The Woodlanders + The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy)

This combo product is bundled in India but the publishing origin of this title may vary.Publication date of this bundle is the creation date of this bundle; the actual publication date of child items may vary.The rambler who for old association or other reasons should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees timber or fruit-bearing as the case may be make the wayside hedges ragged by their drip and shade stretching over the road with easeful horizontality as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate support for their limbs. At one place where a hill is crossed the largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way as the head of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is lonely. The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step for instance at the place under notice from the hedge of the plantation into the adjoining pale thoroughfare and pause amid its emptiness for a moment was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.One evening of late summer before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span a young man and woman the latter carrying a child were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors in Upper Wessex on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their appearance just now. The man was of fine figure swarthy and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy newer than the remainder of his suit which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons breeches of the same tanned leggings and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was further a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds now in the left leg now in the right as he paced along.