Far from the Madding Crowd

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Far from the Madding Crowd


A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan
starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been
casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for
his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw
were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and
under which the whitish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled.
The ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence,
recommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing
to an increasing growth of surrounding wool. This continued till Oak
withdrew again from the flock. He returned to the hut, bringing in
his arms a new-born lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for
a full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane
about half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted
the animal's entire body just at present.

The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small
stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the
lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being
lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard
couch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered
half the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man
stretched himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his
eyes. In about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would
have decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.

The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and
alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle,
reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung
associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools. In the
corner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were
ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to
ovine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia,
ginger, and castor-oil being the chief. On a triangular shelf across
the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider,
which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay
the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely
watcher to beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two
round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides.

The lamb, revived by the warmth began to bleat, and the sound entered
Gabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected
sounds will. Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert
wakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse
operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had
shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried
it into the darkness. After placing the little creature with its
mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the
time of night from the altitudes of the stars.

The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were
half-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which
gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it
soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with
their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy
Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away
through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the
leafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the
uppermost boughs.

"One o'clock," said Gabriel.

Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some
charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky
as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit,
as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed
impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with
the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and
sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys
were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded
hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself; he could
fancy them all gone round to the sunny side.

Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived
that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the
outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing. It was an
artificial light, almost close at hand.

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable
and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by
far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when
intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability,
induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united
to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.

Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower
boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under the slope reminded him
that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the
slope of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level
with the ground. In front it was formed of board nailed to posts and
covered with tar as a preservative. Through crevices in the roof and
side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made
the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind, where,
leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he
could see into the interior clearly.

The place contained two women and two cows. By the side of the
latter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket. One of the women was
past middle age. Her companion was apparently young and graceful;
he could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being
almost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as
Milton's Satan first saw Paradise. She wore no bonnet or hat, but
had enveloped herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung
over her head as a covering.

"There, now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting her
knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole.
"I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I have never been more
frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she
recovers."

The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall
together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without
parting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught
the infection and slightly yawned in sympathy.

"I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things," she
said.

"As we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other; "for you
must help me if you stay."

"Well, my hat is gone, however," continued the younger. "It went over
the hedge, I think. The idea of such a slight wind catching it."

The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a
tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes
to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her
long back being mathematically level. The other was spotted, grey
and white. Beside her Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old,
looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not
long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning
to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited
instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience.
Between the sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill
lately.

"I think we had better send for some oatmeal," said the elder woman;
"there's no more bran."

"Yes, aunt; and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light."

"But there's no side-saddle."

"I can ride on the other: trust me."

Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her
features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of
the cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon
his fancy for their details. In making even horizontal and clear
inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us
whatever our eyes bring in. Had Gabriel been able from the first to
get a distinct view of her countenance, his estimate of it as very
handsome or slightly so would have been as his soul required a
divinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one. Having for
some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing
void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for
his fancy, he painted her a beauty.

By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy
mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn
and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and
forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. Oak knew
her instantly as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and
looking-glass: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.

They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern,
and went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more
than a nebula. Gabriel Oak returned to his flock.




CHAPTER III


A GIRL ON HORSEBACK--CONVERSATION


The sluggish day began to break. Even its position terrestrially is
one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason
save that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again
into the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of
a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an
auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading
past the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of the night before.
Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having
lost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it. He hastily
scanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it found
the hat among the leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned
to his hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the
loophole in the direction of the rider's approach.

She came up and looked around--then on the other side of the hedge.
Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when
an unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for
the present. The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the
plantation. It was not a bridle-path--merely a pedestrian's track,
and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven
feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath
them. The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a
moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view,
then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her
head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to
the sky. The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of
a kingfisher--its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel's eyes had
scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank pony seemed used to
such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the
level boughs.

The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head
and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having
ceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt
another, even more obviously convenient than the first. She had
no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the
smooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways. Springing to
her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying
herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner
demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and
trotted off in the direction of Tewnell Mill.

Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat
in his hut, went again among his ewes. An hour passed, the girl
returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of
her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a
milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off.
The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman.

Soon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in regular
succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person
milking a cow. Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited
beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill.

She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left
arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make
Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole
would have been revealed. There was a bright air and manner about
her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her
existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption
failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the
whole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius,
that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to
recognised power. It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's
face rising like the moon behind the hedge.

The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the
portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution
than a difference. The starting-point selected by the judgment was
her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the
hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison
with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by
women as best. All features of consequence were severe and regular.
It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with
eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is
seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the
highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder
of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads
usually goes off into random facial curves. Without throwing a
Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism
checked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a
long consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her figure in
its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but
since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been put into
a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. Yet
she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to
draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do
it in towns.

That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as
she caught Oak's eyes conning the same page was natural, and almost
certain. The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if
a little more pronounced, dignity if a little less. Rays of male
vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural
districts; she brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been
irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her
previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase
of itself. Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all.

"I found a hat," said Oak.

