When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were extemporized on his young face.
“Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!” she went on to herself. “To think that I was such a fool!”
“ ’Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn’t it, Tess?” murmured Abraham through his tears.
In silence they waited through an interval which seemed endless. At length a sound, and an approaching object, proved to them that the driver of the mail-car had been as good as his word. A farmer’s man from near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob. He was harnessed to the wagon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the load taken on towards Casterbridge.
The evening of the same day saw the empty wagon reach again the spot of the accident. Prince had lain there in the ditch since the morning; but the place of the blood-pool was still visible in the middle of the road, though scratched and scraped over by passing vehicles. All that was left of Prince was now hoisted into the wagon he had formerly hauled, and with his hoofs in the air, and his shoes shining in the setting sunlight, he retraced the eight or nine miles to Marlott.
Tess had gone back earlier. How to break the news was more than she could think. It was a relief to her tongue to find from the faces of her parents that they already knew of their loss, though this did not lessen the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon herself for her negligence.
But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered the misfortune a less terrifying one to them than it would have been to a thriving family,