‘And have the world used ’ee well, sir—or rather John, knowing ’ee as a child? In these rich new countries that we hear of so much, you’ve got rich with the rest?’
‘I am not very rich,’ Mr. Lackland said. ‘Even in new countries, you know, there are failures. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and even if it sometimes is, you may be neither swift nor strong. However, that’s enough about me. Now, having answered your inquiries, you must answer mine; for being in London, I have come down here entirely to discover what Longpuddle is looking like, and who are living there. That was why I preferred a seat in your van to hiring a carriage for driving across.’
‘Well, as for Longpuddle, we rub on there much as usual. Old figures have dropped out o’ their frames, so to speak it, and new ones have been put in their places. You mentioned Tony Kytes as having been the one to drive your family and your goods to Casterbridge in his father’s waggon when you left. Tony is, I believe, living still, but not at Longpuddle. He went away and settled at Lewgate, near Mellstock, after his marriage. Ah, Tony was a sort o’ man!’
‘His character had hardly come out when I knew him.’
‘No. But ’twas well enough, as far as that goes—except as to women. I shall never forget his courting—never!’
The returned villager waited silently, and the carrier went on:—
TONY KYTES, THE ARCH-DECEIVER
‘I shall never forget Tony’s face. ’Twas a little, round, firm, tight face, with a seam here and there left by the smallpox, but not enough to hurt his looks in a woman’s eye, though he’d had it badish when he was a boy. So very serious looking and unsmiling ’a was, that young man, that it really seemed as if he couldn’t laugh at all without great pain to his conscience. He looked very hard at a small speck in your eye when talking to ’ee. And there was no more sign of a whisker or beard on Tony Kytes’s face than on the palm of my hand. He used to sing “The Tailor’s Breeches” with a religious manner, as if it were a hymn:—
‘“O the petticoats went off, and the breeches they went on!”
and all the rest of the scandalous stuff. He was quite the women’s favourite, and in return for their likings he loved ’em in shoals.