Far from the Madding Crowd Page 6

  By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at Shottsford the next day.

  “How far is Shottsford?”

  “Ten miles t’other side of Weatherbury.”

  Weatherbury! It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before. This information was like coming from night into noon.

  “How far is it to Weatherbury?”

  “Five or six miles.”

  Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the Weatherbury quarter. Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means uninteresting intrinsically. If report spoke truly they were as hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county. Oak resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford, and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended as the direct route to the village in question.

  The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks, whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode on in undisturbed serenity. On the higher levels the dead and dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving, but flying away if he stopped to look at them. He passed by Yalbury Wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the crack-voiced cock-pheasants “cu-uck, cuck,” and the wheezy whistle of the hens.

  By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. He descended Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up under a great over-hanging tree by the roadside.

  On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the spot being apparently quite deserted. The waggon, from its position, seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty. Gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his position. He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of the journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted to lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the village of Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging.

  Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into the lonely waggon. Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and, as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over him by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling, physically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life. Inward melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his history. So, thinking of his misfortunes, amorous and pastoral, he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead of having to wait for him.

  If he had framed a conscious wish, or even a prayer, before he fell to slumber that he might dream of she whom he still so ardently loved and desired, it was to be disappointed; he was forced to satisfy himself with remembrance of her face at their last encounter, hiding behind the holly bush, and if this spectacle failed to arouse him, he was too weary to change it for another, where she would appear to him in a more willing guise. Though he would not have wished the real Bathsheba to be more forward, the Bathsheba of his daydreams was as passionate, as open, and as yielding as any man could wish — indeed, her saucy advances upon his person frequently surprised him.

  He had told her he loved her, longed for her, and would never cease wanting her — how could a young girl understand the whole import of this declaration? Yet the Bathsheba of his imagination, while still an innocent girl, took pleasure in giving him pleasure, sometimes with her skilful hands, sometimes with her lips, and rarely, but deliciously, with the entirety of her body.

  On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no idea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion. He was being carried along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a kettledrum-stick. He then distinguished voices in conversation, coming from the forepart of the waggon. His concern at this dilemma (which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars above him.

  Charles’s Wain was getting towards a right angle with the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine o’clock — in other words, that he had slept two hours. This small astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose hands he had fallen.

  Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs outside the waggon, one of whom was driving. Gabriel soon found that this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from Casterbridge fair, like himself.

  A conversation was in progress, which continued thus:

  “Be as ‘twill, she’s a fine handsome body as far’s looks be concerned. But that’s only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides.”

  “Ay — so ‘a do seem, Billy Smallbury — so ‘a do seem.” This utterance was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of the waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker’s larynx. It came from the man who held the reins.

  “She’s a very vain feymell — so ‘tis said here and there.”

  “Ah, now. If so be ‘tis like that, I can’t look her in the face. Lord, no: not I — heh-heh-heh! Such a shy man as I be!”

  “Yes — she’s very vain. ‘Tis said that every night at going to bed she looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly.”

  “And not a married woman. Oh, the world!”

  “And ‘a can play the peanner, so ‘tis said. Can play so clever that ‘a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for.”

  “D’ye tell o’t! A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man! And how do she pay?”

  “That I don’t know, Master Poorgrass.”

  On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed into Gabriel’s mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba. There were, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the waggon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some estate. They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon unseen.

  He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate, and mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under some hay or corn-stack. The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon his ear. He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand an unusual light — appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow increased. Something was on fire.

  Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the exact direction of the fire. The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. A rick-yard was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of thorn-twigs
— the light reaching him through a leafless intervening hedge — and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright in the same abounding rays. He came up to the boundary fence, and stood to regain breath. It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living soul.

  The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone as to preclude a possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently from a house. As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye. However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together, will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the outside.

  This before Gabriel’s eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together, and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of a cigar. Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no crackle. Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow uniformity. Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest.

  Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more serious than he had at first imagined. A scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining stacks of the group.

  Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. The first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could never drag on fast enough.

