Far from the Madding Crowd

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


"True, Henery, you do, I've heard ye," said Joseph Poorgrass in a
voice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn smile of misery.

"'Twould do a martel man no harm to have what's under her bonnet,"
said Billy Smallbury, who had just entered, bearing his one tooth
before him. "She can spaik real language, and must have some sense
somewhere. Do ye foller me?"

"I do, I do; but no baily--I deserved that place," wailed Henery,
signifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at visions of a high
destiny apparently visible to him on Billy Smallbury's smock-frock.
"There, 'twas to be, I suppose. Your lot is your lot, and Scripture
is nothing; for if you do good you don't get rewarded according to
your works, but be cheated in some mean way out of your recompense."

"No, no; I don't agree with'ee there," said Mark Clark. "God's a
perfect gentleman in that respect."

"Good works good pay, so to speak it," attested Joseph Poorgrass.

A short pause ensued, and as a sort of _entr'acte_ Henery turned and
blew out the lanterns, which the increase of daylight rendered no
longer necessary even in the malthouse, with its one pane of glass.

"I wonder what a farmer-woman can want with a harpsichord, dulcimer,
pianner, or whatever 'tis they d'call it?" said the maltster. "Liddy
saith she've a new one."

"Got a pianner?"

"Ay. Seems her old uncle's things were not good enough for her.
She've bought all but everything new. There's heavy chairs for the
stout, weak and wiry ones for the slender; great watches, getting on
to the size of clocks, to stand upon the chimbley-piece."

"Pictures, for the most part wonderful frames."

"And long horse-hair settles for the drunk, with horse-hair pillows
at each end," said Mr. Clark. "Likewise looking-glasses for the
pretty, and lying books for the wicked."

A firm loud tread was now heard stamping outside; the door was opened
about six inches, and somebody on the other side exclaimed--

"Neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?"

"Ay, sure, shepherd," said the conclave.

The door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled from
top to bottom with the blow. Mr. Oak appeared in the entry with a
steaming face, hay-bands wound about his ankles to keep out the snow,
a leather strap round his waist outside the smock-frock, and looking
altogether an epitome of the world's health and vigour. Four lambs
hung in various embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the
dog George, whom Gabriel had contrived to fetch from Norcombe,
stalked solemnly behind.

"Well, Shepherd Oak, and how's lambing this year, if I mid say it?"
inquired Joseph Poorgrass.

"Terrible trying," said Oak. "I've been wet through twice a-day,
either in snow or rain, this last fortnight. Cainy and I haven't
tined our eyes to-night."

"A good few twins, too, I hear?"

"Too many by half. Yes; 'tis a very queer lambing this year. We
shan't have done by Lady Day."

"And last year 'twer all over by Sexajessamine Sunday," Joseph
remarked.

"Bring on the rest Cain," said Gabriel, "and then run back to the
ewes. I'll follow you soon."

Cainy Ball--a cheery-faced young lad, with a small circular orifice
by way of mouth, advanced and deposited two others, and retired as he
was bidden. Oak lowered the lambs from their unnatural elevation,
wrapped them in hay, and placed them round the fire.

"We've no lambing-hut here, as I used to have at Norcombe," said
Gabriel, "and 'tis such a plague to bring the weakly ones to a house.
If 'twasn't for your place here, malter, I don't know what I should
do i' this keen weather. And how is it with you to-day, malter?"

"Oh, neither sick nor sorry, shepherd; but no younger."

"Ay--I understand."

"Sit down, Shepherd Oak," continued the ancient man of malt. "And
how was the old place at Norcombe, when ye went for your dog? I
should like to see the old familiar spot; but faith, I shouldn't know
a soul there now."

"I suppose you wouldn't. 'Tis altered very much."

"Is it true that Dicky Hill's wooden cider-house is pulled down?"

"Oh yes--years ago, and Dicky's cottage just above it."

"Well, to be sure!"

"Yes; and Tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted that used to bear two
hogsheads of cider; and no help from other trees."

