CHAPTER XXII — THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS
Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent—conditions which, powerless without an opportunity as an opportunity without them is barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the favourable conjunction should have occurred. But this incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously. The spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not.
It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being all health and colour. Every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops’ croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint,—like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite,—snow-white ladies’-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to human flesh, the enchanter’s night-shade, and the black-petaled doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the vegetable world in and about Weatherbury at this teeming time; and of the animal, the metamorphosed figures of Mr. Jan Coggan, the master-shearer; the second and third shearers, who travelled in the exercise of their calling, and do not require definition by name; Henery Fray the fourth shearer, Susan Tall’s husband the fifth, Joseph Poorgrass the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and Gabriel Oak as general supervisor. None of these were clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean between a high and low caste Hindoo. An angularity of lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed that serious work was the order of the day.
They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with transepts. It not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be aware; no trace of such surroundings remained. The vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy-pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not apparent in erections where more ornament has been attempted. The dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was far nobler in design, because more wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our modern churches. Along each side wall was a range of striding buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation.
One could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either the church or the castle, akin to it in age and style, that the purpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with that to which it was still applied. Unlike and superior to either of those two typical remnants of mediævalism, the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout—a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers. For once mediævalism and modernism had a common stand-point. The lanceolate windows, the time-eaten archstones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. The defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion, and a desire.
To-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers’ operations, which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick oak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.
This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen’s _Then_ is the rustic’s _Now_. In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. In these Wessex nooks the busy outsider’s ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity.
So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in harmony with the barn.
The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. They were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.
Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the animals were shorn close. Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her bright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time being spent in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for them. At the present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of mild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of bread and cheese.
Bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there, and lecturing one of the younger operators who had allowed his last finished sheep to go off among the flock without re-stamping it with her initials, came again to Gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to drag a frightened ewe to his shear-station, flinging it over upon its back with a dexterous twist of the arm. He lopped off the tresses about its head, and opened up the neck and collar, his mistress quietly looking on.
“She blushes at the insult,” murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the clicking shears—a flush which was enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world.
Poor Gabriel’s soul was fed with a luxury of content by having her over him, her eyes critically regarding his skilful shears, which apparently were going to gather up a piece of the flesh at every close, and yet never did so. Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in that he was not over happy. He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough.
So the chatter was all on her side. There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba’s; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel’s. Full of this dim and temperate bliss, he went on to fling the ewe over upon her other side, covering her head with his knee, gradually running the shears line after line round her dewlap; thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail.
“Well done, and done quickly!” said Bathsheba, looking at her watch as the last snip resounded.
“How long, miss?” said Gabriel, wiping his brow.
“Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the first lock from its forehead. It is the first time that I have ever seen one done in less than half an hour.”
The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece—how perfectly like Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be realized—looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion visible being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed, was white as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind.
“Cain Ball!”
“Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!”
Cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot. “B. E.” is newly stamped upon the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps, panting, over the board into the shirtless flock outside. Then up comes Maryann; throws the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure—before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out—rendering it just now as superior to anything _woollen_ as cream is superior to milk-and-water.
But heartless circumstance could not leave entire Gabriel’s happiness of this morning. The rams, old ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly undergone their stripping, and the men were proceeding with the shearlings and hogs, when Oak’s belief that she was going to stand pleasantly by and time him through another performance was painfully interrupted by Farmer Boldwood’s appearance in the extremest corner of the barn. Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there he certainly was. Boldwood always carried with him a social atmosphere of his own, which everybody felt who came near him; and the talk, which Bathsheba’s presence had somewhat suppressed, was now totally suspended.
He crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him with a carriage of perfect ease. He spoke to her in low tones, and she instinctively modulated her own to the same pitch, and her voice ultimately even caught the inflection of his. She was far from having a wish to appear mysteriously connected with him; but woman at the impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in her choice of words, which is apparent every day, but even in her shades of tone and humour, when the influence is great.
