The Mayor of Casterbridge | Page 8

a village and the tower of a church.
He instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite still,
it being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills the interval
between the departure of the field-labourers to their work, and the
rising of their wives and daughters to prepare the breakfast for their
return. Hence he reached the church without observation, and the door
being only latched he entered. The hay-trusser deposited his basket by
the font, went up the nave till he reached the altar-rails, and opening the
gate entered the sacrarium, where he seemed to feel a sense of the
strangeness for a moment; then he knelt upon the footpace. Dropping
his head upon the clamped book which lay on the Communion-table, he
said aloud--
"I, Michael Henchard, on this morning of the sixteenth of September,
do take an oath before God here in this solemn place that I will avoid

all strong liquors for the space of twenty-one years to come, being a
year for every year that I have lived. And this I swear upon the book
before me; and may I be strook dumb, blind, and helpless, if I break
this my oath!"
When he had said it and kissed the big book, the hay-trusser arose, and
seemed relieved at having made a start in a new direction. While
standing in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke
suddenly start up from the red chimney of a cottage near, and knew that
the occupant had just lit her fire. He went round to the door, and the
housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment,
which was done. Then he started on the search for his wife and child.
The perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent soon enough.
Though he examined and inquired, and walked hither and thither day
after day, no such characters as those he described had anywhere been
seen since the evening of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could gain
no sound of the sailor's name. As money was short with him he decided,
after some hesitation, to spend the sailor's money in the prosecution of
this search; but it was equally in vain. The truth was that a certain
shyness of revealing his conduct prevented Michael Henchard from
following up the investigation with the loud hue-and-cry such a pursuit
demanded to render it effectual; and it was probably for this reason that
he obtained no clue, though everything was done by him that did not
involve an explanation of the circumstances under which he had lost
her.
Weeks counted up to months, and still he searched on, maintaining
himself by small jobs of work in the intervals. By this time he had
arrived at a seaport, and there he derived intelligence that persons
answering somewhat to his description had emigrated a little time
before. Then he said he would search no longer, and that he would go
and settle in the district which he had had for some time in his mind.
Next day he started, journeying south-westward, and did not pause,
except for nights' lodgings, till he reached the town of Casterbridge, in
a far distant part of Wessex.

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