On the evening road from Shaston to Marlott, Parson Tringham rode a grey mare and called the haggler Sir John. Jack Durbeyfield stopped him. It was not the first time. Tringham, tracing pedigrees for a county history, had followed the name on the waggon back to Sir Pagan d'Urberville, who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror. The nose and chin, when Durbeyfield lifted them, were the family's, a little debased.
The knowledge had died out. Better days, as he had heard them, meant two horses once and one horse now. A spoon and a seal at home did not, to him, make a knight. Tringham's account ended in an empty present: extinct in the male line, vaults at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill, no seat left at Kingsbere, Sherton, or the other places he named. Do nothing, the parson told him, except remember how the mighty are fallen. He refused a quart at The Pure Drop. Durbeyfield had already had enough. He rode on, unsure he should have spoken.
Durbeyfield lay down among the daisies and spent a shilling on a lad named Fred, who would not take orders until the coin appeared. A carriage from The Pure Drop, rum on the account, and the wife told to leave the washing: that was the message. Fred called him Sir John. A brass band started in the village. It was not for him. It was the women's club-walking, and his daughter was in it. He had forgotten her. He stayed on the bank. The carriage was still to come, and the band inside the hills was the only human sound.
Coming Up in Chapter 2
On a May afternoon the women of Marlott walk two by two in white gowns, each carrying a peeled willow wand and a bunch of white flowers. Near The Pure Drop a voice hails Tess Durbeyfield: her father is riding home in a hired chaise, and she turns, the only one of the company with a red ribbon in her hair.