What they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who was too independent to get near, though too concerned to disregard. The issue of their dialogue was the taking of her hand by the courteous farmer to help her over the spreading-board into the bright June sunlight outside. Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went on talking again. Concerning the flock? Apparently not. Gabriel theorized, not without truth, that in quiet discussion of any matter within reach of the speakers’ eyes, these are usually fixed upon it. Bathsheba demurely regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the ground, in a way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly embarrassment. She became more or less red in the cheek, the blood wavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the sensitive space between ebb and flood. Gabriel sheared on, constrained and sad.
She left Boldwood’s side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of myrtle green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit; and young Bob Coggan led on her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse from the tree under which it had been tied.
Oak’s eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to continue his shearing at the same time that he watched Boldwood’s manner, he snipped the sheep in the groin. The animal plunged; Bathsheba instantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood.
“Oh, Gabriel!” she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, “you who are so strict with the other men—see what you are doing yourself!”
To an outsider there was not much to complain of in this remark; but to Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that she herself was the cause of the poor ewe’s wound, because she had wounded the ewe’s shearer in a still more vital part, it had a sting which the abiding sense of his inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not calculated to heal. But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he had no longer a lover’s interest in her, helped him occasionally to conceal a feeling.
“Bottle!” he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine. Cainy Ball ran up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing continued.
Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before they turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same dominative and tantalizing graciousness.
“I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood’s Leicesters. Take my place in the barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to their work.”
The horses’ heads were put about, and they trotted away.
Boldwood’s deep attachment was a matter of great interest among all around him; but, after having been pointed out for so many years as the perfect exemplar of thriving bachelorship, his lapse was an anticlimax somewhat resembling that of St. John Long’s death by consumption in the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal disease.
“That means matrimony,” said Temperance Miller, following them out of sight with her eyes.
“I reckon that’s the size o’t,” said Coggan, working along without looking up.
“Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor,” said Laban Tall, turning his sheep.
Henery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same time: “I don’t see why a maid should take a husband when she’s bold enough to fight her own battles, and don’t want a home; for ’tis keeping another woman out. But let it be, for ’tis a pity he and she should trouble two houses.”
As usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably provoked the criticism of individuals like Henery Fray. Her emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her likings. We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.
Henery continued in a more complaisant mood: “I once hinted my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. You all know, neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling wi’ scarn?”
“We do, we do, Henery.”
“So I said, ‘Mistress Everdene, there’s places empty, and there’s gifted men willing; but the spite’—no, not the spite—I didn’t say spite—‘but the villainy of the contrarikind,’ I said (meaning womankind), ‘keeps ’em out.’ That wasn’t too strong for her, say?”
“Passably well put.”
“Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation overtook me for it. Such is my spirit when I have a mind.”
“A true man, and proud as a lucifer.”
“You see the artfulness? Why, ’twas about being baily really; but I didn’t put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so I could lay it on all the stronger. That was my depth!... However, let her marry an she will. Perhaps ’tis high time. I believe Farmer Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t’other day—that I do.”
“What a lie!” said Gabriel.
“Ah, neighbour Oak—how’st know?” said, Henery, mildly.
“Because she told me all that passed,” said Oak, with a pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter.
“Ye have a right to believe it,” said Henery, with dudgeon; “a very true right. But I mid see a little distance into things! To be long-headed enough for a baily’s place is a poor mere trifle—yet a trifle more than nothing. However, I look round upon life quite cool. Do you heed me, neighbours? My words, though made as simple as I can, mid be rather deep for some heads.”
“O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye.”
“A strange old piece, goodmen—whirled about from here to yonder, as if I were nothing! A little warped, too. But I have my depths; ha, and even my great depths! I might gird at a certain shepherd, brain to brain. But no—O no!”
“A strange old piece, ye say!” interposed the maltster, in a querulous voice. “At the same time ye be no old man worth naming—no old man at all. Yer teeth bain’t half gone yet; and what’s a old man’s standing if so be his teeth bain’t gone? Weren’t I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of arms? ’Tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there’s people far past four-score—a boast weak as water.”
It was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences when the maltster had to be pacified.
“Weak as water! yes,” said Jan Coggan. “Malter, we feel ye to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it.”
“Nobody,” said Joseph Poorgrass. “Ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift.”
“Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, I was likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me,” said the maltster.
“’Ithout doubt you was—’ithout doubt.”
The bent and hoary man was satisfied, and so apparently was Henery Fray. That matters should continue pleasant Maryann spoke, who, what with her brown complexion, and the working wrapper of rusty linsey, had at present the mellow hue of an old sketch in oils—notably some of Nicholas Poussin’s:—
“Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-hand fellow at all that would do for poor me?” said Maryann. “A perfect one I don’t expect to get at my time of life. If I could hear of such a thing ’twould do me more good than toast and ale.”
Coggan furnished a suitable reply. Oak went on with his shearing, and said not another word. Pestilent moods had come, and teased away his quiet. Bathsheba had shown indications of anointing him above his fellows by installing him as the bailiff that the farm imperatively required. He did not covet the post relatively to the farm: in relation to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to another, he had coveted it. His readings of her seemed now to be vapoury and indistinct. His lecture to her was, he thought, one of the absurdest mistakes. Far from coquetting with Boldwood, she had trifled with himself in thus feigning that she had trifled with another. He was inwardly convinced that, in accordance with the anticipations of his easy-going and worse-educated comrades, that day would see Boldwood the accepted husband of Miss Everdene. Gabriel at this time of his life had out-grown the instinctive dislike which every Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now quite frequently, and he inwardly said, “‘I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!’” This was mere exclamation—the froth of the storm. He adored Bathsheba just the same.
“We workfolk shall have some lordly junketing to-night,” said Cainy Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction. “This morning I see ’em making the great puddens in the milking-pails—lumps of fat as big as yer thumb, Mister Oak! I’ve never seed such splendid large knobs of fat before in the days of my life—they never used to be bigger then a horse-bean. And there was a great black crock upon the brandish with his legs a-sticking out, but I don’t know what was in within.”
“And there’s two bushels of biffins for apple-pies,” said Maryann.
“Well, I hope to do my duty by it all,” said Joseph Poorgrass, in a pleasant, masticating manner of anticipation. “Yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may be used. ’Tis the gospel of the body, without which we perish, so to speak it.”
CHAPTER XXIII — EVENTIDE—A SECOND DECLARATION
For the shearing-supper a long table was placed on the grass-plot beside the house, the end of the table being thrust over the sill of the wide parlour window and a foot or two into the room. Miss Everdene sat inside the window, facing down the table. She was thus at the head without mingling with the men.
This evening Bathsheba was unusually excited, her red cheeks and lips contrasting lustrously with the mazy skeins of her shadowy hair. She seemed to expect assistance, and the seat at the bottom of the table was at her request left vacant until after they had begun the meal. She then asked Gabriel to take the place and the duties appertaining to that end, which he did with great readiness.
At this moment Mr. Boldwood came in at the gate, and crossed the green to Bathsheba at the window. He apologized for his lateness: his arrival was evidently by arrangement.
“Gabriel,” said she, “will you move again, please, and let Mr. Boldwood come there?”
Oak moved in silence back to his original seat.
The gentleman-farmer was dressed in cheerful style, in a new coat and white waistcoat, quite contrasting with his usual sober suits of grey. Inwardy, too, he was blithe, and consequently chatty to an exceptional degree. So also was Bathsheba now that he had come, though the uninvited presence of Pennyways, the bailiff who had been dismissed for theft, disturbed her equanimity for a while.
Supper being ended, Coggan began on his own private account, without reference to listeners:—
I’ve lost my love, and I care not, I’ve lost my love, and I care not; I shall soon have another That’s better than t’other; I’ve lost my love, and I care not.
This lyric, when concluded, was received with a silently appreciative gaze at the table, implying that the performance, like a work by those established authors who are independent of notices in the papers, was a well-known delight which required no applause.
“Now, Master Poorgrass, your song!” said Coggan.
“I be all but in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me,” said Joseph, diminishing himself.
“Nonsense; wou’st never be so ungrateful, Joseph—never!” said Coggan, expressing hurt feelings by an inflection of voice. “And mistress is looking hard at ye, as much as to say, ‘Sing at once, Joseph Poorgrass.’”
“Faith, so she is; well, I must suffer it!... Just eye my features, and see if the tell-tale blood overheats me much, neighbours?”
“No, yer blushes be quite reasonable,” said Coggan.
“I always tries to keep my colours from rising when a beauty’s eyes get fixed on me,” said Joseph, differently; “but if so be ’tis willed they do, they must.”
“Now, Joseph, your song, please,” said Bathsheba, from the window.
“Well, really, ma’am,” he replied, in a yielding tone, “I don’t know what to say. It would be a poor plain ballet of my own composure.”
“Hear, hear!” said the supper-party.
Poorgrass, thus assured, trilled forth a flickering yet commendable piece of sentiment, the tune of which consisted of the key-note and another, the latter being the sound chiefly dwelt upon. This was so successful that he rashly plunged into a second in the same breath, after a few false starts:—
I sow′-ed th′-e..... I sow′-ed..... I sow′-ed th′-e seeds′ of′ love′, I-it was′ all′ i′-in the′-e spring′, I-in A′-pril′, Ma′-ay, a′-nd sun′-ny′ June′, When sma′-all bi′-irds they′ do′ sing.
“Well put out of hand,” said Coggan, at the end of the verse. “‘They do sing’ was a very taking paragraph.”
“Ay; and there was a pretty place at ‘seeds of love.’ and ’twas well heaved out. Though ‘love’ is a nasty high corner when a man’s voice is getting crazed. Next verse, Master Poorgrass.”
But during this rendering young Bob Coggan exhibited one of those anomalies which will afflict little people when other persons are particularly serious: in trying to check his laughter, he pushed down his throat as much of the tablecloth as he could get hold of, when, after continuing hermetically sealed for a short time, his mirth burst out through his nose. Joseph perceived it, and with hectic cheeks of indignation instantly ceased singing. Coggan boxed Bob’s ears immediately.
“Go on, Joseph—go on, and never mind the young scamp,” said Coggan. “’Tis a very catching ballet. Now then again—the next bar; I’ll help ye to flourish up the shrill notes where yer wind is rather wheezy:—
Oh the wi′-il-lo′-ow tree′ will′ twist′, And the wil′-low′ tre′-ee wi′-ill twine′.
But the singer could not be set going again. Bob Coggan was sent home for his ill manners, and tranquility was restored by Jacob Smallbury, who volunteered a ballad as inclusive and interminable as that with which the worthy toper old Silenus amused on a similar occasion the swains Chromis and Mnasylus, and other jolly dogs of his day.
It was still the beaming time of evening, though night was stealthily making itself visible low down upon the ground, the western lines of light raking the earth without alighting upon it to any extent, or illuminating the dead levels at all. The sun had crept round the tree as a last effort before death, and then began to sink, the shearers’ lower parts becoming steeped in embrowning twilight, whilst their heads and shoulders were still enjoying day, touched with a yellow of self-sustained brilliancy that seemed inherent rather than acquired.
The sun went down in an ochreous mist; but they sat, and talked on, and grew as merry as the gods in Homer’s heaven. Bathsheba still remained enthroned inside the window, and occupied herself in knitting, from which she sometimes looked up to view the fading scene outside. The slow twilight expanded and enveloped them completely before the signs of moving were shown.
Gabriel suddenly missed Farmer Boldwood from his place at the bottom of the table. How long he had been gone Oak did not know; but he had apparently withdrawn into the encircling dusk. Whilst he was thinking of this, Liddy brought candles into the back part of the room overlooking the shearers, and their lively new flames shone down the table and over the men, and dispersed among the green shadows behind. Bathsheba’s form, still in its original position, was now again distinct between their eyes and the light, which revealed that Boldwood had gone inside the room, and was sitting near her.
Next came the question of the evening. Would Miss Everdene sing to them the song she always sang so charmingly—“The Banks of Allan Water”—before they went home?
After a moment’s consideration Bathsheba assented, beckoning to Gabriel, who hastened up into the coveted atmosphere.
“Have you brought your flute?” she whispered.
“Yes, miss.”
“Play to my singing, then.”
She stood up in the window-opening, facing the men, the candles behind her, Gabriel on her right hand, immediately outside the sash-frame. Boldwood had drawn up on her left, within the room. Her singing was soft and rather tremulous at first, but it soon swelled to a steady clearness. Subsequent events caused one of the verses to be remembered for many months, and even years, by more than one of those who were gathered there:—
For his bride a soldier sought her, And a winning tongue had he: On the banks of Allan Water None was gay as she!
In addition to the dulcet piping of Gabriel’s flute, Boldwood supplied a bass in his customary profound voice, uttering his notes so softly, however, as to abstain entirely from making anything like an ordinary duet of the song; they rather formed a rich unexplored shadow, which threw her tones into relief. The shearers reclined against each other as at suppers in the early ages of the world, and so silent and absorbed were they that her breathing could almost be heard between the bars; and at the end of the ballad, when the last tone loitered on to an inexpressible close, there arose that buzz of pleasure which is the attar of applause.
It is scarcely necessary to state that Gabriel could not avoid noting the farmer’s bearing to-night towards their entertainer. Yet there was nothing exceptional in his actions beyond what appertained to his time of performing them. It was when the rest were all looking away that Boldwood observed her; when they regarded her he turned aside; when they thanked or praised he was silent; when they were inattentive he murmured his thanks. The meaning lay in the difference between actions, none of which had any meaning of itself; and the necessity of being jealous, which lovers are troubled with, did not lead Oak to underestimate these signs.
“I like to give praise where praise is due, and the man deserves it—that ’a do so,” he remarked, looking at the worthy thief, as if he were the masterpiece of some world-renowned artist.
“I’m sure I should never have believed it if we hadn’t proved it, so to allude,” hiccupped Joseph Poorgrass, “that every cup, every one of the best knives and forks, and every empty bottle be in their place as perfect now as at the beginning, and not one stole at all.”
“I’m sure I don’t deserve half the praise you give me,” said the virtuous thief, grimly.
“Well, I’ll say this for Pennyways,” added Coggan, “that whenever he do really make up his mind to do a noble thing in the shape of a good action, as I could see by his face he did to-night afore sitting down, he’s generally able to carry it out. Yes, I’m proud to say, neighbours, that he’s stole nothing at all.”
“Well, ’tis an honest deed, and we thank ye for it, Pennyways,” said Joseph; to which opinion the remainder of the company subscribed unanimously.
At this time of departure, when nothing more was visible of the inside of the parlour than a thin and still chink of light between the shutters, a passionate scene was in course of enactment there.
Miss Everdene and Boldwood were alone. Her cheeks had lost a great deal of their healthful fire from the very seriousness of her position; but her eye was bright with the excitement of a triumph—though it was a triumph which had rather been contemplated than desired.
She was standing behind a low arm-chair, from which she had just risen, and he was kneeling in it—inclining himself over its back towards her, and holding her hand in both his own. His body moved restlessly, and it was with what Keats daintily calls a too happy happiness. This unwonted abstraction by love of all dignity from a man of whom it had ever seemed the chief component, was, in its distressing incongruity, a pain to her which quenched much of the pleasure she derived from the proof that she was idolized.
“I will try to love you,” she was saying, in a trembling voice quite unlike her usual self-confidence. “And if I can believe in any way that I shall make you a good wife I shall indeed be willing to marry you. But, Mr. Boldwood, hesitation on so high a matter is honourable in any woman, and I don’t want to give a solemn promise to-night. I would rather ask you to wait a few weeks till I can see my situation better.
“But you have every reason to believe that _then_—”
“I have every reason to hope that at the end of the five or six weeks, between this time and harvest, that you say you are going to be away from home, I shall be able to promise to be your wife,” she said, firmly. “But remember this distinctly, I don’t promise yet.”
“It is enough; I don’t ask more. I can wait on those dear words. And now, Miss Everdene, good-night!”
“Good-night,” she said, graciously—almost tenderly; and Boldwood withdrew with a serene smile.
Bathsheba knew more of him now; he had entirely bared his heart before her, even until he had almost worn in her eyes the sorry look of a grand bird without the feathers that make it grand. She had been awe-struck at her past temerity, and was struggling to make amends without thinking whether the sin quite deserved the penalty she was schooling herself to pay. To have brought all this about her ears was terrible; but after a while the situation was not without a fearful joy. The facility with which even the most timid women sometimes acquire a relish for the dreadful when that is amalgamated with a little triumph, is marvellous.
CHAPTER XXIV — THE SAME NIGHT—THE FIR PLANTATION
Among the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed, to see that all was right and safe for the night. Gabriel had almost constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was somewhat thanklessly received. Women are never tired of bewailing man’s fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.
As watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark lantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light to examine nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan policeman. This coolness may have owed its existence not so much to her fearlessness of expected danger as to her freedom from the suspicion of any; her worst anticipated discovery being that a horse might not be well bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed.
This night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round to the farm paddock. Here the only sounds disturbing the stillness were steady munchings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from all but invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing of bellows slowly. Then the munching would recommence, when the lively imagination might assist the eye to discern a group of pink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very clammy and humid on their surfaces, not exactly pleasant to the touch until one got used to them; the mouths beneath having a great partiality for closing upon any loose end of Bathsheba’s apparel which came within reach of their tongues. Above each of these a still keener vision suggested a brown forehead and two staring though not unfriendly eyes, and above all a pair of whitish crescent-shaped horns like two particularly new moons, an occasional stolid “moo!” proclaiming beyond the shade of a doubt that these phenomena were the features and persons of Daisy, Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot, Twinkle-eye, etc., etc.—the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging to Bathsheba aforesaid.
Her way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of tapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter the premises from the north wind. By reason of the density of the interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless noontide, twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight. To describe the spot is to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling of which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed cones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there.
This bit of the path was always the crux of the night’s ramble, though, before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid enough to lead her to take a companion. Slipping along here covertly as Time, Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering the track at the opposite end. It was certainly a rustle of footsteps. Her own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes. She reassured herself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the traveller was probably some villager returning home; regretting, at the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the darkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own door.
The noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the point of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and pinned it forcibly to the ground. The instantaneous check nearly threw Bathsheba off her balance. In recovering she struck against warm clothes and buttons.
“A rum start, upon my soul!” said a masculine voice, a foot or so above her head. “Have I hurt you, mate?”
“No,” said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink away.
“We have got hitched together somehow, I think.”
“Yes.”
“Are you a woman?”
“Yes.”
“A lady, I should have said.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I am a man.”
“Oh!”
Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.
“Is that a dark lantern you have? I fancy so,” said the man.
“Yes.”
“If you’ll allow me I’ll open it, and set you free.”
A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with astonishment.
The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. He was a soldier. His sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silence. Gloom, the _genius loci_ at all times hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light than by what the lantern lighted. The contrast of this revelation with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.
It was immediately apparent that the military man’s spur had become entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress. He caught a view of her face.
“I’ll unfasten you in one moment, miss,” he said, with new-born gallantry.
“Oh no—I can do it, thank you,” she hastily replied, and stooped for the performance.
The unfastening was not such a trifling affair. The rowel of the spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments, that separation was likely to be a matter of time.
He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm. It radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.
He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment; Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be received point-blank with her own. But she had obliquely noticed that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his sleeve.
Bathsheba pulled again.
“You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter,” said the soldier, drily. “I must cut your dress if you are in such a hurry.”
“Yes—please do!” she exclaimed, helplessly.
“It wouldn’t be necessary if you could wait a moment,” and he unwound a cord from the little wheel. She withdrew her own hand, but, whether by accident or design, he touched it. Bathsheba was vexed; she hardly knew why.
His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end. She looked at him again.
“Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!” said the young sergeant, without ceremony.
She coloured with embarrassment. “’Twas unwillingly shown,” she replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity—which was very little—as she could infuse into a position of captivity.
“I like you the better for that incivility, miss,” he said.
“I should have liked—I wish—you had never shown yourself to me by intruding here!” She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began to give way like liliputian musketry.
“I deserve the chastisement your words give me. But why should such a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father’s sex?”
“Go on your way, please.”
“What, Beauty, and drag you after me? Do but look; I never saw such a tangle!”
“Oh, ’tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose to keep me here—you have!”
“Indeed, I don’t think so,” said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle.
“I tell you you have!” she exclaimed, in high temper. “I insist upon undoing it. Now, allow me!”
“Certainly, miss; I am not of steel.” He added a sigh which had as much archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature altogether. “I am thankful for beauty, even when ’tis thrown to me like a bone to a dog. These moments will be over too soon!”
She closed her lips in a determined silence.
Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily behind her. The thought was too dreadful. The dress—which she had put on to appear stately at the supper—was the head and front of her wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well. What woman in Bathsheba’s position, not naturally timid, and within call of her retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear a price?
“All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive,” said her cool friend.
“This trifling provokes, and—and—”
“Not too cruel!”
“—Insults me!”
“It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologizing to so charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam,” he said, bowing low.
Bathsheba really knew not what to say.
“I’ve seen a good many women in my time,” continued the young man in a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding her bent head at the same time; “but I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful as you. Take it or leave it—be offended or like it—I don’t care.”
“Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?”
“No stranger. Sergeant Troy. I am staying in this place.—There! it is undone at last, you see. Your light fingers were more eager than mine. I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there’s no untying!”
This was worse and worse. She started up, and so did he. How to decently get away from him—that was her difficulty now. She sidled off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the redness of his coat no longer.
“Ah, Beauty; good-bye!” he said.
She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty yards, turned about, and ran indoors.
Liddy had just retired to rest. In ascending to her own chamber, Bathsheba opened the girl’s door an inch or two, and, panting, said—
“Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village—sergeant somebody—rather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking—a red coat with blue facings?”
“No, miss.... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on furlough, though I have not seen him. He was here once in that way when the regiment was at Casterbridge.”
“Yes; that’s the name. Had he a moustache—no whiskers or beard?”
“He had.”
“What kind of a person is he?”
“Oh! miss—I blush to name it—a gay man! But I know him to be very quick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire. Such a clever young dandy as he is! He’s a doctor’s son by name, which is a great deal; and he’s an earl’s son by nature!”
“Which is a great deal more. Fancy! Is it true?”
“Yes. And, he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge Grammar School for years and years. Learnt all languages while he was there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down Chinese in shorthand; but that I don’t answer for, as it was only reported. However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier; but even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all. Ah! such a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine out even in the ranks and files. And is he really come home, miss?”
“I believe so. Good-night, Liddy.”
After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently offended with the man? There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour. When they want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom. Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba, with a dash of the second. Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who had evidently seen better days.
So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he had insulted her or not.
“Was ever anything so odd!” she at last exclaimed to herself, in her own room. “And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did—to skulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!” Clearly she did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now.
It was a fatal omission of Boldwood’s that he had never once told her she was beautiful.