The Mayor of Casterbridge | Page 7

walked here,
and I had the furmity, and rum in it--and sold her. Yes, that's what's
happened and here am I. Now, what am I to do--am I sober enough to
walk, I wonder?" He stood up, 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 thereon. 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 dewed grass, whereon the shadows of the yellow and red vans
were projected far away, those thrown by the felloe of each wheel
being elongated in shape to the orbit of a comet. All the gipsies 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, barked as a matter of principle, and quickly
lay down again. He was the only positive spectator of the hay-trusser's
exit from the Weydon Fair-field.
This seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent thought,
unheeding the yellowhammers 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 leant
upon 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
demeanour was enough to show how he was surprised and nettled 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. Meek--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 he 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 fetichistic in this man's beliefs.
He shouldered 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