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PG24 | 26 | Is he going to farm here with you?
He shall do whatever he wants to, Alexandra declared warmly. He is
going to have a chance, a whole chance; thats what Ive worked for.
Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes, just lately, hes
been talking about going out into the sand hills and taking up more
land. He has his sad times, like father. But I hope he wont do that.
We have land enough, at last! Alexandra laughed.
How about Lou and Oscar? Theyve done well, havent they?
Yes, very well; but they are different, and now that they have farms
of their own I do not see so much of them. We divided the land equally
when Lou married. They have their own way of doing things, and they do
not altogether like my way, I am afraid. Perhaps they think me too
independent. But I have had to think for myself a good many years and
am not likely to change. On the whole, though, we take as much comfort
in each other as most brothers and sisters do. And I am very fond of
Lous oldest daughter.
I think I liked the old Lou and Oscar better, and they probably feel
the same about me. I even, if you can keep a secret,Carl leaned
forward and touched her arm, smiling,I even think I liked the old
country better. This is all very splendid in its way, but there was
something about this country when it was a wild old beast that has
haunted me all these years. Now, when I come back to all this milk and
honey, I feel like the old German song, Wo bist du, wo bist du, mein
geliebtest Land?Do you ever feel like that, I wonder?
Yes, sometimes, when I think about father and mother and those who are
gone; so many of our old neighbors. Alexandra paused and looked up
thoughtfully at the stars. We can remember the graveyard when it was
wild prairie, Carl, and now
And now the old story has begun to write itself over there, said Carl
softly. Isnt it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and
they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never
happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing
the same five notes over for thousands of years.
Oh, yes! The young people, they live so hard. And yet I sometimes envy
them. There is my little neighbor, now; the people who bought your old
place. I wouldnt have sold it to any one else, but I was always fond
of that girl. You must remember her, little Marie Tovesky, from Omaha,
who used to visit here? When she was eighteen she ran away from the
convent school and got married, crazy child! She came out here a bride,
with her father and husband. He had nothing, and the old man was
willing to buy them a place and set them up. Your farm took her fancy,
and I was glad to have her so near me. Ive never been sorry, either. I
even try to get along with Frank on her account.
Is Frank her husband?
Yes. Hes one of these wild fellows. Most Bohemians are good-natured,
but Frank thinks we dont appreciate him here, I guess. Hes jealous
about everything, his farm and his horses and his pretty wife.
Everybody likes her, just the same as when she was little. Sometimes I
go up to the Catholic church with Emil, and its funny to see Marie
standing there laughing and shaking hands with people, looking so
excited and gay, with Frank sulking behind her as if he could eat
everybody alive. Franks not a bad neighbor, but to get on with him
youve got to make a fuss over him and act as if you thought he was a
very important person all the time, and different from other people. I
find it hard to keep that up from one years end to another.
I shouldnt think youd be very successful at that kind of thing,
Alexandra. Carl seemed to find the idea amusing.
Well, said Alexandra firmly, I do the best I can, on Maries
account. She has it hard enough, anyway. Shes too young and pretty for
this sort of life. Were all ever so much older and slower. But shes
the kind that wont be downed easily. Shell work all day and go to a
Bohemian wedding and dance all night, and drive the hay wagon for a
cross man next morning. I could stay by a job, but I never had the go
in me that she has, when I was going my best. Ill have to take you
over to see her to-morrow. | 1,017 |
PG24 | 27 | Carl dropped the end of his cigar softly among the castor beans and
sighed. Yes, I suppose I must see the old place. Im cowardly about
things that remind me of myself. It took courage to come at all,
Alexandra. I wouldnt have, if I hadnt wanted to see you very, very
much.
Alexandra looked at him with her calm, deliberate eyes. Why do you
dread things like that, Carl? she asked earnestly. Why are you
dissatisfied with yourself?
Her visitor winced. How direct you are, Alexandra! Just like you used
to be. Do I give myself away so quickly? Well, you see, for one thing,
theres nothing to look forward to in my profession. Wood-engraving is
the only thing I care about, and that had gone out before I began.
Everythings cheap metal work nowadays, touching up miserable
photographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling good ones. Im
absolutely sick of it all. Carl frowned. Alexandra, all the way out
from New York Ive been planning how I could deceive you and make you
think me a very enviable fellow, and here I am telling you the truth
the first night. I waste a lot of time pretending to people, and the
joke of it is, I dont think I ever deceive any one. There are too many
of my kind; people know us on sight.
Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with a
puzzled, thoughtful gesture. You see, he went on calmly, measured by
your standards here, Im a failure. I couldnt buy even one of your
cornfields. Ive enjoyed a great many things, but Ive got nothing to
show for it all.
But you show for it yourself, Carl. Id rather have had your freedom
than my land.
Carl shook his head mournfully. Freedom so often means that one isnt
needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of
your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are
thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties,
we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know
where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our
mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle,
or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by.
All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent
that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of
things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in
the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and
concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and
shudder.
Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon made
on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He knew that she
understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, And yet I would
rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers. We pay a
high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here.
We dont move lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If
the world were no wider than my cornfields, if there were not something
beside this, I wouldnt feel that it was much worth while to work. No,
I would rather have Emil like you than like them. I felt that as soon
as you came.
I wonder why you feel like that? Carl mused.
I dont know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my
hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years
ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and
over, and she didnt see the use of it. After she had tried to kill
herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa
to visit some relations. Ever since shes come back shes been
perfectly cheerful, and she says shes contented to live and work in a
world thats so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as
the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And its
what goes on in the world that reconciles me.
V
Alexandra did not find time to go to her neighbors the next day, nor
the next. It was a busy season on the farm, with the corn-plowing going
on, and even Emil was in the field with a team and cultivator. Carl
went about over the farms with Alexandra in the morning, and in the
afternoon and evening they found a great deal to talk about. Emil, for
all his track practice, did not stand up under farmwork very well, and
by night he was too tired to talk or even to practise on his cornet. | 1,082 |
PG24 | 28 | On Wednesday morning Carl got up before it was light, and stole
downstairs and out of the kitchen door just as old Ivar was making his
morning ablutions at the pump. Carl nodded to him and hurried up the
draw, past the garden, and into the pasture where the milking cows used
to be kept.
The dawn in the east looked like the light from some great fire that
was burning under the edge of the world. The color was reflected in the
globules of dew that sheathed the short gray pasture grass. Carl walked
rapidly until he came to the crest of the second hill, where the
Bergson pasture joined the one that had belonged to his father. There
he sat down and waited for the sun to rise. It was just there that he
and Alexandra used to do their milking together, he on his side of the
fence, she on hers. He could remember exactly how she looked when she
came over the close-cropped grass, her skirts pinned up, her head bare,
a bright tin pail in either hand, and the milky light of the early
morning all about her. Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her
coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that
she looked as if she had walked straight out of the morning itself.
Since then, when he had happened to see the sun come up in the country
or on the water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and her
milking pails.
Carl sat musing until the sun leaped above the prairie, and in the
grass about him all the small creatures of day began to tune their tiny
instruments. Birds and insects without number began to chirp, to
twitter, to snap and whistle, to make all manner of fresh shrill
noises. The pasture was flooded with light; every clump of ironweed and
snow-on-the-mountain threw a long shadow, and the golden light seemed
to be rippling through the curly grass like the tide racing in.
He crossed the fence into the pasture that was now the Shabatas and
continued his walk toward the pond. He had not gone far, however, when
he discovered that he was not the only person abroad. In the draw
below, his gun in his hands, was Emil, advancing cautiously, with a
young woman beside him. They were moving softly, keeping close
together, and Carl knew that they expected to find ducks on the pond.
At the moment when they came in sight of the bright spot of water, he
heard a whirr of wings and the ducks shot up into the air. There was a
sharp crack from the gun, and five of the birds fell to the ground.
Emil and his companion laughed delightedly, and Emil ran to pick them
up. When he came back, dangling the ducks by their feet, Marie held her
apron and he dropped them into it. As she stood looking down at them,
her face changed. She took up one of the birds, a rumpled ball of
feathers with the blood dripping slowly from its mouth, and looked at
the live color that still burned on its plumage.
As she let it fall, she cried in distress, Oh, Emil, why did you?
I like that! the boy exclaimed indignantly. Why, Marie, you asked me
to come yourself.
Yes, yes, I know, she said tearfully, but I didnt think. I hate to
see them when they are first shot. They were having such a good time,
and weve spoiled it all for them.
