The Mayor of Casterbridge

Chapter 3

The highroad into the village of Weydon-Priors 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

neighbouring 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 rotundity; her

skin had undergone a textural change; and though her hair

had not lost colour it was considerably thinner than

heretofore. She was dressed in the mourning clothes of a

widow. Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-

formed young woman about eighteen, 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 withy basket of old-fashioned

make; 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-fliers, 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 neighbouring 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 Newson--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 Newson, mariner, who was

unfortunately lost at sea, in the month of November 184--,

aged forty-one years."

"And it was here," continued her mother, with more

hesitation, "that I last saw the relation we are going to

look for--Mr. Michael Henchard."

"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-trusser, wasn't he, when you last heard of

him?

"He was."

"I suppose he never knew me?" the girl innocently continued.

Mrs. Henchard paused for a moment, and answered un-easily,

"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," 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 to-day who was here all

those years ago."

"I am not so sure of that," said Mrs. Newson, as she now

called 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

smouldering 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 furmity sold here!"

It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent--once

thriving, cleanly, white-aproned, and c******g with money--

now tentless, dirty, owning no tables or benches, and having

scarce any customers except two small whity-brown boys, who

came up and asked for "A ha'p'orth, 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 coloured

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. Henchard-Newson's request for a penny-

worth with more alacrity than she had shown in selling six-

pennyworths in her younger days. When the soi-disant

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 slily,

whispered, "Just a thought o' rum in it?--smuggled, you

know--say two penn'orth--'twill make it slip down like

cordial!"

Her customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old

trick, and shook her head with a meaning the old woman was

far from translating. She pretended to eat a little of the

furmity with the leaden spoon offered, and as she did so

said blandly to the hag, "You've seen better days?"

"Ah, ma'am--well ye may say it!" responded the old woman,

opening the sluices of her heart forthwith. "I've stood in

this fair-ground, 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.

Goodenough's furmity. I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy

gent's taste; I knew the town's taste, the country's taste.

I even knowed the taste of the coarse shameless females.

But Lord's my life--the world's no memory; straightforward

dealings don't bring profit--'tis the sly and the underhand

that get on in these times!"

Mrs. Newson 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 to-day?"

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 o' married parties, every

murder, every manslaughter, even every pocket-picking--

leastwise large ones--that 't has been my lot to witness.

But a selling? Was it done quiet-like?"

"Well, yes. I think so."

The furmity woman half shook her head again. "And yet," she

said, "I do. At any rate, I can mind a man doing something

o' the sort--a man in a cord jacket, with a basket of tools;

but, Lord bless ye, we don't gi'e it 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?--Casterbridge--yes--to

Casterbridge, said he. But, Lord's my life, I shouldn't ha'

thought of it again!"

Mrs. Newson 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 our relative visited this fair he

said he was living at Casterbridge. 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 a night's lodging.