The Mayor of Casterbridge | Page 9

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 chinking 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 pennyworth 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