Emil gave a rather sore laugh. I should say we had! Im not going
hunting with you any more. Youre as bad as Ivar. Here, let me take
them. He snatched the ducks out of her apron.
Dont be cross, Emil. OnlyIvars right about wild things. Theyre too
happy to kill. You can tell just how they felt when they flew up. They
were scared, but they didnt really think anything could hurt them. No,
we wont do that any more.
All right, Emil assented. Im sorry I made you feel bad. As he
looked down into her tearful eyes, there was a curious, sharp young
bitterness in his own.
Carl watched them as they moved slowly down the draw. They had not seen
him at all. He had not overheard much of their dialogue, but he felt
the import of it. It made him, somehow, unreasonably mournful to find
two young things abroad in the pasture in the early morning. He decided
that he needed his breakfast. | 990 |
PG24 | 29 | VI
At dinner that day Alexandra said she thought they must really manage
to go over to the Shabatas that afternoon. Its not often I let three
days go by without seeing Marie. She will think I have forsaken her,
now that my old friend has come back.
After the men had gone back to work, Alexandra put on a white dress and
her sun-hat, and she and Carl set forth across the fields. You see we
have kept up the old path, Carl. It has been so nice for me to feel
that there was a friend at the other end of it again.
Carl smiled a little ruefully. All the same, I hope it hasnt been
_quite_ the same.
Alexandra looked at him with surprise. Why, no, of course not. Not the
same. She could not very well take your place, if thats what you mean.
Im friendly with all my neighbors, I hope. But Marie is really a
companion, some one I can talk to quite frankly. You wouldnt want me
to be more lonely than I have been, would you?
Carl laughed and pushed back the triangular lock of hair with the edge
of his hat. Of course I dont. I ought to be thankful that this path
hasnt been worn bywell, by friends with more pressing errands than
your little Bohemian is likely to have. He paused to give Alexandra
his hand as she stepped over the stile. Are you the least bit
disappointed in our coming together again? he asked abruptly. Is it
the way you hoped it would be?
Alexandra smiled at this. Only better. When Ive thought about your
coming, Ive sometimes been a little afraid of it. You have lived where
things move so fast, and everything is slow here; the people slowest of
all. Our lives are like the years, all made up of weather and crops and
cows. How you hated cows! She shook her head and laughed to herself.
I didnt when we milked together. I walked up to the pasture corners
this morning. I wonder whether I shall ever be able to tell you all
that I was thinking about up there. Its a strange thing, Alexandra; I
find it easy to be frank with you about everything under the sun
exceptyourself!
You are afraid of hurting my feelings, perhaps. Alexandra looked at
him thoughtfully.
No, Im afraid of giving you a shock. Youve seen yourself for so long
in the dull minds of the people about you, that if I were to tell you
how you seem to me, it would startle you. But you must see that you
astonish me. You must feel when people admire you.
Alexandra blushed and laughed with some confusion. I felt that you
were pleased with me, if you mean that.
And youve felt when other people were pleased with you? he insisted.
Well, sometimes. The men in town, at the banks and the county offices,
seem glad to see me. I think, myself, it is more pleasant to do
business with people who are clean and healthy-looking, she admitted
blandly.
Carl gave a little chuckle as he opened the Shabatas gate for her.
Oh, do you? he asked dryly.
There was no sign of life about the Shabatas house except a big yellow
cat, sunning itself on the kitchen doorstep.
Alexandra took the path that led to the orchard. She often sits there
and sews. I didnt telephone her we were coming, because I didnt want
her to go to work and bake cake and freeze ice-cream. Shell always
make a party if you give her the least excuse. Do you recognize the
apple trees, Carl?
Linstrum looked about him. I wish I had a dollar for every bucket of
water Ive carried for those trees. Poor father, he was an easy man,
but he was perfectly merciless when it came to watering the orchard.
Thats one thing I like about Germans; they make an orchard grow if
they cant make anything else. Im so glad these trees belong to some
one who takes comfort in them. When I rented this place, the tenants
never kept the orchard up, and Emil and I used to come over and take
care of it ourselves. It needs mowing now. There she is, down in the
corner. Maria-a-a! she called.
A recumbent figure started up from the grass and came running toward
them through the flickering screen of light and shade.
