Kabanata Kabanata 2 · Chapter II

The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when

the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the

marquee, and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it.

Besides the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about—at

the benches—at the table supported by trestles—at his basket of

tools—at the stove where the furmity had been boiled—at the empty

basins—at some shed grains of wheat—at the corks which dotted the

grassy floor. Among the odds and ends he discerned a little shining

object, and picked it up. It was his wife’s ring.

A confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come

back to him, and he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. A rustling

revealed the sailor’s bank-notes thrust carelessly in.

This second verification of his dim memories was enough; he knew now

they were not dreams. He remained seated, looking on the ground for

some time. “I must get out of this as soon as I can,” he said

deliberately at last, with the air of one who could not catch his

thoughts without pronouncing them. “She’s gone—to be sure she is—gone

with that sailor who bought her, and little Elizabeth-Jane. We 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 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.