The Mayor of Casterbridge

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“He came in about five minutes ago,” said the furmity woman, joining the rest with her hands on her hips. “And then ’a stepped back, and then ’a looked in again. I’m not a penny...

The sight of the girl made her mother sad—not vaguely but by logical inference. They both were still in that strait-waistcoat of poverty from which she had tried so many times t...

He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed, and slight in build. He might possibly have passed by without stopping at all, or at most for half a minute to glance in at...

When Elizabeth-Jane had carried down his supper tray, and also that used by her mother and herself, she found the bustle of serving to be at its height below, as it always was a...

Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or nerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing from the many manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodie...

“I am quite in your hands, Michael,” she said meekly. “I came here for the sake of Elizabeth; for myself, if you tell me to leave again to-morrow morning, and never come near yo...

To Elizabeth-Jane the time was a most triumphant one. The freedom she experienced, the indulgence with which she was treated, went beyond her expectations. The reposeful, easy,...

The journey to be taken by the waggons next day was a long one into Blackmoor Vale, and at four o’clock lanterns were moving about the yard. But Abel was missing. Before either...

They had got into the lamplight. “Now, I’ll think over that,” said Donald Farfrae. “And I’ll not come up to your door; but part from you here; lest it make your father more angr...

“I don’t want you to come to me all of a sudden,” said Henchard in jerks, and moving like a great tree in a wind. “No, Elizabeth, I don’t. I’ll go away and not see you till to-m...

Interesting as things had been out of doors, at home it turned out to be one of her bad days. Henchard, whose two years’ mayoralty was ending, had been made aware that he was no...

HIGH-PLACE HALL MY DEAR MR. HENCHARD,—Don’t be surprised. It is for your good and mine, as I hope, that I have come to live at Casterbridge—for how long I cannot tell. That depe...

“And I from near Edinboro’,” he murmured. “It’s better to stay at home, and that’s true; but a man must live where his money is made. It is a great pity, but it’s always so! Yet...

A seer’s spirit took possession of Elizabeth, impelling her to sit down by the fire and divine events so surely from data already her own that they could be held as witnessed. S...

Elizabeth-Jane heard by accident that Jopp had been engaged by her stepfather. She was so fully convinced that he was not the right man for the place that, at the risk of making...

Henchard thereupon left the field and followed her. His state of mind was such that on reaching Lucetta’s door he did not knock but opened it, and walked straight up to her sitt...

The immediate subject of their talk being exhausted she felt more embarrassed at sitting thus beside her past lover; but soon the two figures of the others were visible at the e...

Try as she might, Elizabeth could never meet with him. She believed in him still, though nobody else did; and she wanted to be allowed to forgive him for his roughness to her, a...

“I know the Psa’am—I know the Psa’am!” said the leader hastily; “but I would as lief not sing it. ’Twasn’t made for singing. We chose it once when the gipsy stole the pa’son’s m...

Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest, Farfrae being seated at the other end of the dining-table. “You don’t forget, of course,” he resumed, “that cu...

“Why—Joe closed wi’ me, and we rolled down together, close to his garden hedge. Hearing the noise, out ran his wife with the oven pyle, and it being dark under the trees she cou...

Henchard merely heard his story, without taking it deeply in. His own relation to Farfrae and Lucetta overshadowed all kindred ones. He went on saying brokenly to himself, “She...

“Now I’ve noticed, come to think o’t that the wind in the Walk trees makes a peculiar poetical-like murmur to-night, sir; more than common; so perhaps ’twas that?” Jopp suggeste...

Was Elizabeth-Jane to remain his by virtue of this hardy invention of a moment? “Perhaps not for long,” said he. Newson might converse with his fellow-travellers, some of whom m...

Henchard vowed that he would leave them to their own devices, put nothing in the way of their courses, whatever they might mean. If he were doomed to be bereft of her, so it mus...

The renowned hill whereon the annual fair had been held for so many generations was now bare of human beings, and almost of aught besides. A few sheep grazed thereabout, but the...

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering Henchard. He had apparently sunk into the earth on leaving Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae’s door. Elizabeth-Jane remembered what he ha...