Look at her! Isnt she like a little brown rabbit? Alexandra laughed. | 973 |
PG24 | 30 | Maria ran up panting and threw her arms about Alexandra. Oh, I had
begun to think you were not coming at all, maybe. I knew you were so
busy. Yes, Emil told me about Mr. Linstrum being here. Wont you come
up to the house?
Why not sit down there in your corner? Carl wants to see the orchard.
He kept all these trees alive for years, watering them with his own
back.
Marie turned to Carl. Then Im thankful to you, Mr. Linstrum. Wed
never have bought the place if it hadnt been for this orchard, and
then I wouldnt have had Alexandra, either. She gave Alexandras arm a
little squeeze as she walked beside her. How nice your dress smells,
Alexandra; you put rosemary leaves in your chest, like I told you.
She led them to the northwest corner of the orchard, sheltered on one
side by a thick mulberry hedge and bordered on the other by a
wheatfield, just beginning to yellow. In this corner the ground dipped
a little, and the blue-grass, which the weeds had driven out in the
upper part of the orchard, grew thick and luxuriant. Wild roses were
flaming in the tufts of bunchgrass along the fence. Under a white
mulberry tree there was an old wagon-seat. Beside it lay a book and a
workbasket.
You must have the seat, Alexandra. The grass would stain your dress,
the hostess insisted. She dropped down on the ground at Alexandras
side and tucked her feet under her. Carl sat at a little distance from
the two women, his back to the wheatfield, and watched them. Alexandra
took off her shade-hat and threw it on the ground. Marie picked it up
and played with the white ribbons, twisting them about her brown
fingers as she talked. They made a pretty picture in the strong
sunlight, the leafy pattern surrounding them like a net; the Swedish
woman so white and gold, kindly and amused, but armored in calm, and
the alert brown one, her full lips parted, points of yellow light
dancing in her eyes as she laughed and chattered. Carl had never
forgotten little Marie Toveskys eyes, and he was glad to have an
opportunity to study them. The brown iris, he found, was curiously
slashed with yellow, the color of sunflower honey, or of old amber. In
each eye one of these streaks must have been larger than the others,
for the effect was that of two dancing points of light, two little
yellow bubbles, such as rise in a glass of champagne. Sometimes they
seemed like the sparks from a forge. She seemed so easily excited, to
kindle with a fierce little flame if one but breathed upon her. What a
waste, Carl reflected. She ought to be doing all that for a
sweetheart. How awkwardly things come about!
It was not very long before Marie sprang up out of the grass again.
Wait a moment. I want to show you something. She ran away and
disappeared behind the low-growing apple trees.
What a charming creature, Carl murmured. I dont wonder that her
husband is jealous. But cant she walk? does she always run?
Alexandra nodded. Always. I dont see many people, but I dont believe
there are many like her, anywhere.
Marie came back with a branch she had broken from an apricot tree,
laden with pale yellow, pink-cheeked fruit. She dropped it beside Carl.
Did you plant those, too? They are such beautiful little trees.
Carl fingered the blue-green leaves, porous like blotting-paper and
shaped like birch leaves, hung on waxen red stems. Yes, I think I did.
Are these the circus trees, Alexandra?
Shall I tell her about them? Alexandra asked. Sit down like a good
girl, Marie, and dont ruin my poor hat, and Ill tell you a story. A
long time ago, when Carl and I were, say, sixteen and twelve, a circus
came to Hanover and we went to town in our wagon, with Lou and Oscar,
to see the parade. We hadnt money enough to go to the circus. We
followed the parade out to the circus grounds and hung around until the
show began and the crowd went inside the tent. Then Lou was afraid we
looked foolish standing outside in the pasture, so we went back to
Hanover feeling very sad. There was a man in the streets selling
apricots, and we had never seen any before. He had driven down from
somewhere up in the French country, and he was selling them twenty-five
cents a peck. We had a little money our fathers had given us for candy,
and I bought two pecks and Carl bought one. They cheered us a good
deal, and we saved all the seeds and planted them. Up to the time Carl
went away, they hadnt borne at all. | 1,074 |
PG24 | 31 | And now hes come back to eat them, cried Marie, nodding at Carl.
That IS a good story. I can remember you a little, Mr. Linstrum. I
used to see you in Hanover sometimes, when Uncle Joe took me to town. I
remember you because you were always buying pencils and tubes of paint
at the drug store. Once, when my uncle left me at the store, you drew a
lot of little birds and flowers for me on a piece of wrapping-paper. I
kept them for a long while. I thought you were very romantic because
you could draw and had such black eyes.
Carl smiled. Yes, I remember that time. Your uncle bought you some
kind of a mechanical toy, a Turkish lady sitting on an ottoman and
smoking a hookah, wasnt it? And she turned her head backwards and
forwards.
Oh, yes! Wasnt she splendid! I knew well enough I ought not to tell
Uncle Joe I wanted it, for he had just come back from the saloon and
was feeling good. You remember how he laughed? She tickled him, too.
But when we got home, my aunt scolded him for buying toys when she
needed so many things. We wound our lady up every night, and when she
began to move her head my aunt used to laugh as hard as any of us. It
was a music-box, you know, and the Turkish lady played a tune while she
smoked. That was how she made you feel so jolly. As I remember her, she
was lovely, and had a gold crescent on her turban.
Half an hour later, as they were leaving the house, Carl and Alexandra
were met in the path by a strapping fellow in overalls and a blue
shirt. He was breathing hard, as if he had been running, and was
muttering to himself.
Marie ran forward, and, taking him by the arm, gave him a little push
toward her guests. Frank, this is Mr. Linstrum.
Frank took off his broad straw hat and nodded to Alexandra. When he
spoke to Carl, he showed a fine set of white teeth. He was burned a
dull red down to his neckband, and there was a heavy three-days
stubble on his face. Even in his agitation he was handsome, but he
looked a rash and violent man.
Barely saluting the callers, he turned at once to his wife and began,
in an outraged tone, I have to leave my team to drive the old woman
Hillers hogs out-a my wheat. I go to take dat old woman to de court if
she aint careful, I tell you!
His wife spoke soothingly. But, Frank, she has only her lame boy to
help her. She does the best she can.
Alexandra looked at the excited man and offered a suggestion. Why
dont you go over there some afternoon and hog-tight her fences? Youd
save time for yourself in the end.
Franks neck stiffened. Not-a-much, I wont. I keep my hogs home.
Other peoples can do like me. See? If that Louis can mend shoes, he can
mend fence.
Maybe, said Alexandra placidly; but Ive found it sometimes pays to
mend other peoples fences. Good-bye, Marie. Come to see me soon.
Alexandra walked firmly down the path and Carl followed her.
Frank went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his face to
the wall, his clenched fist on his hip. Marie, having seen her guests
off, came in and put her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.
Poor Frank! Youve run until youve made your head ache, now havent
you? Let me make you some coffee.
What else am I to do? he cried hotly in Bohemian. Am I to let any
old womans hogs root up my wheat? Is that what I work myself to death
for?
Dont worry about it, Frank. Ill speak to Mrs. Hiller again. But,
really, she almost cried last time they got out, she was so sorry.
Frank bounced over on his other side. Thats it; you always side with
them against me. They all know it. Anybody here feels free to borrow
the mower and break it, or turn their hogs in on me. They know you
wont care!
Marie hurried away to make his coffee. When she came back, he was fast
asleep. She sat down and looked at him for a long while, very
thoughtfully. When the kitchen clock struck six she went out to get
supper, closing the door gently behind her. She was always sorry for
Frank when he worked himself into one of these rages, and she was sorry
to have him rough and quarrelsome with his neighbors. She was perfectly
aware that the neighbors had a good deal to put up with, and that they
bore with Frank for her sake. | 1,070 |
PG24 | 32 | VII
Maries father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligent
Bohemians who came West in the early seventies. He settled in Omaha and
became a leader and adviser among his people there. Marie was his
youngest child, by a second wife, and was the apple of his eye. She was
barely sixteen, and was in the graduating class of the Omaha High
School, when Frank Shabata arrived from the old country and set all the
Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily the buck of the
beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his silk hat
and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and carrying a
little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with splendid teeth
and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore a slightly disdainful
expression, proper for a young man with high connections, whose mother
had a big farm in the Elbe valley. There was often an interesting
discontent in his blue eyes, and every Bohemian girl he met imagined
herself the cause of that unsatisfied expression. He had a way of
drawing out his cambric handkerchief slowly, by one corner, from his
breast-pocket, that was melancholy and romantic in the extreme. He took
a little flight with each of the more eligible Bohemian girls, but it
was when he was with little Marie Tovesky that he drew his handkerchief
out most slowly, and, after he had lit a fresh cigar, dropped the match
most despairingly. Any one could see, with half an eye, that his proud
heart was bleeding for somebody.
