He slept soundly and long, and was awakened by the sound of a bell. On peering from the hole he found the time had advanced to full day; the sun was shining brightly. The bell was that of the “faire chappell” on 142 the green outside the gatehouse, and it was calling to matins. Presently the priest crossed the green to a little side-door in the chancel, and then from the gateway of the mansion emerged the household, the tall man whom Roger had seen with his sister on the previous night, on his arm being a portly dame, and, running beside the pair, two little girls and a boy. These all entered the chapel, and the bell having ceased and the environs become clear, the sailor crept out from his hiding.
He sauntered towards the chapel, the opening words of the service being audible within. While standing by the porch he saw a belated servitor approaching from the kitchen-court to attend the service also. Roger carelessly accosted him, and asked, as an idle wanderer, the name of the family he had just seen cross over from the mansion.
“Od zounds! if ye modden be a stranger here in very truth, goodman. That war Sir John and his dame, and his children Elizabeth, Mary, and John.”
“I be from foreign parts. Sir John what d’ye call’n?”
“Master John Horseleigh, Knight, who had a’most as much lond by inheritance of his mother as a had by his father, and likewise some by his wife. Why, baint his arms dree goolden horses’ heads, and idden his lady the daughter of Master Richard Phelipson of Montislope, in Nether Wessex, known to us all?”
“It mid be so, and yet it mid not. However, th’ ’lt miss thy prayers for such an honest knight’s welfare, and I have to traipse seaward many miles.”
He went onward, and, as he walked, continued saying to himself, “Now to that poor wronged fool Edy. The fond thing! I thought it; ’twas too quick—she was ever amorous. What’s to become of her? God wot! How be I going to face her with the news, and how be I to hold it from her? To bring this disgrace on my father’s honored name, a double-tongued knave!” He turned and shook his fist at the chapel and all in it, and resumed his way.
Perhaps it was owing to the perplexity of his mind that, instead of returning by the direct road towards his sister’s obscure lodging in the next county, he followed the highway to Casterbridge, some fifteen miles off, where he remained drinking hard all that afternoon and evening, and where he lay that and two or three succeeding nights, wandering thence along the Anglebury road to some village that way, and lying the Friday night after at his native place of Havenpool. The sight of the familiar objects there seems to have stirred him anew to action, and the next morning he was observed pursuing the way to Oozewood that he had followed on the Saturday previous, reckoning, no doubt, that Saturday night would, as before, be a time for finding Sir John with his sister again.