  “O, man — fire, fire! A good master and a bad servant is fire, fire! — I mean, a bad servant and a good master. Oh, Mark Clark — come! And you, Matthew Moon — and you, Maryann Money — and you, Jan Coggan, and Matthew there!” Other figures now appeared behind this shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from being alone he was in a great company — whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by their owners’ movements. The assemblage — belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotion — set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose.

  “Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!” cried Gabriel to those nearest to him. The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these, tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the fire once got under this stack, all would be lost.

  “Get a tarpaulin — quick!” said Gabriel.

  A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the corn-stack, and stood up vertical.

  “Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet.” said Gabriel again.

  The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack.

  “A ladder,” cried Gabriel.

  “The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,” said a spectre-like form in the smoke.

  Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage in the operation of “reed-drawing,” and digging in his feet, and occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up the beetling face. He at once sat astride the very apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and some water.

  Billy Smallbury — one of the men who had been on the waggon — by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak’s face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.

  On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was another woman, on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.

  “He’s a shepherd,” said the woman on foot. “Yes — he is. See how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock-frock is burnt in two holes, I declare! If ‘twas laid open any further, we’d be seeing his wedding tackle poking through it. A fine young shepherd he is too, a proper man, with a lusty, strong body; I’d tumble in a haystack with him any day, that I would.”

  “Maryann, enough! Whose shepherd is he?” said the equestrian in a clear voice.

  “Don’t know, ma’am.”

  “Don’t any of the others know?”

  “Nobody at all — I’ve asked ‘em. Quite a stranger, they say.”

  The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked anxiously around.

  “Do you think the barn is safe?” she said.

  “D’ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?” said the second woman, passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.

  “Safe-now — leastwise I think so. If this rick had gone the barn would have followed. ‘Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done the most good — he sitting on the top o’ rick, whizzing his great long-arms about like a windmill.”

  “He does work hard,” said the young woman on horseback, looking up at Gabriel through her thick woollen veil. “I wish he was shepherd here. Don’t any of you know his name.”

  “Never heard the man’s name in my life, or seed his form afore.”

  The fire began to die down, and Gabriel’s elevated position being no longer required of him, he made as if to descend.

  “Maryann,” said the girl on horseback, “go to him as he comes down, and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he has done.”

  “That I will, and willingly,” said Maryann. A new shepherd on this farm would suit her needs very well. She gathered up her skirts fetchingly, stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the ladder. She delivered her message with as much grace and allure as she could muster.

  “Where is your master the farmer?” asked Gabriel, kindling with the idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.

  “’Tisn’t a master; ‘tis a mistress, shepherd.”

  Seeing him closer, Maryann was even more taken by his appearance.

  “A woman farmer?”

  “Ay, ‘a b’lieve, and a rich one too!” said a bystander. “Lately ‘a came here from a distance. Took on her uncle’s farm, who died suddenly. Used to measure his money in half-pint cups. They say now that she’ve business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I do pitch-halfpenny — not a bit in the world, shepherd.”

  “That’s she, back there upon the pony,” said Maryann; not so willing to acquaint the stranger with the charms of her mistress, “wi’ her face a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it.”

  Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water, the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter,
advanced with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the slight female form in the saddle. He lifted his hat with respect, and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said in a hesitating voice,

  “Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma’am?”

  She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all astonishment.

  Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba Everdene, were face to face.

  Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice, “Do you want a shepherd, ma’am?”

  CHAPTER VII

  RECOGNITION — A TIMID GIRL

  Bathsheba withdrew into the shade. She scarcely knew whether most to be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at its awkwardness. There was room for a little pity, also for a very little exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own. Embarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel’s declaration of love to her at Norcombe, only to think she had nearly forgotten it.

  “Yes,” she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again to him with a little warmth of cheek; “I do want a shepherd. But — ”

  “He’s the very man, ma’am,” said one of the villagers, quietly.

  Conviction breeds conviction. “Ay, that ‘a is,” said a second, decisively.

  “The man, truly!” said a third, with heartiness.

  “He’s all there!” said number four, fervidly.

  “Then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff,” said Bathsheba.

  All was practical again now. A summer eve and loneliness would have been necessary to give the meeting its proper fullness of romance.

  The bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation within his breast at discovering that this bounteous goddess of strange report was only a modification of his Venus, the well-known and admired, retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring.