



Produced by John Hamm and David Widger








THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

by Thomas Hardy




1.


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 Weydon-Priors, in Upper
Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick
hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from
an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their
appearance just now.

The man was of 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
rush basket, from which 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 countryman as distinct from
the desultory shamble of the general labourer; 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 slantwise the rays of the strongly  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
blackened-green stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass through on
their way to dingy, and yellow, and red. The grassy margin of the bank,
and the nearest hedgerow boughs, 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
breves, 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 Weydon-Priors could just be
described, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on
his shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly
glanced up.

"Any trade doing here?" he asked phlegmatically, designating the village
in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the labourer did
not understand him, he added, "Anything in the hay-trussing line?"

The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. "Why, save the man,
what wisdom's in him that 'a should come to Weydon for a job of that
sort this time o' year?"

"Then is there any house to let--a little small new cottage just a
builded, or such like?" asked the other.

The pessimist still maintained a negative. "Pulling down is more the
nater of Weydon. 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 o' Weydon-Priors."

The hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some
superciliousness. Looking towards the village, he continued, "There is
something going on here, however, is there not?"

"Ay. 'Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the
clatter and scurry of getting away the money o' children and fools, for
the real business is done earlier than this. I've been working within
sound o't all day, but I didn't go up--not I. 'Twas no business of
mine."

The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the
Fair-field, 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 shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked in;
persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peep-shows,
toy-stands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who
travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers, nick-nack 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 in the ochreous 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 Cyder." The other was less new; a little iron
stove-pipe came out of it at the back and in front appeared the placard,
"Good Furmity Sold Hear." The man mentally weighed the two inscriptions
and inclined to the former tent.

"No--no--the other one," said the woman. "I always like furmity; 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 furmity 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 what
not, 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 furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a
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 in reply to her nod; when she took a bottle
from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its contents, and
tipped the same into the man's furmity. The liquor poured in was rum.
The man as slily sent back money in 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
signalled 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-night resentful. "I married at
eighteen, like the fool that I was; and this is the consequence o't." 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 o't. But a fellow never knows these little things
till all chance of acting upon 'em is past."

The auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside could be
heard saying, "Now this is the last lot--now who'll take the last
lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? 'Tis a very promising
broodmare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with the
hoss 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 'em,
shouldn't get rid of 'em as these gipsy fellows do their old horses,"
said the man in the tent. "Why shouldn't they put 'em up and sell 'em
by auction to men who are in need of such articles? Hey? Why, begad, 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-favoured.

"True," said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about
the collar, 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 neighbouring
county family. "I've had my breedings 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 o'
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 to 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
furmity 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 furmity drinkers with. "I
asked this question, and nobody answered to 't. Will any Jack Rag or Tom
Straw among ye buy my goods?"

The woman's manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and
colour of which mention has been made.

"Mike, Mike," she said; "this is getting serious. O!--too serious!"

"Will anybody buy 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. 'Tis simple as
Scripture history. Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself."

"Don't, my chiel," whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous
petticoats