The Mayor of Casterbridge | Page 3

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