"It is mine," said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to
a small smile an inclination to laugh distinctly: "it flew away last
night."

"One o'clock this morning?"

"Well--it was." She was surprised. "How did you know?" she said.

"I was here."

"You are Farmer Oak, are you not?"

"That or thereabouts. I'm lately come to this place."

"A large farm?" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging
back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but
it being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent
curves with a colour of their own.

"No; not large. About a hundred." (In speaking of farms the word
"acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions
as "a stag of ten.")

"I wanted my hat this morning," she went on. "I had to ride to
Tewnell Mill."

"Yes you had."

"How do you know?"

"I saw you."

"Where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her
lineaments and frame to a standstill.

"Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill," said
Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some
matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction
named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes.

A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as
suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. Recollection of the
strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was
succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot
face. It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to
reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the
deepest rose-colour. From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties
of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's
acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness,
turned away his head.

The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she
would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again.
He heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the
breeze, and looked. She had gone away.

With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to
his work.

Five mornings and evenings passed. The young woman came regularly to
milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed
her vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person. His want of
tact had deeply offended her--not by seeing what he could not help,
but by letting her know that he had seen it. For, as without law
there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared
to feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman
without her own connivance. It was food for great regret with him;
it was also a _contretemps_ which touched into life a latent heat he
had experienced in that direction.

The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting,
but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week. One
afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening,
which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. It was a time
when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets;
when round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the
sitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. Many
a small bird went to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs.

As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon the
cowshed. At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of
bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the hut and heaped more
fuel upon the stove. The wind came in at the bottom of the door,
and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there and wheeled the cot round a
little more to the south. Then the wind spouted in at a ventilating
hole--of which there was one on each side of the hut.

Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door
closed one of these must be kept open--that chosen being always on
the side away from the wind. Closing the slide to windward, he
turned to open the other; on second thoughts the farmer considered
that he would first sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two,
till the temperature of the hut was a little raised. He sat down.

His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself
weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak
decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall
asleep. He fell asleep, however, without having performed the
necessary preliminary.

How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew. During the
first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be
in course of enactment. His dog was howling, his head was aching
fearfully--somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his
neckerchief.

On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in
a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with the
remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. More than
this--astonishingly more--his head was upon her lap, his face and
neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his
collar.

"Whatever is the matter?" said Oak, vacantly.

She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a kind to
start enjoyment.

"Nothing now," she answered, "since you are not dead. It is a wonder
you were not suffocated in this hut of yours."

"Ah, the hut!" murmured Gabriel. "I gave ten pounds for that hut.
But I'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old
times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw! It played me nearly
the same trick the other day!" Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought
down his fist upon the floor.

"It was not exactly the fault of the hut," she observed in a tone
which showed her to be that novelty among women--one who finished a
thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it. "You
should, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to
leave the slides closed."

"Yes I suppose I should," said Oak, absently. He was endeavouring to
catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head
upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone
things. He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon
have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey
the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language.
So he remained silent.

She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking
himself like a Samson. "How can I thank 'ee?" he said at last,
gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his
face.

"Oh, never mind that," said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile
to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to
be.

"How did you find me?"

"I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when
I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy's milking is almost
over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the
next). The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my
skirt. I came across and looked round the hut the very first thing
to see if the slides were closed. My uncle has a hut like this one,
and I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without
leaving a slide open. I opened the door, and there you were like
dead. I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting
it was warm, and no use."

"I wonder if I should have died?" Gabriel said, in a low voice, which
was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her.

"Oh no!" the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic
probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should
harmonise with the dignity of such a deed--and she shunned it.

"I believe you saved my life, Miss--I don't know your name. I know
your aunt's, but not yours."

"I would just as soon not tell it--rather not. There is no reason
either why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with
me."

"Still, I should like to know."

"You can inquire at my aunt's--she will tell you."

"My name is Gabriel Oak."

"And mine isn't. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so
decisively, Gabriel Oak."

"You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the
most of it."

"I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable."

"I should think you might soon get a new one."

"Mercy!--how many opinions you keep about you concerning other
people, Gabriel Oak."

"Well, Miss--excuse the words--I thought you would like them. But I
can't match you, I know, in mapping out my mind upon my tongue. I
never was very clever in my inside. But I thank you. Come, give me
your hand."

She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old-fashioned earnest
conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on. "Very well," she
said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure
impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too
demonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers
with the lightness of a small-hearted person.

"I am sorry," he said the instant after.

"What for?"

"Letting your hand go so quick."

"You may have it again if you like; there it is." She gave him her
hand again.

Oak held it longer this time--indeed, curiously long. "How soft it
is--being winter time, too--not chapped or rough or anything!" he
said.

"There--that's long enough," said she, though without pulling it
away. "But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it? You
may if you want to."

"I wasn't thinking of any such thing," said Gabriel, simply; "but I
will--"

"That you won't!" She snatched back her hand.

Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact.

"Now find out my name," she said, teasingly; and withdrew.




CHAPTER IV


GABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE MISTAKE


The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is,
as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which
recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities
of capture to the subordinated man.