Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

“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 smockfrock 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.

  The fire before them wasted away. “Men,” said Bathsheba, “you shall take a little refreshment after this extra work. Will you come to the house?”

  “We could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, Miss, if so be ye’d send it to Warren’s Malthouse,” replied the spokesman.

  Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on to the village in twos and threes — Oak and the bailiff being left by the rick alone.

  “And now,” said the bailiff, finally, “all is settled, I think, about your coming, and I am going home-along. Goodnight to ye, shepherd.”

  “Can you get me a lodging?” inquired Gabriel.

  “That I can’t, indeed,” he said, moving past Oak as a Christian edges past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute. “If you follow on the road till you come to Warren’s Malthouse, where they are all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of ‘em will tell you of a place. Goodnight to ye, shepherd.”

  The bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still astonished at the reencounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.

  Obliged, to some extent, to forgo dreaming in order to find the way, he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where several ancient trees grew. There was a wide margin of grass along here, and Gabriel’s footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at this indurating period of the year. When abreast of a trunk which appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure was standing behind it. Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed a careless position.

  It was a slim girl, rather thinly clad.

  “Goodnight to you,” said Gabriel, heartily.

  “Goodnight,” said the girl to Gabriel.

  The voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was the low and dulcet note suggestive of romance; common in descriptions, rare in experience.

  “I’ll thank you to tell me if I’m in the way for Warren’s Malthouse?” Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get more of the music.

  “Quite right. It’s at the bottom of the hill. And do you know — ” The girl hesitated and then went on again. “Do you know how late they keep open the Buck’s Head Inn?” She seemed to be won by Gabriel’s heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.

  “I don’t know where the Buck’s Head is, or anything about it. Do you think of going there tonight?”

  “Yes — ” The woman again paused. There was no necessity for any continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to proceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a remark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by stealth. “You are not a Weatherbury man?” she said, timorously.

  “I am not. I am the new shepherd — just arrived.”

  “Only a shepherd — and you seem almost a farmer by your ways.”

  “Only a shepherd,” Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality. His thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the girl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some sort. She may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said coaxingly, —

  “You won’t say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will you — at least, not for a day or two?”

  “I won’t if you wish me not to,” said Oak.

  “Thank you, indeed,” the other replied. “I am rather poor, and I don’t want people to know anything about me.” Then she was silent and shivered.

  “You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night,” Gabriel observed. “I would advise ‘ee to get indoors.”

  “O no! Would you mind going on and leaving me? I thank you much for what you have told me.”

  “I will go on,” he said; adding hesitatingly — “Since you are not very well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me. It is only a shilling, but it is all I have to spare.”

  “Yes, I will take it,” said the stranger gratefully.

  She extended her hand; Gabriel his. In feeling for each other’s palm in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident occurred which told much. Gabriel’s fingers alighted on the young woman’s wrist. It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. He had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery of his lambs when overdriven. It suggested a consumption too great of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was already too little.

  “What is the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But there is?”

  “No, no, no! Let your having seen me be a secret!”

  “Very well; I will. Goodnight, aga
in.”

  “Goodnight.”

  The young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended into the village of Weatherbury, or Lower Longpuddle as it was sometimes called. He fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile creature. But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE MALTHOUSE — THE CHAT — NEWS

  Warren’s Malthouse was enclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy, and though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the character and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by its outline upon the sky. From the walls an overhanging thatched roof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small wooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides, and from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping into the night air. There was no window in front; but a square hole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red, comfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front. Voices were to be heard inside.

  Oak’s hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to an Elymas-the-Sorcerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which he pulled. This lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open.

  The room inside was lighted only by the ruddy glow from the kiln mouth, which shone over the floor with the streaming horizontality of the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial irregularities in those assembled around. The stone-flag floor was worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations everywhere. A curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one side, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner and frequent occupier of which was the maltster.

  This aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white hair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and lichen upon a leafless apple-tree. He wore breeches and the laced-up shoes called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire.

  Gabriel’s nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet smell of new malt. The conversation (which seemed to have been concerning the origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one ocularly criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the flesh of their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eyelids, as if he had been a light too strong for their sight. Several exclaimed meditatively, after this operation had been completed —

  “Oh, ‘tis the new shepherd, ‘a b’lieve.”

