The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by
Thomas Hardy

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Title: The Mayor of Casterbridge
Author: Thomas Hardy
Release Date: May 28, 2007 [EBook #143] [This file was first posted
on March 11, 2006]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE ***

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 coloured 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