Far from the Madding Crowd

by Pan Zador

  Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat in his hut, went again among his ewes.

  His thoughts were now busier than ever, for he had never before seen a young woman ride boldly astride a horse on a saddle of hard leather most properly used by men; for convention demanded and, Oak had always assumed, biology dictated, that the fairer sex was quite unable to ride a horse unless correctly seated, on a decorous ladies’ side-saddle. It was abundantly clear that this young lady had no care for conventions, and certainly, the long skirts of her dress, hitched up to her lissom thighs as she had swung herself athwart the horse, had in no way impeded her from the performances of acrobatics he had recently observed, but as to the arousing effect upon her of the rhythmic squeezing sensations between her legs, and the suggestive pressure on her inner groin caused by vigorous trotting, Oak could only imagine the bodily perturbation thus caused to her, reflected in the disturbance in his own equanimity, an aching disturbance that he resolved to relieve by his customary immersion in the river; yet even in his mind its solace failed him now, for his yearnings, previously formless, had begun to take on a clearer shape.

  An hour passed, the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off. The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman.

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

  She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole would have been revealed. To see only her arm! The poor man quickly reined in his thoughts of seeing more, abashed by the living physical presence of the object of his fantasies appearing here in the vibrant, vigorous form of this young girl, who at each minute seemed to him more alluring. There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to recognised power. It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel’s face rising like the moon behind the hedge.

  The adjustment of the farmer’s hazy conceptions of her charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution than a difference. The starting-point selected by the judgment was her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by women as best. All features of consequence were severe and regular. It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure usually goes off into random facial curves.

  Without throwing a tissue of divinity over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and Oak looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her figure in its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. Yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do it in towns.

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

  “I found a hat,” said Oak.

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

  “One o’clock this morning?”

  “Well — it was.” She was surprised. “How did you know?” she said.

  “I was here.”

  “You are Farmer Oak, are you not?”

  “That or thereabouts. I’m lately come to this place.”

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

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

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

  “Yes, you had.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw you.”

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

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

  A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face.

  For the maid, his words were as shocking as if Oak had confessed to spying on her at bedtime, spying eagerly through a knothole in her bedroom door as she unlaced her bodice, freeing her virginal small breasts from their prison, and with a sigh of relief throwing off first her dress, then her underskirts, finally her pantalettes, two separate cotton leggings threaded on a narrow belt around her waist her, leaving her quite naked and glowing with health and youth in the flattering golden light of a candle. As he stood blushing before her, a sudden piercing certainty within her breast made her catch her breath. He too must surely have imagined her thus unclothed! Would he lie himself down to sleep tonight with herself, in his imagination, lying naked beside him? The girl had to turn away now, for her knowledge of men was only from books and poetry, and it was too much to be faced with a live young man, his face a deep crimson, standing before her.

  It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. From the Maiden’s Blush, through all varieties of roses, of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak’s acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness, turned away his head.

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

  With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to his work. Five mornings and evenings passed. The young woman came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction of Oak’s person. His want of tact had deeply offended her — not by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her know that he had s
een it. For, as without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel that Gabriel’s espial had made her an indecorous woman without her own connivance. It was food for great regret with him; it was also a contretemps which touched into life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction, and which, in spite of his better judgment, he allowed himself to encourage in the lonely reaches of the night; for to summon up again the image of her blushing at his words, was almost to have her in bodily form in the narrow bed beside him, and her imagined proximity could happily have but one inevitable outcome.

  He saw in his mind her abundant raven hair loosened from its ribbons as she bent her head to let it fall caressingly around his manly length, kissing him softly on that tender part of his groin that caused him to gasp in anticipation; even as he tried to forbear thinking of her stroking and squeezing as the green water-weeds were wont to do, ever harder, ever faster, until with an involuntary cry of delight, he released his seed with violent pleasure into the darkness of the night. This was the first time Gabriel had been assailed by such a delicious fury of passion, and, try as he might to subdue them, these images continued to exercise their fascination over his waking thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Whatever is the matter?” said Oak, vacantly.

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

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

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

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

  “Yes I suppose I should,” said Oak, absently. He was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone things.

  Her presence he felt as a welcome, though overwhelming, assault on all his senses; first of touch, for his drowsy head lay cradled in the softness of her lap, the form and feeling of which was like nothing so much as a birds’ nest lined with soft mosses and small leaves, and the fabric of her working dress, an old and much-washed sprigged cotton, was as filmy to his rough hand as a spider’s web drawn over thistledown.

  Her soft hand, loosening his collar and stroking back the wayward hair from his face, at times even touching his cheek, roused equal pleasurable sensations in other parts of him — yet she seemed unaware that her concern was perceived by him as anything other than the ministrations of a sister. He was likewise excited by her own natural perfumes; his nostrils breathed in a scent of soap that brought to mind apple blossom in springtime, and the musk of her hair as it swung over his face conveyed a heavier, darker note of oranges, spice and sandalwood.

  This was the gently caressing hair he had imagined exciting his body previously and now actually brushing his face, with a delicate intimation of pleasures to come, real or only wished for. Crowning this heady bouquet was the girl’s own pure essence, composed of sweet breath, fresh air, and new cut grass. There was no less a feast for the eyes, for her face bent close over his, and her lips and cheeks he had already observed, were as comely as any man could desire. There remained only taste, but, unless he were to offer her his gratitude in the shape of a kiss, he saw no way to satisfy his ardent longing for more.

  He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.

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

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

  “How did you find me?”

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

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

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

  “I believe you saved my life, Miss — I don’t know your name. I know your aunt’s, but not yours.”

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

  “Still, I should like to know.”

  “You can inquire at my aunt’s — she will tell you.”

  “My name is Gabriel Oak.”

  “And mine isn’t. You seem fond
of yours in speaking it so decisively, Gabriel Oak.”

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

  “I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable.”

  “I should think you might soon get a new one — as a wife, I mean.”

  “Mercy! — how many opinions you keep about you concerning other people, Gabriel Oak.”

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

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

  “I am sorry,” he said the instant after.

  “What for?”

  “Letting your hand go so quick.”

  “You may have it again if you like; there it is.”

  She gave him her hand again.

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

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

  “I wasn’t thinking of any such thing,” said Gabriel, simply; “but I will — ”

  “That you won’t!” She snatched back her hand.