By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and
unharnessing the hot form of Prince. But he was already dead, and,
seeing that nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man
returned to his own animal, which was uninjured.
"You was on the wrong side," he said. "I am bound to go on with the
mail-bags, so that the best thing for you to do is bide here with
your load. I'll send somebody to help you as soon as I can. It is
getting daylight, and you have nothing to fear."
He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and waited. The
atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook themselves in the hedges,
arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and
Tess showed hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of
her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the
sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it. Prince lay
alongside, still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest
looking scarcely large enough to have let out all that had animated
him. "'Tis all my doing--all mine!" the girl cried, gazing at the
spectacle. "No excuse for me--none. What will mother and father
live on now? Aby, Aby!" She shook the child, who had slept soundly
through the whole disaster. "We can't go on with our load--Prince
is killed!" 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 waggon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the
load taken on towards Casterbridge.
The evening of the same day saw the empty waggon 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
waggon 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.