Then their dank spongy forms closed in upon the sky.
It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped, this being the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the first fog of the series.
The air was as an eye suddenly struck blind.
The waggon and its load rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor throughout.
There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs composing the wood on either side.
The trees stood in an attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock them.
A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things — so completely, that the crunching of the waggon- wheels was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized.
Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectrelike in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog.
Stopping the home, he listened.
Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny.
The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves.
The hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim Leveller.
Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three.
Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers.
The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty- red leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair.
At the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond this wood, was the old inn Buck's Head.
It was about a mile and a half from Weatherbury, and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling had been the place where many coaches changed and kept their relays of horses.
All the old stabling was now pulled down, and little remained besides the habitable inn itself, which, standing a little way back from the road, sig- nified its existence to people far up and down the highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough of an elm on the opposite side of the way.
Travellers — for the variety TOURIST had hardly developed into a distinct species at this date — sometimes said in passing, when they cast their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond of representing the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves had never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working order.
It was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which Gabriel Oak crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness, the sign and the inn had been unobserved.
The manners of the inn were of the old-established type.
Indeed, in the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulae: E.G.
— Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor.
For tobacco, shout.
In calling for the girl in waiting, say,
"Maid!"
Ditto for the landlady, "Old Soul!" etc., etc.
It was a relief to Joseph's heart when the friendly signboard came in view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to fulfil an intention made a long time before.
His spirits were oozing out of him quite.
He turned the horse's head to the green bank, and entered the hostel for a mug of ale.
Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside, what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-coloured discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark Clark.
These owners of the two most appreciative throats in the neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were now sitting face to face over a threelegged circular table, having an iron rim to keep cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining VIS-A-VIS across the globe.
"Why, 'tis neighbour Poorgrass!" said Mark Clark.
"I'm sure your face don't praise your mistress's table, Joseph."
"I've had a very pale companion for the last four miles." said Joseph, indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation.
"And to speak the truth, 'twas beginning to tell upon me.
I assure ye, I ha'n't seed the colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that was no more than a dew-bit afield."
"Then drink, Joseph, and don't restrain yourself!" said Coggan, handing him a hooped mug three- quarters full.
Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time, saying, as he lowered the jug, "'Tis pretty drinking — very pretty drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to speak it."
"True, drink is a pleasant delight." said Jan, as one who repeated a truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings.
"Well, I must be on again." said Poorgrass.
"Not but that I should like another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me if I was seed here."
"Where be ye trading o't to to-day, then, Joseph?"
"Back to Weatherbury.
I've got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five with her."
"Ay-I've heard of it.
And so she's nailed up in parish boards after all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown." "The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling, because the bell's a luxery: but 'a can hardly do without the grave, poor body.
However, I expect our mistress will pay all."
"A pretty maid as ever I see!
But what's yer hurry, Joseph?