"Rooted?--you don't say it! Ah! stirring times we live in--stirring
times."

"And you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle of the
place? That's turned into a solid iron pump with a large stone
trough, and all complete."

"Dear, dear--how the face of nations alter, and what we live to see
nowadays! Yes--and 'tis the same here. They've been talking but now
of the mis'ess's strange doings."

"What have you been saying about her?" inquired Oak, sharply turning
to the rest, and getting very warm.

"These middle-aged men have been pulling her over the coals for pride
and vanity," said Mark Clark; "but I say, let her have rope enough.
Bless her pretty face--shouldn't I like to do so--upon her cherry
lips!" The gallant Mark Clark here made a peculiar and well known
sound with his own.

"Mark," said Gabriel, sternly, "now you mind this! none of that
dalliance-talk--that smack-and-coddle style of yours--about Miss
Everdene. I don't allow it. Do you hear?"

"With all my heart, as I've got no chance," replied Mr. Clark,
cordially.

"I suppose you've been speaking against her?" said Oak, turning to
Joseph Poorgrass with a very grim look.

"No, no--not a word I--'tis a real joyful thing that she's no worse,
that's what I say," said Joseph, trembling and blushing with terror.
"Matthew just said--"

"Matthew Moon, what have you been saying?" asked Oak.

"I? Why ye know I wouldn't harm a worm--no, not one underground
worm?" said Matthew Moon, looking very uneasy.

"Well, somebody has--and look here, neighbours," Gabriel, though one
of the quietest and most gentle men on earth, rose to the occasion,
with martial promptness and vigour. "That's my fist." Here he
placed his fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the
mathematical centre of the maltster's little table, and with it gave
a bump or two thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly
took in the idea of fistiness before he went further. "Now--the
first man in the parish that I hear prophesying bad of our mistress,
why" (here the fist was raised and let fall as Thor might have done
with his hammer in assaying it)--"he'll smell and taste that--or I'm
a Dutchman."

All earnestly expressed by their features that their minds did not
wander to Holland for a moment on account of this statement, but were
deploring the difference which gave rise to the figure; and Mark
Clark cried "Hear, hear; just what I should ha' said." The dog George
looked up at the same time after the shepherd's menace, and though he
understood English but imperfectly, began to growl.

"Now, don't ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down!" said Henery,
with a deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of the kind in
Christianity.

"We hear that ye be a extraordinary good and clever man, shepherd,"
said Joseph Poorgrass with considerable anxiety from behind the
maltster's bedstead, whither he had retired for safety. "'Tis a
great thing to be clever, I'm sure," he added, making movements
associated with states of mind rather than body; "we wish we were,
don't we, neighbours?"

"Ay, that we do, sure," said Matthew Moon, with a small anxious laugh
towards Oak, to show how very friendly disposed he was likewise.

"Who's been telling you I'm clever?" said Oak.

"'Tis blowed about from pillar to post quite common," said Matthew.
"We hear that ye can tell the time as well by the stars as we can by
the sun and moon, shepherd."

"Yes, I can do a little that way," said Gabriel, as a man of medium
sentiments on the subject.

"And that ye can make sun-dials, and prent folks' names upon their
waggons almost like copper-plate, with beautiful flourishes, and
great long tails. A excellent fine thing for ye to be such a clever
man, shepherd. Joseph Poorgrass used to prent to Farmer James
Everdene's waggons before you came, and 'a could never mind which way
to turn the J's and E's--could ye, Joseph?" Joseph shook his head
to express how absolute was the fact that he couldn't. "And so you
used to do 'em the wrong way, like this, didn't ye, Joseph?" Matthew
marked on the dusty floor with his whip-handle


[the word J A M E S appears here with the "J" and the "E"
printed backwards]


"And how Farmer James would cuss, and call thee a fool, wouldn't he,
Joseph, when 'a seed his name looking so inside-out-like?" continued
Matthew Moon with feeling.

