd no business to take the maid because my maid and if it were the doing again she shouldn't have her. Perhaps from some little sense of having countenance than indefensible proceeding perhaps because it was late the customers thinned away from the tents shortly after this episode the man stretched his elbows forward on the table lent his face upon his arms and soon began to snore. The firmity seller decided to close for the night and after seeing the rum bottles milk corn raisins etc that remained on hand loaded into the cart came to where the man reclined. She shook him but could not wake him. As the tent was not to be struck that night the fare continuing for two or three days she decided to let the sleeper who was obviously no tramp stay where he was and his basket with him. Extinguishing the last candle and lowering the flap of the tent she left it and drove away. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of the Mayor of Castor Bridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Mayor of Castor Bridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 2 The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the marquee and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it. Besides the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about at the benches at the tables supported by trestles at his basket of tools at the stove where the firmity had been boiled at the empty basins at some shed grains of wheat at the corks which dotted the grassy floor. Among the odds and ends he discerned a little shining object and picked it up. It was his wife's ring. A confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come back to him and he thrust his hand into his breast pocket. A rustling revealed the sailor's banknotes thrust carelessly in. This second verification of his dim memories was enough. He knew now there were not dreams. He remained seated looking on the ground for some time. I must get out of this as soon as I can, he said deliberately at last, with the air of one who could not catch his thoughts without pronouncing them. She's gone, to be sure she is, gone with that sailor who bought her and little Elizabeth Jane. We walked here and I had the firmity and rum in it and sold her. Yes, that's what happened and here am I. Now what am I to do? Am I sober enough to walk, I wonder? He stood up, found the door open found that he was in fairly good condition for progress, unencumbered. Next he shouldered his tool-basket and found he could carry it. Then lifting the tent door he emerged into the open air. Here the man looked around with gloomy curiosity. The freshness of the September morning inspired and braced him as he stood. He and his family had been weary when they arrived the night before and they had observed but little of the place so that he now beheld it as a new thing. It exhibited itself as the top of an open down, bounded on one extreme by a plantation and approached by a winding road. At the bottom stood the village which lent its name to the upland and the annual fair that was held there on. The spot stretched downward into valleys and onward to other uplands, dotted with barrows and trenched with the remains of prehistoric forts. The whole scene lay under the rays of a newly risen sun which had not as yet dried a single blade of the heavily dood grass where on the shadows of the yellow and red vans were projected far away, those thrown by the fellow of each wheel being elongated and shaped to the orbit of a comet. All the gypsies and showmen who had remained on the ground lay snug within their carts and tents or wrapped in horse-cloths under them and were silent and still as death with the exception of an occasional snore that revealed their presence. But the seven sleepers had a dog and dogs of the mysterious breeds that vagrants own that are as much like cats as dogs and as much like foxes as cats also lay about here. A little one started up under one of the carts, bark as a matter of principle and quickly lay down again. He was the only positive spectator of the Hay Trusser's exit from the Wade and Fairfield. This seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent thought unheeding the yellow hammers which flitted about the hedges with straws in their bills, the crowns of the mushrooms, and the tinkling of local sheep bells whose wearer had had the good fortune not to be included in the fair. When he reached a lane a good mile from the scene of the previous evening the man pitched his basket and went on to pun a gate. A difficult problem or two occupied his mind. Did I tell my name to anybody last night or didn't I tell my name? He said to himself. And at last concluded that he did not. His general demeanor was enough to show how he was surprised and nettle that his wife had taken him so literally as much could be seen in his face and in the way he nibbled a straw which he pulled from the hedge. He knew that she must have been somewhat excited to do this. Moreover, she must have believed that there was some sort of binding force in the transaction. On this latter point he felt almost certain knowing her freedom from levity of character and the extreme simplicity of her intellect. There may too have been enough recklessness and resentment beneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any momentary doubts. On a previous occasion when he had declared during a fuddle that he would dispose of her as he had done she had replied that she would not hear him say that many times more before it happened in the resigned tones of a fatalist. Yet she knows I am not in my senses when I do that he exclaimed. Well, I must walk about till I find her. Seize her. Why didn't she know better than bring me into this disgrace? He roared out. She wasn't queer if I was. Tis like Susan to show such idiotic simplicity. Meat. That meekness has done me more harm than the bitterest temper. When he was calmer he turned to his original conviction that he must somehow find her and his little Elizabeth Jane and put up with the shame as best she could. It was of his own making and he ought to bear it. But first he resolved to register an oath, a greater oath than he had ever sworn before and to do it properly he required a fit place and imagery for there was something fetishistic in this man's beliefs. He shoulded his basket and moved on casting his eyes inquisitively round upon the landscape as he walked and at the distance of three or four miles perceived the roofs of a village in the tower of a church. He instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite still at being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills the interval between the departure of the field laborers to their work and the rising of their wives and daughters to prepare the breakfast for their return. Hence he reached the church without observation and the door being only latched he entered. The hay trusser deposited his basket by the font went up the nave till he reached the altar rails and opening the gate entered the sacrarium where he seemed to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment. Then he knelt upon the foot pace dropping his head upon the clamped book which lay on the communion table he said aloud, I, Michael Henschard, on this morning of the 16th of September do take an oath before God here in this solemn place that I will avoid all strong liquors for the space of twenty-one years to come being a year for every year that I have lived and this I swear upon the book before me and may I be struck dumb, blind and helpless if I break this my oath. When he had said it and kissed the big book the hay trusser arose and seemed relieved at having made a start in a new direction. While standing in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke suddenly start up from the red chimney of a cottage near and knew that the occupant had just let her fire. He went round to the door and the housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment which was done. Then he started on the search for his wife and child. The perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent soon enough. Though he examined and inquired and walked hither and thither day after day no such characters as those he described had anywhere been seen since the evening of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could gain no sound of the sailor's name. As money was short with him he decided after some hesitation to spend the sailor's money and the prosecution of this search but it was equally in vain. The truth was that a certain shyness of revealing his conduct prevented Michael Henschard from following up the investigation with a loud hue and cry such a pursuit demanded to render it effectual. And it was probably for this reason that he obtained no clue though everything was done by him that did not involve an explanation of the circumstances under which he had lost her. Weeks counted up to months and still he searched on maintaining himself by small jobs of work in the intervals. By this time he had arrived at a seaport and there he derived intelligence that persons answering somewhat to his description had emigrated a little time before. Then he said he would search no longer and that he would go and settle in the district which he had had for some time in his mind. Next day he started journeying southwestward and did not pause except for night's lodgings till he reached the town of Casterbridge in a far distant part of Wessex. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of the Mayor of Casterbridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 3 The high road into the village of Waden Priers was again carpeted with dust. The trees had put on as of yore their aspect of dingy green and where the henchard family of three had once walked along two persons not unconnected with the family walked now. The scene in its broad aspect had so much of its previous character even to the voices and rattle from the neighboring village down that it might for that matter have been the afternoon following the previously recorded episode. Change was only to be observed in details but here it was obvious that a long procession of years had passed by. One of the two who walked the road was she who had figured as the young wife of henchard on the previous occasion. Now her face had lost much of its retundity, her skin had undergone a textural change and though her hair had not lost color it was considerably thinner than here to fore. She was dressed in the morning clothes of a widow. Her companion also in black appeared as a well-formed young woman about 18 completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth which is itself beauty irrespective of complexion or contour. A glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was Susan henchard's grown-up daughter. While life's middle summer had set its hardening mark on the mother's face her former spring-like specialities were transferred so dexterously by time to the second figure, her child, that the absence of certain facts within her mother's knowledge from the girl's mind would have seemed for the moment to one reflecting on those facts to be a curious imperfection in nature's powers of continuity. They walked with joined hands and it could be perceived that this was the act of simple affection. The daughter carried in her outer hand a witty basket of old-fashioned mate, the mother a blue bundle which contrasted oddly with her black-stuff gown. Reaching the outskirts of the village they pursued the same track as formerly and ascended to the fair. Here, too, it was evident that the years had told. Certain mechanical improvements might have been noticed in the roundabouts and high flyers, machines for testing rustic strength and weight and in the erections devoted to shooting for nuts. But the real business of the fair had considerably dwindled. The new periodical great markets of neighboring towns were beginning to interfere seriously with the trade carried on here for centuries. The pens for sheep, the tie ropes for horses were about half as long as they had been. The stalls of tailors, hosiers, coopers, linen drapers and other such trades had almost disappeared and the vehicles were far less numerous. The mother and daughter threaded the crowd for some little distance and then stood still. Why did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you wished to get onward, said the maiden. Yes, my dear Elizabeth Jane explained the other, but I had a fancy for looking up here. Why? It was here I first met with nuisance on such a day as this. First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before and now he's drowned and gone from us. As she spoke, the girl drew a card from her pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black and inscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words in affectionate memory of Richard Newsen, Mariner, who was unfortunately lost at sea in the month of November, 1840 something, aged 41 years. And it was here, continued her mother, with more hesitation, that our last saw the relation we are going to look for, Mr. Michael Henschard. What is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly had it told me. He is, or was, for he may be dead, a connection by marriage, said her mother deliberately. That's exactly what you have said a score of times before, replied the young woman, looking about her inattentively. He's not a near relation, I suppose. Not by any means. He was a hay-truster, wasn't he, when you last heard of him? He was. I suppose he never knew me, the girl innocently continued. Mrs. Henschard paused for a moment and answered uneasily. Of course not, Elizabeth Jane, but come this way. She moved on to another part of the field. It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think, as the daughter observed, as she gazed round about. People at fairs change like the leaves of trees, and I daresay you are the only one here today who was here all those years ago. I am not so sure of that, said Mrs. Newson, as she now calls herself, keenly eyeing something under a green bank, a little way off. See there? The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed out was a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth from which hung a three-legged crock, kept hot by a smoldering wood fire beneath. Over the pot stooped an old woman, haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She stirred the contents of the pot with a large spoon and occasionally croaked in a broken voice. Good firmity sold here. It was indeed the former mistress of the Firmity Tent, once thriving, cleanly, white-aproned, and chinking with money, now tentless, dirty, owning no tables or benches, and having scarce any customers except two small whitey-brown boys who came up and asked for a half-earth, please, good measure, which she served in a couple of chipped yellow basins of commonest clay. She was here at that time, resumed Mrs. Newson, making a step as if to draw nearer. Don't speak to her. It isn't respectable, urged the other. I will just say a word. You, Elizabeth Jane, can stay here. The girl was not loth and turned to some stalls of colored prints while her mother went forward. The old woman begged for the latter's custom as soon as she saw her, and responded to Mrs. Hentred Newson's request for a penny-worth with more lacquery than she had shown in selling six penny-worths in her younger days. When the Soit de Saint-Widow had taken the basin of thin, poor slop that stood for the rich concoction of the former time, the hag opened a little basket behind the fire and, looking up, slyly whispered, just a thought of rum in it, smuggled, you know, say, two penneth to make it slip down like cordial. Her customers smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick and shook her head with the meaning the old woman was far from translating. She pretended to eat a little of the firmity with the leaden spoon offered, and as she did so, said Blandly to the hag, You've seen better days. Ah, ma'am, well you may say it, responded the old woman, opening the sluices of her heart forthwith. I've stood in this fairground, maid, wife, and widow these nine and thirty years, and in that time have known what it was to do business with the richest stomachs in the land. Ma'am, you'd hardly believe that I was once the owner of a great pavilion tent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody could come, nobody could go without having a dish of Mrs. Goodenow's firmity. I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy gents' taste. I knew the town's taste, the country's taste. I even know the taste of the coarse, shameless females. But lords, my life, the world's no memory. Straightforward dealings don't bring profit. Tiss the sly in the underhand that get on in these times. Mrs. Nooson glanced round. Her daughter was still bending over the distant stalls. Can you call to mind, she said cautiously to the old woman, the sale of a wife by her husband in your tent eighteen years ago today? The hag reflected and half shook her head. If it had been a big thing I should have minded it in a moment, she said. I can mind every serious fight of married parties, every murder, every manslaughter, even every pocket picking, least wise large ones, that has been my lot to witness. But a selling? Was it done quiet like? Well, yes, I think so. Diffirmity woman half shook her head again. And yet, she said, I do, at any rate, I can mind a man doing something of the sort, a man in a cord jacket with a basket of tools. But lord bless you, we don't get head room, we don't, such as that. The only reason why I can mind the man is that he came back here to the next year's fair and told me quite private like that if a woman ever asked for him, I was to say he had gone to— Where? Castor Bridge. Yes, to Castor Bridge, said he. But lords, my life, I shouldn't have thought of it again. Mrs. Newsom would have rewarded the old woman as far as her small means afforded had she not discreetly borne in mind that it was by that unscrupulous person's liquor her husband had been degraded. She briefly thanked her informant and rejoined Elizabeth, who greeted her with, Mother, do let's get on. It was hardly respectable for you to buy refreshments there. I see none but the lowest do. I have learned what I wanted, however, said her mother quietly. The last time my relative visited this fair, he said he was living at Castor Bridge. It is a long, long way from here, and it was many years ago that he said it. But there I think we'll go. With this they descended out of the fair and went onward to the village, where they obtained the night's lodging. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The Mayor of Castor Bridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Mayor of Castor Bridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 4 Henschard's wife acted for the best, but she had involved herself in difficulties. A hundred times she had been upon the point of telling her daughter, Elizabeth Jane, the true story of her life, the tragic crisis of which had been the transaction at Wade and Fair when she was not much older than the girl now beside her, but she had refrained. An innocent maiden had thus grown up in the belief that the relations between the genial sailor and her mother were the ordinary ones that they had always appeared to be. The risk of endangering a child's strong affection by disturbing ideas which had grown with her growth was to Mrs. Henschard too fearful a thing to contemplate. It had seemed indeed folly to think of making Elizabeth Jane wise, but Susan Henschard's fear of losing her dearly loved daughter's heart by a revelation had little to do with any sense of wrongdoing on her own part. Her simplicity, the original ground of Henschard's contempt for her, had allowed her to live on in the conviction that Newsen had acquired a morally real and justifiable right to her by his purchase, though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right were vague. It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young matron could believe in the seriousness of such a transfer, and were there not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might scarcely be credited, but she was by no means the first or last peasant woman who had religiously adhered to her purchaser as too many rural records show. The history of Susan Henschard's adventures in the interim can be told in two or three sentences. Absolutely helpless, she had been taken off to Canada where they had lived several years without any great worldly success, though she worked as hard as any woman could to keep their college cheerful and well provided. When Elizabeth Jane was about twelve years old, the three returned to England and settled at Falmouth where Newsen made a living for a few years as boatman and general handy-shoreman. He then engaged in the Newfoundland trade, and it was during this period that Susan had an awakening. A friend to whom she confided her history ridiculed her grave acceptance of her position and all was over with her peace of mind. When Newsen came home at the end of one winter he saw that the delusion he had so carefully sustained had vanished forever. There was then a time of sadness in which she told him her doubts if she could live with him longer. Newsen left home again on the Newfoundland trade when the season came round. The vague news of his loss at sea a little later on solved a problem which had become torture to her meek conscience. She saw him no more. Of henchard they heard nothing. To the leech subjects of labour the England of those days was a continent and a mile a geographical degree. Elizabeth Jane developed early into womanliness. One day a month or so after receiving intelligence of Newsen's death off the Bank of Newfoundland when the girl was about 18 she was sitting on a willow chair in the cottage they still occupied working twine nets for the fishermen. Her mother was in a back corner of the same room engaged in the same labour and dropping the heavy wood needle she was filling she surveyed her daughter thoughtfully. The sun shone in at the door upon the young woman's head and hair which was worn loose so that the rays streamed into its depths as into a hazel cops. Her face though somewhat wan and incomplete possessed the raw materials of beauty in a promising degree. There was an underhandsomeness in it struggling to reveal itself through the provisional curves of immaturity and the casual disfigurements that resulted from the straightened circumstances of their lives. She was handsome in the bone hardly as yet handsome in the flesh. She possibly might never be fully handsome unless the carking accidents of her daily existence could be evaded before the mobile parts of her countenance had settled to their final mould. The sight of the girl made her mother sad not vaguely but by logical inference. They both were still in that straight waistcoat of poverty from which she had tried so many times to be delivered for the girl's sate. The woman had long perceived how zealously and constantly the young mind of her companion was struggling for enlargement and yet now in her 18th year it still remained but little unfolded. The desire, sober and repressed of Elizabeth Jane's heart was indeed to see, to hear and to understand. How could she become a woman of wider knowledge, higher repute, better as she termed it. This was her constant inquiry of her mother. She sought further into things than other girls in her position ever did and her mother groaned as she felt she could not aid in the search. The sailor drowned or no was probably now lost to them and Susan's staunch religious adherence to him as her husband in principle till her views had been disturbed by enlightenment was demanded no more. She asked herself whether the present moment now that she was a free woman again were not as opportune a one as she would find in a world where everything had been so inopportune for making a desperate effort to advance Elizabeth. To pocket her pride in search for the first husband seemed wisely or not the best initiatory step. He had possibly drunk himself into his tomb but he might on the other hand have had too much sense to do so for in her time with him he had been given to bouts only and was not a habitual drunkard. At any rate the propriety of returning to him if he lived was unquestionable. The awkwardness of searching for him lay an enlightening Elizabeth a proceeding which her mother could not endure to contemplate. She finally resolved to undertake the search without confiding to the girl her former relations with Henschard leaving it to him if they found him to take what steps he might choose to that end. This will account for their conversation at the fair and the half informed state at which Elizabeth was led onward. In this attitude they proceeded on their journey trusting solely to the dim light afforded of Henschard's whereabouts by the Firmity Woman. The strictest economy was indispensable sometimes they might have been seen on foot sometimes on farmers wagons sometimes in carriers fans and thus they drew near to Caster Bridge. Elizabeth Jane discovered to her alarm that her mother's health was not what it once had been and there was ever and anon in her talk that renunciatory tone which showed that but for the girl she would not be very sorry to quit a life she was growing thoroughly weary of. It was on a Friday evening near the middle of September and just before dusk that they reached the summit of a hill within a mile of the place they sought. There were high banked hedges to the coach road here and they mounted upon the green turf within and sat down. The spot commanded a full view of the town and its environs. What an old fashioned place it seems to be said Elizabeth Jane while her silent mother mused on other things than topography. It is huddled all together and it is shut in by a square wall of trees like a plot of garden ground by a box edging. Its squareness was indeed the characteristic which most struck the eye in this antiquated burrow. The burrow of Casterbridge at that time recent as it was untouched by the faintest sprinkle of modernism. It was compact as a box of dominoes. It had no suburbs in the ordinary sense. Country and town met at a mathematical line. To birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on this fine evening as a mosaic work of subdued reds, brownones, grays and crystals held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the level eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense stockade of limes and chestnuts sat in the midst of miles of rotund down in concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the vision into towers, gables, chimneys and casements. The highest glazing shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire they caught from the belt of sunlit cloud in the west. From the center of each side of this tree-bound square ran avenues east, west and south into the wide expanse of cornland and cum to the distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the pedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed, two men passed outside the hedge engaged in argumentative conversation. Why, surely, said Elizabeth as they receded, those men mentioned the name of Henschard in their talk, the name of our relative. I thought so, too, said Mrs. Neusen. That seems a hint to us that he is still here. Yes. Shall I run after them and ask them about him? No, no, no. Not for the world, just yet. He may be in the workhouse or in the stocks for all we know. Dear me, why should you think that, mother? It was just something to say, that's all, but we must make private inquiries. Having sufficiently rested, they proceeded on their way at Evenfall. The dense trees of the avenue rendered the road dark as a tunnel, though the open land on each side was still under a faint daylight. In other words, they passed down a midnight between two glomings. The features of the town had a keen interest for Elizabeth's mother now that the human side came to the fore. As soon as they had wandered about, they could see that the stockade of gnarled trees which framed in Casterbridge was itself an avenue, standing on a low green bank or escarpment with a ditch yet visible without. Within the avenue and bank was a wall, more or less discontinuous, and within the wall were packed the abodes of the burgers. Though the two women did not know it, these external features were but the ancient defenses of the town planted as a promenade. The lamplights now glimmered through the engirdling trees, conveying a sense of great smugness and comfort inside, and rendering at the same time the unlighted country without strangely solitary and vacant in aspect considering its nearness to life. The difference between Berg and Champagne was increased too by sounds which now reached them above others, the notes of a brass band. The travelers returned into the high street where there were timber houses with overhanging stories whose small pained lattices were screened by dimedy curtains on a drawing string and under whose barge boards old cobwebs waved in the breeze. There were houses of brick gnawing which derived their chief support from those adjoining. There were slate roofs patched with tiles and tile roofs patched with slate with occasionally a roof of thatch. The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence was shown by the class of objects displayed in the shop windows. Sides, reap hooks, sheep shears, bill hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the ironmongers. Beehives, butterfirkens, churns, milking stools and pails, hay rakes, field flagons, and seed lips at the coopers. Cart ropes and plough harness at the saddlers. Carts, wheel borrows and mill gear at the wheel rights and machinists, horse embrications at the chemists, at the glovers and leather cutters, hedging gloves, stature's kneecaps, ploughman's leggings, villagers' patents and clogs. They came to a grizzled church whose massive square tower rose unbroken into the darkening sky. The lower parts, being illuminated by the nearest lamps, sufficiently to show how completely the mortar from the joints of the stonework had been nibbled out by time and weather, which had planted in the crevices thus made little tufts of stone crop and grass almost as far up as the very battlements. From this tower the clock struck eight and thereupon a bell began to toll with a peremptory clang. The curfew was still rung in Casterbridge and it was utilized by the inhabitants as a signal for shutting their shops. No sooner did the deep notes of the bell throb between the house fronts than a clatter of shutters arose through the whole length of the high street. In a few minutes, business at Casterbridge was ended for the day. Other clocks struck eight from time to time, one gloomily from the jail, another from the gable of an alms house with a preparative creak of machinery, more audible than the note of the bell. A row of tall varnished case clocks from the interior of a clockmaker's shop joined in one after another just as the shutters were enclosing them like a row of actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of the curtain. Then chimes were heard stammering out the Sicilian mariners' hymn so that chronologists of the advanced school were appreciably on their way to the next hour before the whole business of the old one was satisfactorily wound up. In an open space before the church walked a woman with her gown sleeves rolled up so high that the edge of her under linen was visible and her skirt tucked up through her pocket hole. She carried a load under her arm from which she was pulling pieces of bread and handing them to some other women who walked with her, which pieces they nibbled critically. The site reminded Mrs. Henshard Nussan and her daughter that they had an appetite and they inquired of the woman for the nearest bakers. You may as well look for manner food as good bread and castor bridge just now, she said after directing them. They can blare their trumpets and thump their drums and have their roaring dinners, waving her hand towards a point further along the street where the brass band could be seen standing in front of an illuminated building, but we must needs be put to for want of a wholesome crust. There's less good bread than good beer in castor bridge now. And less good beer than swipes, said a man with his hands in his pocket. How does it happen there's no good bread? asked Mrs. Henshard. Oh, just a corn factor. He's the man that our millers and bakers all deal with, and he has sold them grod wheat, which they didn't know was grod, so they say, till the dough ran all over the ovens like quicksilver, so that their loaves be as flat as toads and like suet pudding inside. I've been a wife and I've been a mother, and I never see such unprincipled bread in castor bridges this before. But you must be a real stranger here not to know what's made all the poor of Auckland's side plumb like blowed bladders this week. I am, said Elizabeth's mother, Shiley. Not wishing to be observed further till she knew more of her future in this place, she withdrew with her daughter from the speaker's side. Getting a couple of biscuits at the shop indicated as a temporary substitute for a meal, they next bent their steps instinctively to where the music was playing. End of chapter four. Chapter five of The Mayor of Castor Bridge. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mayor of Castor Bridge by Thomas Hardy. Chapter five. A few score yards brought them to the spot where the town band was now shaking the window panes with the strains of the roast beef of old England. The building before whose doors they had pitched their music stands was the chief hotel in Castor Bridge, namely the King's Arms. A spacious bow window projected into the street over the main portico, and from the open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the drawing of corks. The blinds, more or less, being left unclosed, the whole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of a flight of stone steps to the road wagon office opposite, for which reason a knot of idlers had gathered there. We might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about our relation Mr. Henschard, whispered Mrs. Newson, who, since her entry into Castor Bridge, had seemed strangely weak and agitated, and this, I think, would be a good place for trying it, just to ask, you know, how he stands in the town, if he is here, as I think he must be. You, Elizabeth Jane, had better be the one to do it. I'm too worn out to do anything. Pull down your fall first. She sat down upon the lowest step, and Elizabeth Jane obeyed her directions and stood among the idlers. What's going on tonight? asked the girl, after singling out an old man and standing by him long enough to acquire a neighborly right of converse. Well, you must be a stranger, said the old man, without taking his eyes from the window. Why, just a great public dinner of the gentle people, and such like leading vult with the mayor in the chair. As we plainer fellows bayant invited, they leave the window shutters open that we may get just a sense out here. If you mount the steps, you can see them. That's Mr. Henschard, the mayor at the end of the table, a-facing you. And that's the councilmen, right and left, lots of them, when they began life, were no more than I be now. Henschard, said Elizabeth Jane, surprised, but by no means suspecting the whole force of the revelation. She ascended to the top of the steps. Her mother, though her head was bowed, had already caught from the end window tones that strangely riveted her attention before the old man's words, Mr. Henschard, the mayor, reached her ears. She arose and stepped up to her daughter's side as soon as she could do so without showing exceptional eagerness. The interior of the hotel dining room was spread out before her with its tables and glass and plate and inmates. Facing the window in the chair of dignity sat a man about 40 years of age of heavy frame, large features, and commanding voice, his general build being rather coarse than compact. He had a rich complexion which verged on swarthiness, a flashing black eye, and dark bushy brows and hair. When he indulged, when he indulged in an occasional loud laugh at some remark among the guests, his large mouth parted so far back as to show to the rays of the chandelier a full score or more of the two-and-thirty sound white teeth that he obviously still could boast of. That laugh was not encouraging to strangers, and hence it may have been well that it was rarely heard. Many theories might have been built upon it. It fell in well with conjectures of a temperament which would have no pity for weakness, but would be ready to yield ungrudging admiration to greatness and strength. Its producer's personal goodness, if he had any, would be of a very fitful cast, an occasional almost oppressive generosity rather than a mild and constant kindness. Susan Henchard's husband, in law at least, sat before them, matured in shape, stiffened in line, exaggerated in traits, disciplined, thought-marked, in a word older. Elizabeth, encumbered with no recollections as her mother was, regarded him with nothing more than the keen curiosity and interest which the discovery of such unexpected social standing in the long sought relative naturally begot. He was dressed in an old-fashioned evening suit, an expanse of frilled shirts showing on his broad breast, jeweled studs and a heavy gold chain. Three glasses stood at his right hand, but to his wife's surprise, the two for wine were empty, while the third, a tumbler, was half full of water. When last she had seen him, he was sitting in a corduroy jacket, bustian waistcoat and breeches and tanned leather leggings with a basin of hot firmity before him. Time the magician had wrought much here. Watching him and thus thinking of past days, she became so moved that she shrank back against the jam of the wagon-office doorway to which the steps gave access, the shadow from it conveniently hiding her features. She forgot her daughter till a touch from Elizabeth Jane aroused her. Have you seen him, mother? whispered the girl. Yes, yes, answered her companion hastily. I have seen him, and it is enough for me. Now I only want to go, pass away, die. Why, oh, what? She drew closer and whispered in her mother's ear. Does he seem to you not likely to befriend us? I thought he looked a generous man. What a gentleman he is, isn't he? And how his diamond studs shine. How strange that you should have said he might be in the stocks or in the workhouse or dead. Did ever anything go more by contraries? Why do you feel so afraid of him? I am not at all. I'll call upon him. He can but say he don't own such remote kin. I don't know at all. I can't tell what to set about. I feel so down. Don't be that, mother. Now we have got here and all. Rest there where you be a little while. I will look on and find out more about him. I don't think I can ever meet Mr. Henschard. He is not how I thought he would be. He overpowers me. I don't wish to see him anymore. But wait a little time and consider. Elizabeth Jane had never been so much interested in anything in her life as in their present position. Partly from the natural elation she felt at discovering herself akin to a coach, and she gazed again at the scene. The younger guests were talking and eating with animation. Their elders were searching for tidbits and sniffing and grunting over their plates like sows nuzzling for acorns. Three drinks seemed to be sacred to the company. Port, sherry, and rum, outside which old established trinity few or no palates ranged. A roll of ancient rummers with ground figures on their sides and each primed with a spoon was now placed down the table and these were promptly filled with grog at such high temperatures as to raise serious considerations for the articles exposed to its vapors. But Elizabeth Jane noticed that though this filling went on with great promptness up and down the table, nobody filled the mayor's glass who still drank large quantities of water from the tumbler behind the clump of crystal vessels intended for wine and spirits. They don't fill Mr. Hensherd's wine glasses, she ventured to say to her elbow acquaintance, the old man. Ah, no, don't you know him to be the celebrated, abstaining, worthy of that name? He scorns all tempting liquors, never touches nothing. Oh, yes, he's strong qualities that way. I have heard tell that he sware a gospel oath and bygone times and has bowed by it ever since. So they don't press him, knowing it would be unbecoming in the face of that for your gospel oath is a serious thing. Another elderly man hearing this discourse now joined in by inquiring how much longer have you got to suffer from it, Solomon, long ways? Another two year, they say. I don't know the why and the wherefore of his fixing such a time for I never has told anybody, but just exactly two calendar years longer, they say, a powerful mind to hold out so long. True, but there's great strength and hope, knowing that in four and 20 months time you'll be out of your bondage and able to make up for all you've suffered by partaking without stint, why it keeps a man up, no doubt. No doubt, Christopher Coney, no doubt, and a must need such reflections, a lonely widow man, said long ways. When did he lose his wife, asked Elizabeth? I never knowed her, because before he came to Casterbridge, Solomon, long ways replied with terminative emphasis as if the fact of his ignorance of Mrs. Henschard were sufficient to deprive her history of all interest. But I know that as a banded tea totaler, and that if any of his men be ever so little overtook by a drop, he's down upon him as stern as the Lord upon the jovial Jews. Has he many men, then? said Elizabeth Jane. Many? Why, my good mate, he's the powerfulest member of the town council, and quite a principal man in the country round besides. Never a big dealing in wheat, barley, oats, hay, roots, and such like, but Henschard's got a hand in it. A, and he'll go into other things, too, and that's where he makes his mistake. He worked his way up from nothing when it came here, and now he's a pillar of the town. Not but what he's been shaking a little to year about this bad corn he has supplied in his contracts. I've seen the sunrise over Dernovermore, these nine and sixty years, and though Mr. Henschard has never cussed me unfairly, ever since I've worked for him, seeing I be but a little small man, I must say that I have never before tasted such rough bread as has been made from Henschard's wheat lately. Just that growed out that you could almost call it malt, and there's a list at bottom of the loaf as thick as the sole of one's shoe. The band now struck up another melody, and by the time it was ended the dinner was over and speeches began to be made. The evening being calm and the windows still open, these orations could be distinctly heard. Henschard's voice arose above the rest. He was telling a story of his hay dealing experiences in which he had outwitted a sharper who had been bent upon outwitting him. Ha ha ha, responded his audience at the upshot of the story, and hilarity was general till a new voice arose but this is all very well, but how about the bad bread? It came from the lower end of the table where there sat a group of minor tradesmen who, although part of the company, appeared to be a little below the social level of the others, and who seemed to nourish a certain independence of opinion and carry on discussions not quite in harmony with those at the head. Just as the west end of a church is sometimes persistently found to sing out of time and tune with the leading spirits in the chancel. This interruption about the bad bread afforded infinite satisfaction to the loungers outside, several of whom were in the mood which finds its pleasure in others' discomforture, and hence they echoed pretty freely. Hey, how about the bad bread, Mr. Mayor? Moreover, feeling none of the restraints of those who shared the feast, they could afford to add you rather ought to tell the story of that, sir. The interruption was sufficient to compel the Mayor to notice it. Well, I admit that the wheat turned out badly, he said, but I was taken in and buying it as much as the bakers who bought it a me. And the poor folk who had to eat it whether or no, said the inharmonious man outside the window. Hensherd's face darkened. There was temper under the thin-blanned surface, the temper which artificially intensified had banished a wife nearly a score of years before. You must make allowances for the accidents of a large business, he said. You must bear in mind that the weather just at the harvest of that corn was worse than we have known it for years. However, I have mended my arrangements on account of it. Since I have found my business too large to be well looked after by myself alone, I have advertised for a thorough good man as manager of the corn department. When I have got him, you will find these mistakes will no longer occur. Matters will be better looked into. But what are you going to do to repay us for the past? inquired the man who had before spoken and who seemed to be a baker or miller. Will you replace the grown flower we have still got by sound grain? Hensherd's face had become still more stern at these interruptions, and he drank from his tumbler of water as if to calm himself or gain time. Instead of out-safing a direct reply, he stiffly observed, If anybody will tell me how to turn grown wheat into wholesome wheat, I'll take it back with pleasure, but it can't be done. Hensherd was not to be drawn again. Having said this, he sat down. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of the Mayor of Casterbridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 6 Now the group outside the window had within the last few minutes been reinforced by new arrivals, some of them respectable shopkeepers and their assistants who had come out for a whiff of air after putting up the shutters for the night, some of them of a lower class. Distinct from either there appeared a stranger, a young man of remarkably pleasant aspect who carried in his hand a carpet bag of the smart floral pattern prevalent in such articles at that time. He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed and slight in build. He might possibly have passed by without stopping at all, or at most for half a minute to glance in at the scene, had not his advent coincided with the discussion on corn and bread in which event this history had never been enacted. But the subject seemed to arrest him and he whispered some inquiries of the other bystanders and remained listening. When he heard henchard's closing words It Can't Be Done, he smiled impulsively, drew out his pocketbook and wrote down a few words by the aid of the lighted in the window. He tore out the leaf, folded and directed it, and seemed about to throw it in through the open sash upon the dining table. But on second thoughts edged himself through the loiterers till he reached the door of the hotel where one of the waiters who had been serving inside was now idly leaning against the doorpost. Give this to the mayor at once, he said, handing in his hasty note. Elizabeth Jane had seen his movements and heard the words which attracted her both by their subject and by their accent, a strange one for those parts. It was quaint and northerly. The waiter took the note while the young stranger continued. And can you tell me of a respectable hotel that's a little more moderate than this? The waiter glanced indifferently up and down the street. They say the three mariners, just below here is a very good place, he languidly answered, but I have never stayed there myself. The Scotchman, as he seemed to be, thanked him and strolled on in the direction of the three mariners, a force said, apparently more concerned about the question of an inn than about the fate of his note, now that the momentary impulse of writing it was over. While he was disappearing slowly down the street, the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth Jane saw, with some interest, the note brought into the dining room and handed to the mayor. Henschard looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand, and glanced it through. Thereupon it was curious to note an unexpected effect. The nettle-clouded aspect which had held possession of his face since the subject of his corn dealings had been broached, changed itself into one of arrested attention. He read the note slowly and fell into thought, not moody but fitfully intense, as that of a man who has been captured by an idea. By this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs, the wheat subject being quite forgotten. Men were putting their heads together in twos and threes, telling good stories with pantomimic laughter which reached convulsive grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did not know how they had come there, what they had come for, or how they were going to get home again, and provisionally sat on with a dazed smile. Square-built men showed a tendency to become hunchbacks. Men with a dignified presence lost it in a curious obliquity of figure in which their futures grew disarranged and one-sided, whilst the heads of a few who had dined with extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking into their shoulders, the corners of their mouth and eyes being bent upwards by the subsidence. Only Hinchard did not conform to these flexuous changes. He remained stately and vertical, silently thinking. The clock struck nine. Elizabeth Jane turned to her companion. The evening is drawing on, mother, she said. What do you propose to do? She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had become. We must get a place to lie down in, she murmured. I have seen, Mr. Hinchard, and that's all I wanted to do. That's enough for tonight at any rate, Elizabeth Jane replied soothingly. We can think tomorrow what is best to do about him. The question now is, is it not, how shall we find a lodging? As her mother did not reply, Elizabeth Jane's mind reverted to the words of the waiter, that the three mariners was an inn of moderate charges. A recommendation good for one person was probably good for another. Let's go where the young man has gone to, she said. He is respectable. What do you say? Her mother assented, and down the street they went. In the meantime, the mayor's thoughtfulness, engendered by the notice, stated, continued to hold him in abstraction, till, whispering to his neighbor to take his place, he found opportunity to leave the chair. This was just after the departure of his wife and Elizabeth. Outside the door of the assembly room he saw the waiter, and beckoning to him, asked who had brought the note which had been handed in a quarter of an hour before. A young man, sir, a sort of traveler, he was a Scotchman, seemingly. Did he say how he had got it? He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window. Oh, wrote it himself. Is the young man in the hotel? No, sir, he went to the three mariners, I believe. The mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with his hands under his coattails, as if he were merely seeking a cooler atmosphere than that of the room he had quitted. But there could be no doubt that he was, in reality, still possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever that might be. At length he went back to the door of the dining room, paused, and found that the song's toasts and conversation were proceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence. The corporation, private residents, and major and minor tradesmen had, in fact, gone in for comforting beverages to such an extent that they had quite forgotten not only the mayor, but all those vast political, religious, and social differences which they felt necessary to maintain in the daytime and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing this, the mayor took his hat, and when the waiter had helped him on with a thin holland overcoat, went out and stood under the portico. Very few persons were now in the street, and his eyes, by a sort of attraction, turned and dwelt upon a spot about a hundred yards further down. It was the house to which the writer of the note had gone, the three mariners, whose two prominent Elizabethan gables, bow, window, and passage light could be seen from where he stood. Having kept his eyes on it for a while, he strolled in that direction. This ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now unfortunately pulled down, was built of mellow sandstone with mullioned windows of the same material, markedly out of perpendicular from the settlement of foundations. The bay window projecting into the street, whose interior was so popular among the frequenters of the inn, was closed with shutters, in each of which appeared a heart-shaped aperture, somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles than is seen in nature. Inside these illuminated holes at a distance of about three inches were ranged at this hour as every passer knew the ruddy poles of Billy Will's The Glacier, Smart the Shoemaker, Buzzford the General Dealer, and others of a secondary set of wordies of a grade somewhat below that of the diners at the King's Arms, each with his yard of clay. A four-centered tutor arch was over the entrance and over the arch, the signboard, now visible in the rays of an opposite lamp. Hereon the mariners who had been represented by the artist as persons of two dimensions only, in other words, flat as a shadow, were standing in a row in paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the street the three comrades had suffered largely from warping, splitting, fading, and shrinkage so that they were but a half-visible film upon the reality of the grain and knots and nails which composed the signboard. As a matter of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to stantage the landlord's neglect as from the lack of a painter and castor bridge who would undertake to reproduce the features of men so traditional. A long, narrow, dimly-lit passage gave access to the inn within which passage the horses going to their stalls at the back and the coming and departing human guests rubbed shoulders indiscriminately, the latter running no slight risk of having their toes trodden upon by the animals. The good stabling and the good ale of the mariners, though somewhat difficult to reach on account of their being but this narrow way to both, were nevertheless perseveringly sought out by the sagacious old heads who knew what was what in castor bridge. Henschard stood without the inn for a few instance, then lowering the dignity of his presence as much as possible by buttoning the brown Holland coat over his shirt front and in other ways toning himself down to his ordinary everyday appearance he entered the inn door. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of the Mayor of Castor Bridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Mayor of Castor Bridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 7 Elizabeth Jane and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier. Outside the house they had stood and considered whether even this homely place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious in its prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found courage to enter and duly met Stannage the Landlord, a silent man who drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to that, shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-maids, a stately slowness, however, entering into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as became one whose service was somewhat optional. It would have been altogether optional, but for the orders of the landlady, a person who sat in the bar corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye and quick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and hatchway the pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked though close at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted as sojourners and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables where they sat down. The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the passages, floors, and windows, by quantities of clean linen spread about everywhere, and this had a dazzling effect upon the travelers. It is too good for us. We can't meet it, said the elder woman, looking round the apartment with misgiving as soon as they were left alone. I fear it is, too, said Elizabeth, but we must be respectable. We must pay our way even before we must be respectable, replied her mother. Mr. Henschard is too high for us to make ourselves known to him, I much fear, so we've only our own pockets to depend on. I know what I'll do, said Elizabeth Jane, after an interval of waiting, during which their needs seemed quite forgotten under the press of business below, and leaving the room she descended the stairs and penetrated to the bar. If there was one good thing more than another which characterized this single-hearted girl, it was a willingness to sacrifice her personal comfort and dignity to the common wheel. As you seem busy here tonight, and mother's not well off, might I take out part of our accommodation by helping? She asked of the landlady. The latter, who remained as fixed in the armchair as if she had been melted into it when in a liquid state and could not now be unstuck, looked the girl up and down inquiringly with her hands on the chair-arms. Such arrangements as the one Elizabeth proposed were not uncommon in country villages, but, though Castor Bridge was old-fashioned, the custom was well nigh obsolete here. The mistress of the house, however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made no objection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods and motions from the task-eternal landlord as to where she could find the different things, trotted up and down stairs with materials for her own and her parent's meal. While she was doing this, the wood partition in the center of the house thrilled to its center with the tugging of a bell-pull upstairs. A bell below tinkled a note that was feebler in sound than the twanging of wires and cranks that had produced it. "'Tis the scotch, gentlemen,' said the landlady omnisciently, and turning her eyes to Elizabeth. Now, then, can you go and see if his supper is on the tray? If it is, you can take it up to him, the front room over this." Elizabeth Jane, though hungry, willingly postponed serving herself a while and applied to the cook in the kitchen whence she brought forth the tray of supper viens and proceeded with it upstairs to the apartment indicated. The accommodation of the three mariners was far from spacious, despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions, passages, staircases, disused ovens, settles, and fore-posters left comparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at a time before home-brewing was abandoned by the smaller viddlers and the house in which the twelve-bushel strength was still religiously adhered to by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was the chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had to make way for utensils and operations in connection therewith. Thus Elizabeth found that the Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small one that had been allotted to herself and her mother. When she entered, nobody was present but the young man himself, the same whom she had seen lingering without the windows of the King's Arms Hotel. He was now idly reading a copy of the local paper and was hardly conscious of her entry so that she looked at him quite coolly and saw how his forehead shone where the light caught it and how nicely his hair was cut and the sort of velvet pile or down that was on the skin at the back of his neck and how his cheek was so truly curved as to be part of a globe and how clearly drawn were the lids and lashes which hid his bent eyes. She sat down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word. On her arrival below, the landlady, who was as kind as she was fat and lazy, saw that Elizabeth Jane was rather tired, though in her earnestness to be useful she was waving her own needs altogether. Mrs. Stannage thereupon said with a considerable perumpturiness that she and her mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to have any. Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions as she had fetched the Scotchmans and went up to the little chamber where she had left her mother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray. To her surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on the bed where she had left her, was in an erect position with lips parted. At Elizabeth's entry she lifted her finger. The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two women had at one time served as a dressing room to the Scotchmans chamber as was evidenced by signs of a door of communication between them, now screwed up and pasted over with the wallpaper. But, as is frequently the case with hotels of far higher pretensions than the three mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was distinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through now. Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray and her mother whispered as she drew near. To see. Who, said the girl, the mayor? The tremors and Susan Hensherd's tone might have led any person but one so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was to surmise some closer connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of accounting for them. Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young Scotchman and Hensherd, who, having entered the inn while Elizabeth Jane was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been deferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannage himself. The girl noiselessly laid out their little meal and back into her mother to join her, which Mrs. Hensherd mechanically did, her attention being fixed on the conversation through the door. I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about something that has excited my curiosity, said the mayor, with careless geniality. But I see you have not finished supper. Hey, but I will be done in a little. You needn't go, sir. Take a seat. I've almost done, and it makes no difference at all. Hensherd seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed. Well, first I should ask, did you write this? A rustling of paper followed. Yes, I did, said the Scotchman. Then, said Hensherd, I am under the impression that we have met by accident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each other. My name is Hensherd. Hents you replied to an advertisement for a corn factors manager that I put into the paper? Hents you come here to see me about it? No, said the Scotchman, with some surprise. Surely you are the man, went on Hensherd insistingly, who arranged to come and see me. Joshua, Joshua, jit, job, what was his name? You're wrong, said the young man. My name is Donald Farfray. It is true I am in the corn trade, but I have replied to no advertisements and arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristol, from there to the other side of the world, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing districts of the West. I have some inventions useful to the trade, and there is no scope for developing them here. To America, well well, said Hensherd, in a tone of disappointment so strong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. And yet I could have sworn you were the man. The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till Hensherd resumed. Then I am truly and sincerely obliged to you for the few words you wrote on that paper. It was nothing, sir. While it is of great importance for me just now, this row about my grown wheat, which I declare to heaven I didn't know to be bad till the people came complaining, has put me to my wit's end. I have some hundreds of quarters of it on hand, and if your renovating process will make it wholesome, why, you can see what a quagp would get me out of. I saw in a moment there might be truth in it, but I should like to have it proved, and of course you don't care to tell the steps of the process sufficiently for me to do that without my paying you well for it first. The young man reflected a moment or two. I don't know that I have any objection, he said. I'm going to another country, and curing bad corn is not the line I'll take up there. Yes, I'll tell you the whole of it. You'll make more out of it here than I will in a foreign country. Just look here a minute, sir. I can show you by a sample in my carpet bag. The click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and rustling, then a discussion about so many ounces to the bushel, and drying, and refrigerating, and so on. These few grains will be sufficient to show you with, came in the young fellow's voice, and after a pause during which some operations seemed to be intently watched by them both he exclaimed, there now. Do you taste that? It's complete, quite restored, or well nearly. Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it, said the Scotchman. To fetch it back entirely is impossible. Nature won't stand so much as that, but here you go a great way towards it. Well, sir, that's the process. I don't value it, for it can be but of little use in countries where the weather is more settled than in ours, and I'll be only too glad if it's of service to you. But hearken to me, pleaded Henschard, my business you know is in corn and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay trusser simply, and hay is what I understand best, though I now do more in corn than in the other. If you'll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch entirely, and receive a commission, in addition to salary. You're liberal, very liberal, but no, no I connect. The young man still replied with some distress in his accents. So be it, said Henschard conclusively. Now, to change the subject, one good turn deserves another. Don't stay to finish that miserable supper. Come to my house, I can find something better for you than cold ham and ale. Donald Farfray was grateful, said he feared he must decline that he wished to leave early next day. Very well, said Henschard quickly, please yourself, but I tell you young man, if this holds good for the bulk as it has done for the sample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I pay you for this knowledge? Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to you to use it often, and I don't value it at all. I thought I might just as well let you know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were hard upon you. Henschard paused. I shan't soon forget this, he said, and from a stranger I couldn't believe you were not the man I had engaged. Says I to myself, he knows who I am, and recommends himself by this stroke. And yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who answered my advertisement, but a stranger. A, A, that's so, said the young man. Henschard again suspended his words, and then his voice came thoughtfully. Your forehead, Farfray, is something like my poor brother's, now dead and gone. And the nose, too, isn't unlike his. You must be, what, five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half out of my shoes. But what of that? In my business, just true that strength and bustle build up a firm, but judgment and knowledge are what keep it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfray, bad at figures, a rule of thumb sort of man. You are just the reverse, I can see that. I have been looking for such as you these two years, and yet you are not for me. Well, before I go, let me ask this. Though you are not the young man I thought you were, what's the difference? Can't you stay just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this American notion? I won't mince matters, I feel you would be invaluable to me, that needn't be said. And if you abide and be my manager, I will make it worth your while. My plans are fixed, said the young man in negative tones. I have formed a scheme, and so we needn't say any more about it. But will you not drink with me, sir? I find this castor bridge ale warming to the stomach. No, no, I feign would, but I can't, said Henschard Gravely, the scraping of his chair, informing the listeners that he was rising to leave. When I was a young man, I went in for that sort of thing too strong, far too strong, and was well and I ruined by it. I did a deed on account of it, which I shall be ashamed of to my dying day. It made such an impression on me that I swore there and then that I'd drink nothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was old that day. I have kept my oath, and though far afraid I am sometimes that dry in the dog days that I could drink a quarter barrel to the pitching, I think of my oath and touch no strong drink at all. I'll no pressure, sir, I'll no pressure. I respect your vow. Well, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt, said Henschard, with strong feeling in his tones, but it will be long before I see one that would suit me so well. The young man appeared much moved by Henschard's warm convictions of his value. He was silent till they reached the door. I wish I could stay. Sincerely I would like to, he replied. But no, it cannot be, it cannot. I want to see the world. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Mayor of Casterbridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. Chapter 8 Thus they parted, and Elizabeth Jane and her mother remained each in her thoughts over their meal, the mother's face being strangely bright since Henschard's a vowel of shame for a past action. The quivering of the partition to its core presented denoted that Donald Farfray had again rung his bell. No doubt to have his supper removed. For humming a tune and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by the lively bursts of conversation and melody from the general company below. He sauntered out upon the landing and descended the staircase. When Elizabeth Jane had carried down his supper tray, and also that used by her mother and herself, she found the bustle of serving to be at its height below, as it always was at this hour. The young woman shrank from having anything to do with the ground floor serving, and crept silently about observing the scene so new to her, fresh from the seclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general sitting room, which was large, she remarked the two or three dozen strong back chairs that stood round against the wall, each fitted with its genial occupant. The sanded floor, the black settle, which projecting end-wise from the wall within the door, permitted Elizabeth to be a spectator of all that went on, without herself being particularly seen. The young scotchmen had just joined the guests. These, in addition to the respectable master tradesmen occupying the seats of privileges in the bow window in its neighborhood, included an inferior set at the unlighted end whose seats were mere benches against the wall, and who drank from cups instead of from glasses. Among the ladders, she noticed some of those personages who had stood outside the windows of the king's arms. Behind their backs was a small window with a wheel ventilator in one of the panes, which would suddenly start off spinning with a jingling sound as suddenly stop and as suddenly start again. While thus furtively making her survey, the opening words of a song greeted her ears from the front of the settle in a melody and accent of peculiar charm. There had been some singing before she came down, and now the scotchmen had made himself so soon at home that at the request of some of the master tradesmen, he too was favoring the room with a diddy. Elizabeth Jane was fond of music. She could not help pausing to listen, and the longer she listened, the more she was enraptured. She had never heard any singing like this, and it was evident that the majority of the audience had not heard such frequently, for they were attentive to a much greater degree than usual. They neither whispered nor drank, nor dipped their pipe stems in their ale to moisten them, nor pushed the mug to their neighbors. The singer himself grew emotional, till she could imagine a tear in his eye as the words went on. It's hame and it's hame, hame, feign would I be, or hame, hame, hame to my own country. There's an eye that ever weeps in a fair face will be feign, as I pass through unin water with my bonnie bands again. When the flower is in the bud and the leaf upon the tree, the lark shall sing me hame to my own country. There was a burst of applause and a deep silence, which was even more eloquent than the applause. It was of such a kind that the snapping of a pipe stem too long for him by old Solomon Longways, who was one of those gathered at the shady end of the room, seemed a harsh and irreverent act. Then the ventilator in the windowpane spasmodically started off for a new spin, and the pathos of Donald's song was temporarily effaced. It was not a miss, not at all a miss, muttered Christopher Coney, who was also present. And removing his pipe, a finger's breadth from his lips, he said aloud, Draw on with the next verse, young gentlemen, please. Yes, let's have it again, stranger, said the glazier, a stout bucket-headed man with a white apron rolled up round his waist. Folks don't lift up their hearts like that in this part of the world. And turning aside, he said it under tones. Who is the young man, Scotch, do you say? Yes, straight from the mountains of Scotland, I believe, replied Tony. Young Farfray repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so pathetic had been heard as the three mariners for a considerable time. The difference of accent, the excitability of the singer, the intense local feeling, and the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a climax surprised this set of worthies who were only too prone to shut up their emotions with caustic words. Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that, continued the glazier as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying fall, my own country. When you take away from among us the fools and the rogues and the lameggers and the wanton hussies and the slatterns and such like, there's just few left to ornament a song with in Casterbridge at the country round. True, said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of the table, Casterbridge is the old, hoary place of wickedness by all account, tis recorded in history that we rebelled against the king one or two hundred years ago in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was hanged on Gallows Hill and quartered and our different giants sent about the country like butchers meet, and for my part I can well believe it. What did you come away from your own country for, young maester, you'd be so wounded about it, inquired Christopher Coney from the background, with the tone of a man who preferred the original subject. Faith, it wasn't worth your while on our account, for as maester Billy Will says, we be brockelfolk here, the best of us, hardly honest sometimes, what with hard winters and so many mouths to fill, and God Almighty sending his little taty so terrible small to fill him with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not we, except in the shape of cauliflower and pig's chaps. But no, said Donald Farfray, gazing round into their faces with earnest concern, the best of you, hardly honest, not that surely, none of you has been stealing what didn't belong to him. Lord, no, no, said Solomon long ways, smiling grimly, that's only his random way of speaking. I was always such a man of underthoughts, and reprovingly towards Christopher, don't you be so over-familiar with a gentleman that you know nothing of, and that's traveled the most from the North Pole? Christopher Coney was silenced, and as he could get no public sympathy, he mumbled his feelings to himself. Be dazed if I loved my country half as well as the young fellow do, I'd live by cleaning my neighbor's pig's thighs before I'd go away, for my part I have no more love for my country than I have for Botany Bay. Come, said Longways, let the young man draw onward with his ballet, or we shall be here all night. That's all of it, said the singer apologetically. Soul of my body then will have another, said the general dealer. Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir, inquired a fat woman with a figured purple apron, the waist string of which was overhung so far by her sides as to be invisible? Let him breathe, let him breathe, Mother Cuxham. He ain't got his second wind yet, said the master glazier. Oh, yes, but I have, exclaimed the young man, and he at once rendered, oh, nanny, with faultless modulations, and another or two of the like sentiment, winding up at their earnest request with all delaying zine. By this time he had completely taken possession of the hearts of the three mariners inmates, including even old Coney, now withstanding an occasional odd gravity, which awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the moment, they began to view him through a golden haze which the tone of his mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had sentiment, Casterbridge had romance, but this stranger's sentiment was of differing quality, or rather perhaps the difference was mainly superficial. He was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm, who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then. The silent landlord came and lent over the settle while the young man sang, and even Mrs. Stannage managed to unstick herself from the framework of her chair in the bar and get as far as the door post, which movement she accomplished by rolling herself round as the cask is trundled on the chine by a drayman without losing much of its perpendicular. And are you going to Biden, Casterbridge, sir? she asked. Ah, no, said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in his voice. I'm only passing through. I'm on my way to Bristol and on for there to foreign parts. We'll be truly sorry to hear it, said Solomon, long ways. We can ill afford to lose tuneful windpipes like yours when they fall among us. And verily, to make acquaintance with the man who come from so far, from the land of perpetual snow, as we may say, where wolves and wild boars and other dangerous animacules be as common as blackbirds hear about, why, just a thing we can't do every day, and there's good sound information for Biden homes like we when such a man opens his mouth. Nay, but ye mistake my country, said the young man, looking round upon them with tragic fixity, till his eye lighted up and his cheek kindled with a sudden enthusiasm to write their errors. There are not perpetual snow and wolves at all in it, except snow and winter and, well, a little in summer, just sometimes, and a gabberlunzie or two stalking about here and there, if you may call them dangerous. Hey, but you should take a summer journey to Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat and all around there, and then go unto the locks and all the Highland scenery in May and June, and you would never say, just the land of wolves and perpetual snow. Of course not, it stands to reason, said Buzzford, to spare an ignorance that leads to such words. He's a simple homespun man that never was fit for good company. Think nothing of him, sir. And do you carry your flock bed and your quilt and your crock and your bit of china, or do you go and bear bones, as I may say, inquired Christopher Coney? I've sent on my luggage, though it isn't much, for the voyage is long. Donald's eyes dropped into a remote gaze, as he added, but I said to myself, never are one of the prizes of life will I come by unless I undertake it, and I decided to go. A general sense of regret, in which Elizabeth Jane shared not least, made itself apparent in the company. As she looked at Farfray from the back of the settle, she decided that his statements showed him to be no less thoughtful than his fascinating melodies revealed him to be cordial and impassioned. She admired the serious light in which he looked at serious things. He had seen no jest in ambiguities and roguery as the castor bridge toss pots had done, and rightly not, there was none. She disliked those wretched humors of Christopher Coney and his tribe, and he did not appreciate them. He seemed to feel exactly as she felt about life and its surroundings, that they were a tragical rather than a comical thing, that though one could be gay on occasion, moments of gaiety were interludes and no part of the actual drama. It was extraordinary how similar their views were. Though it was still early, the young Scotchman expressed his wish to retire, whereupon the landlady whispered to Elizabeth to run upstairs and turn down his bed. She took a candlestick and proceeded on her mission, which was the act of a few moments only. When candle in hand she reached the top of the stairs on her way down again, Mr. Farfray was at the foot coming up. She could not very well retreat. They met and passed in the turn of the staircase. She must have appeared interesting in some way, notwithstanding her plain dress, or rather possibly in consequence of it, for she was a girl characterized by earnestness and soberness of mien, with which simple drapery accorded well. Her face flushed, too, at the slight awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes bent on the candle flame that she carried just below her nose. Thus it happened that when confronting her he smiled, and then, with the manner of a temporarily light-hearted man who has started himself on a flight of song whose momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old ditty that she seemed to suggest. As they came in by my bower door, as day was waxing weary, a walk came, tripping down the stair, but Bonnie pegged my dearie. Elizabeth Jane, rather disconcerted, hastened on, and the Scotchman's voice died away, humming more of the same within the closed door of his room. Here the scene and sentiment ended for the present. When soon after the girl rejoined her mother, the latter was still in thought on quite another matter than a young man's song. We've made a mistake, she whispered, that the Scotchman might not overhear. On no account ought she to have helped serve here tonight, not because of ourselves, but for the sake of him. If he should befriend us and take us up and then find out what she did when staying here, to grieve and wound his natural pride as mayor of the town. Elizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this than her mother had she known the real relationship, was not much disturbed about it as things stood. Her he was another man than her poor mothers. For myself, she said, I didn't at all mind wading a little upon him. He's so respectable and educated, far above the rest of them in the inn. They thought him very simple not to know their grim broad way of talking about themselves here, but of course she didn't know. He was too refined in his mind to know such things. Thus she earnestly pleaded. Meanwhile, the he of her mother was not so far away as even they thought. After leaving the three mariners, he had sauntered up and down the empty high street, passing and repassing the inn in his promenade. When the Scotchman sang, his voice had reached henchards ears through the heart-shaped holes in the window shutters, and had led him to pause outside them a long while. To be sure, to be sure how that fellow does draw me, he had said to himself, I suppose just because I'm so lonely, I'd have given him a third share in the business to have stayed.