  “We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but weren’t sure ‘twere not a dead leaf blowed across,” said another. “Come in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don’t know yer name.”

  “Gabriel Oak, that’s my name, neighbours.”

  The ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this — his turning being as the turning of a rusty crane.

  “That’s never Gable Oak’s grandson over at Norcombe — never!” he said, as a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a moment to take literally.

  “My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,” said the shepherd, placidly.

  “Thought I knowed the man’s face as I seed him on the rick! — thought I did! And where be ye trading o’t to now, shepherd?”

  “I’m thinking of biding here,” said Mr. Oak.

  “Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!” continued the maltster, the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum previously imparted had been sufficient.

  “Ah — and did you!”

  “Knowed yer grandmother.”

  “And her too!”

  “Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child. Why, my boy Jacob there and your father were sworn brothers — that they were sure — weren’t ye, Jacob?”

  “Ay, sure,” said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw, which made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in a bank. “But ‘twas Joe had most to do with him. However, my son William must have knowed the very man afore us — didn’t ye, Billy, afore ye left Norcombe?”

  “No, ‘twas Andrew,” said Jacob’s son Billy, a child of forty, or thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla shade here and there.

  “I can mind Andrew,” said Oak, “as being a man in the place when I was quite a child.”

  “Ay — the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at my grandson’s christening,” continued Billy. “We were talking about this very family, and ‘twas only last Purification Day in this very world, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk, you know, shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to traipse up to the vestry — yes, this very man’s family.”

  “Come, shepherd, and drink. ‘Tis gape and swaller with us — a drap of sommit, but not of much account,” said the maltster, removing from the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing into it for so many years. “Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob. See if ‘tis warm, Jacob.”

  Jacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather furred with extraneous matter about the outside, especially in the crevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have seen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation thereon — formed of ashes accidentally wetted with cider and baked hard; but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no worse for that, being incontestably clean on the inside and about the rim. It may be observed that such a class of mug is called a God-forgive-me in Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons; probably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of himself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty.

  Jacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough, placidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and having pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and very civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with the skirt of his smockfrock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger.

  “A clane cup for the shepherd,” said the maltster commandingly.

  “No — not at all,” said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of considerateness. “I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and when I know what sort it is.” Taking the mug he drank an inch or more from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the next man. “I wouldn’t think of giving such trouble to neighbours in washing up when there’s so much work to be done in the world already,” continued Oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the stoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs.

  “A right sensible man,” said Jacob.

  “True, true; it can’t be gainsaid!” observed a brisk young man — Mark Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for.

  “And here’s a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis’ess have sent, shepherd. The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. Don’t ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in the road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be ‘tis rather gritty. There, ‘tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you say, and you bain’t a particular man we see, shepherd.”

  “True, true — not at all,” said the friendly Oak.

  “Don’t let your teeth quite meet, and you won’t feel the sandiness at all. Ah! ‘tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!”

  “My own mind exactly, neighbour.”

  “Ah, he’s his grandfer’s own grandson! — his grandfer were just such a nice unparticular man!” said the maltster.

  “Drink, Henry Fray — drink,” magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person who held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor was concerned, as the vessel
showed signs of approaching him in its gradual revolution among them.

  Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air, Henry did not refuse. He was a man of more than middle age, with eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination. He always signed his name “Henery” — strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the second “e” was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply that “H-e-n-e-r-y” was the name he was christened and the name he would stick to — in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences were matters which had a great deal to do with personal character.

  Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose name had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and neighbouring parishes as best man and chief witness in countless unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.

  “Come, Mark Clark — come. Ther’s plenty more in the barrel,” said Jan.

  “Ay — that I will, ‘tis my only doctor,” replied Mr. Clark, who, twenty years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit. He secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular parties.

  “Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han’t had a drop!” said Mr. Coggan to a self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.

  “Such a modest man as he is!” said Jacob Smallbury. “Why, ye’ve hardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis’ess’s face, so I hear, Joseph?”

  All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.

  “No — I’ve hardly looked at her at all,” simpered Joseph, reducing his body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue prominence. “And when I seed her, ‘twas nothing but blushes with me!”

  “Poor feller,” said Mr. Clark.