"Ay--'a would," said Joseph, meekly. "But, you see, I wasn't so much
to blame, for them J's and E's be such trying sons o' witches for the
memory to mind whether they face backward or forward; and I always
had such a forgetful memory, too."

"'Tis a very bad afiction for ye, being such a man of calamities in
other ways."

"Well, 'tis; but a happy Providence ordered that it should be no
worse, and I feel my thanks. As to shepherd, there, I'm sure mis'ess
ought to have made ye her baily--such a fitting man for't as you be."

"I don't mind owning that I expected it," said Oak, frankly.
"Indeed, I hoped for the place. At the same time, Miss Everdene has
a right to be her own baily if she choose--and to keep me down to be
a common shepherd only." Oak drew a slow breath, looked sadly into
the bright ashpit, and seemed lost in thoughts not of the most
hopeful hue.

The genial warmth of the fire now began to stimulate the nearly
lifeless lambs to bleat and move their limbs briskly upon the hay,
and to recognize for the first time the fact that they were born.
Their noise increased to a chorus of baas, upon which Oak pulled the
milk-can from before the fire, and taking a small tea-pot from the
pocket of his smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of
the helpless creatures which were not to be restored to their dams
how to drink from the spout--a trick they acquired with astonishing
aptitude.

"And she don't even let ye have the skins of the dead lambs, I hear?"
resumed Joseph Poorgrass, his eyes lingering on the operations of Oak
with the necessary melancholy.

"I don't have them," said Gabriel.

"Ye be very badly used, shepherd," hazarded Joseph again, in the hope
of getting Oak as an ally in lamentation after all. "I think she's
took against ye--that I do."

"Oh no--not at all," replied Gabriel, hastily, and a sigh escaped
him, which the deprivation of lamb skins could hardly have caused.

Before any further remark had been added a shade darkened the door,
and Boldwood entered the malthouse, bestowing upon each a nod of a
quality between friendliness and condescension.

"Ah! Oak, I thought you were here," he said. "I met the mail-cart
ten minutes ago, and a letter was put into my hand, which I opened
without reading the address. I believe it is yours. You must excuse
the accident please."

"Oh yes--not a bit of difference, Mr. Boldwood--not a bit," said
Gabriel, readily. He had not a correspondent on earth, nor was there
a possible letter coming to him whose contents the whole parish would
not have been welcome to peruse.

Oak stepped aside, and read the following in an unknown hand:--


DEAR FRIEND,--I do not know your name, but I think these
few lines will reach you, which I wrote to thank you for
your kindness to me the night I left Weatherbury in a
reckless way. I also return the money I owe you, which you
will excuse my not keeping as a gift. All has ended well,
and I am happy to say I am going to be married to the young
man who has courted me for some time--Sergeant Troy, of
the 11th Dragoon Guards, now quartered in this town. He
would, I know, object to my having received anything except
as a loan, being a man of great respectability and high
honour--indeed, a nobleman by blood.

I should be much obliged to you if you would keep the
contents of this letter a secret for the present, dear
friend. We mean to surprise Weatherbury by coming there
soon as husband and wife, though I blush to state it to one
nearly a stranger. The sergeant grew up in Weatherbury.
Thanking you again for your kindness,

I am, your sincere well-wisher,
FANNY ROBIN.


"Have you read it, Mr. Boldwood?" said Gabriel; "if not, you had
better do so. I know you are interested in Fanny Robin."

Boldwood read the letter and looked grieved.

"Fanny--poor Fanny! the end she is so confident of has not yet
come, she should remember--and may never come. I see she gives no
address."

"What sort of a man is this Sergeant Troy?" said Gabriel.

"H'm--I'm afraid not one to build much hope upon in such a case as
this," the farmer murmured, "though he's a clever fellow, and up to
everything. A slight romance attaches to him, too. His mother was
a French governess, and it seems that a secret attachment existed
between her and the late Lord Severn. She was married to a poor
medical man, and soon after an infant was born; and while money was
forthcoming all went on well. Unfortunately for her boy, his best
friends died; and he got then a situation as second clerk at a
lawyer's in Casterbridge. He stayed there for some time, and might
have worked himself into a dignified position of some sort had he not
indulged in the wild freak of enlisting. I have much doubt if ever
little Fanny will surprise us in the way she mentions--very much
doubt. A silly girl!--silly girl!"