One Sunday, late in the summer after Maries graduation, she met Frank
at a Bohemian picnic down the river and went rowing with him all the
afternoon. When she got home that evening she went straight to her
fathers room and told him that she was engaged to Shabata. Old Tovesky
was having a comfortable pipe before he went to bed. When he heard his
daughters announcement, he first prudently corked his beer bottle and
then leaped to his feet and had a turn of temper. He characterized
Frank Shabata by a Bohemian expression which is the equivalent of
stuffed shirt.
Why dont he go to work like the rest of us did? His farm in the Elbe
valley, indeed! Aint he got plenty brothers and sisters? Its his
mothers farm, and why dont he stay at home and help her? Havent I
seen his mother out in the morning at five oclock with her ladle and
her big bucket on wheels, putting liquid manure on the cabbages? Dont
I know the look of old Eva Shabatas hands? Like an old horses hoofs
they areand this fellow wearing gloves and rings! Engaged, indeed! You
arent fit to be out of school, and thats whats the matter with you.
I will send you off to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis,
and they will teach you some sense, _I_ guess!
Accordingly, the very next week, Albert Tovesky took his daughter, pale
and tearful, down the river to the convent. But the way to make Frank
want anything was to tell him he couldnt have it. He managed to have
an interview with Marie before she went away, and whereas he had been
only half in love with her before, he now persuaded himself that he
would not stop at anything. Marie took with her to the convent, under
the canvas lining of her trunk, the results of a laborious and
satisfying morning on Franks part; no less than a dozen photographs of
himself, taken in a dozen different love-lorn attitudes. There was a
little round photograph for her watch-case, photographs for her wall
and dresser, and even long narrow ones to be used as bookmarks. More
than once the handsome gentleman was torn to pieces before the French
class by an indignant nun.
Marie pined in the convent for a year, until her eighteenth birthday
was passed. Then she met Frank Shabata in the Union Station in St.
Louis and ran away with him. Old Tovesky forgave his daughter because
there was nothing else to do, and bought her a farm in the country that
she had loved so well as a child. Since then her story had been a part
of the history of the Divide. She and Frank had been living there for
five years when Carl Linstrum came back to pay his long deferred visit
to Alexandra. Frank had, on the whole, done better than one might have
expected. He had flung himself at the soil with savage energy. Once a
year he went to Hastings or to Omaha, on a spree. He stayed away for a
week or two, and then came home and worked like a demon. He did work;
if he felt sorry for himself, that was his own affair. | 1,074 |
PG24 | 33 | VIII
On the evening of the day of Alexandras call at the Shabatas, a heavy
rain set in. Frank sat up until a late hour reading the Sunday
newspapers. One of the Goulds was getting a divorce, and Frank took it
as a personal affront. In printing the story of the young mans marital
troubles, the knowing editor gave a sufficiently colored account of his
career, stating the amount of his income and the manner in which he was
supposed to spend it. Frank read English slowly, and the more he read
about this divorce case, the angrier he grew. At last he threw down the
page with a snort. He turned to his farm-hand who was reading the other
half of the paper.
By God! if I have that young feller in de hayfield once, I show him
someting. Listen here what he do wit his money. And Frank began the
catalogue of the young mans reputed extravagances.
Marie sighed. She thought it hard that the Goulds, for whom she had
nothing but good will, should make her so much trouble. She hated to
see the Sunday newspapers come into the house. Frank was always reading
about the doings of rich people and feeling outraged. He had an
inexhaustible stock of stories about their crimes and follies, how they
bribed the courts and shot down their butlers with impunity whenever
they chose. Frank and Lou Bergson had very similar ideas, and they were
two of the political agitators of the county.
The next morning broke clear and brilliant, but Frank said the ground
was too wet to plough, so he took the cart and drove over to
Sainte-Agnes to spend the day at Moses Marcels saloon. After he was
gone, