He entered Casterbridge between twelve and one, and, putting up at
the Old Greyhound, walked on to the Bow. Here, rather dusty on the
ledges of his clothes, he stood and waited while the people in their
best summer dresses poured out of the three churches round him.
When they had all gone, and a smell of cinders and gravy had spread
down the ancient high-street, and the pie-dishes from adjacent
bakehouses had all travelled past, he saw the mail coach rise above
the arch of Grey's Bridge, a quarter of a mile distant, surmounted
by swaying knobs, which proved to be the heads of the outside
travellers.
'That's the way for a man's bride to come to him,' said Robert to
himself with a feeling of poetry; and as the horn sounded and the
horses clattered up the street he walked down to the inn. The knot
of hostlers and inn-servants had gathered, the horses were dragged
from the vehicle, and the passengers for Casterbridge began to
descend. Captain Bob eyed them over, looked inside, looked outside
again; to his disappointment Matilda was not there, nor her boxes,
nor anything that was hers. Neither coachman nor guard had seen or
heard of such a person at Melchester; and Bob walked slowly away.
Depressed by forebodings to an extent which took away nearly a third
of his appetite, he sat down in the parlour of the Old Greyhound to
a slice from the family joint of the landlord. This gentleman, who
dined in his shirt-sleeves, partly because it was August, and partly
from a sense that they would not be so fit for public view further
on in the week, suggested that Bob should wait till three or four
that afternoon, when the road-waggon would arrive, as the lost lady
might have preferred that mode of conveyance; and when Bob appeared
rather hurt at the suggestion, the landlord's wife assured him, as a
woman who knew good life, that many genteel persons travelled in
that way during the present high price of provisions.
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