The door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running Cainy
Ball out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny
trumpet, from which he coughed with noisy vigour and great distension
of face.

"Now, Cain Ball," said Oak, sternly, "why will you run so fast and
lose your breath so? I'm always telling you of it."

"Oh--I--a puff of mee breath--went--the--wrong way, please, Mister
Oak, and made me cough--hok--hok!"

"Well--what have you come for?"

"I've run to tell ye," said the junior shepherd, supporting his
exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost, "that you must come
directly. Two more ewes have twinned--that's what's the matter,
Shepherd Oak."

"Oh, that's it," said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present
his thoughts on poor Fanny. "You are a good boy to run and tell me,
Cain, and you shall smell a large plum pudding some day as a treat.
But, before we go, Cainy, bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot
and have done with 'em."

Oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it
into the pot, and imprinted on the buttocks of the infant sheep the
initials of her he delighted to muse on--"B. E.," which signified to
all the region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to Farmer
Bathsheba Everdene, and to no one else.

"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off. Good morning, Mr. Boldwood."
The shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he
had himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the
lambing field hard by--their frames being now in a sleek and hopeful
state, pleasantly contrasting with their death's-door plight of half
an hour before.

Boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and
turned back. He followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating
return. On approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed,
the farmer drew out his pocket-book, unfastened it, and allowed it to
lie open on his hand. A letter was revealed--Bathsheba's.

"I was going to ask you, Oak," he said, with unreal carelessness, "if
you know whose writing this is?"

Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed
face, "Miss Everdene's."

Oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name.
He now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought. The
letter could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry
would not have been necessary.

Boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready
with their "Is it I?" in preference to objective reasoning.

"The question was perfectly fair," he returned--and there was
something incongruous in the serious earnestness with which he
applied himself to an argument on a valentine. "You know it is
always expected that privy inquiries will be made: that's where
the--fun lies." If the word "fun" had been "torture," it could not
have been uttered with a more constrained and restless countenance
than was Boldwood's then.

Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to
his house to breakfast--feeling twinges of shame and regret at having
so far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger. He
again placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of
the circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriel's information.




CHAPTER XVI


ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'


On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of
women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church
called All Saints', in the distant barrack-town before-mentioned, at
the end of a service without a sermon. They were about to disperse,
when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central
passage, arrested their attention. The step echoed with a ring
unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs. Everybody looked. A
young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a
sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment
which was only the more marked by the intense vigour of his step, and
by the determination upon his face to show none. A slight flush had
mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these
women; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till
he came close to the altar railing. Here for a moment he stood
alone.

The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice,
perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space. He
whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his
turn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they
also went up the chancel steps.

"'Tis a wedding!" murmured some of the women, brightening. "Let's
wait!"

The majority again sat down.

There was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones
turned their heads. From the interior face of the west wall of the
tower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell
beneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery
that struck the large bell in the tower. Between the tower and the
church was a close screen, the door of which was kept shut during
services, hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight. At present,
however, the door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on
the bell, and the mannikin's retreat into the nook again, were
visible to many, and audible throughout the church.

The jack had struck half-past eleven.

"Where's the woman?" whispered some of the spectators.

The young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of the old
pillars around. He faced the south-east, and was as silent as he was
still.

The silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on,
and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved. The rattle of the
quarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its
fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the
congregation to start palpably.

"I wonder where the woman is!" a voice whispered again.

There began now that slight shifting of feet, that artificial
coughing among several, which betrays a nervous suspense. At length
there was a titter. But the soldier never moved. There he stood,
his face to the south-east, upright as a column, his cap in his hand.

The clock ticked on. The women threw off their nervousness, and
titters and giggling became more frequent. Then came a dead silence.
Every one was waiting for the end. Some persons may have noticed how
extraordinarily the striking of quarters seems to quicken the flight
of time. It was hardly credible that the jack had not got wrong with
the minutes when the rattle began again, the puppet emerged, and the
four quarters were struck fitfully as before. One could almost be
positive that there was a malicious leer upon the hideous creature's
face, and a mischievous delight in its twitchings. Then followed the
dull and remote resonance of the twelve heavy strokes in the tower
above. The women were impressed, and there was no giggle this time.

The clergyman glided into the vestry, and the clerk vanished. The
sergeant had not yet turned; every woman in the church was waiting to
see his face, and he appeared to know it. At last he did turn, and
stalked resolutely down the nave, braving them all, with a compressed
lip. Two bowed and toothless old almsmen then looked at each other
and chuckled, innocently enough; but the sound had a strange weird
effect in that place.

Opposite to the church was a paved square, around which several
overhanging wood buildings of old time cast a picturesque shade. The
young man on leaving the door went to cross the square, when, in the
middle, he met a little woman. The expression of her face, which had
been one of intense anxiety, sank at the sight of his nearly to
terror.

"Well?" he said, in a suppressed passion, fixedly looking at her.

"Oh, Frank--I made a mistake!--I thought that church with the spire
was All Saints', and I was at the door at half-past eleven to a
minute as you said. I waited till a quarter to twelve, and found
then that I was in All Souls'. But I wasn't much frightened, for
I thought it could be to-morrow as well."

"You fool, for so fooling me! But say no more."

"Shall it be to-morrow, Frank?" she asked blankly.

"To-morrow!" and he gave vent to a hoarse laugh. "I don't go through
that experience again for some time, I warrant you!"

"But after all," she expostulated in a trembling voice, "the mistake
was not such a terrible thing! Now, dear Frank, when shall it be?"

"Ah, when? God knows!" he said, with a light irony, and turning from
her walked rapidly away.




CHAPTER XVII


IN THE MARKET-PLACE


On Saturday Boldwood was in Casterbridge market house as usual, when
the disturber of his dreams entered and became visible to him. Adam
had awakened from his deep sleep, and behold! there was Eve. The
farmer took courage, and for the first time really looked at her.

Material causes and emotional effects are not to be arranged in
regular equation. The result from capital employed in the production
of any movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the
cause itself is absurdly minute. When women are in a freakish mood,
their usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect,
seemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that Bathsheba
was fated to be astonished to-day.

Boldwood looked at her--not slily, critically, or understandingly,
but blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing
train--as something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood.
To Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary
complements--comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and
permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical,
unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely
erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty
to consider.

He saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and profile, and
the roundness of her chin and throat. He saw then the side of her
eyelids, eyes, and lashes, and the shape of her ear. Next he noticed
her figure, her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes.

Boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was right in
his thought, for it seemed impossible that this romance in the flesh,
if so sweet as he imagined, could have been going on long without
creating a commotion of delight among men, and provoking more inquiry
than Bathsheba had done, even though that was not a little. To the
best of his judgement neither nature nor art could improve this
perfect one of an imperfect many. His heart began to move within
him. Boldwood, it must be remembered, though forty years of age, had
never before inspected a woman with the very centre and force of his
glance; they had struck upon all his senses at wide angles.

Was she really beautiful? He could not assure himself that his
opinion was true even now. He furtively said to a neighbour, "Is
Miss Everdene considered handsome?"

"Oh yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you
remember. A very handsome girl indeed."

A man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions
on the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere
child's word on the point has the weight of an R.A.'s. Boldwood was
satisfied now.

And this charming woman had in effect said to him, "Marry me." Why
should she have done that strange thing? Boldwood's blindness to
the difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and
originating what they do not suggest, was well matched by Bathsheba's
insensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings.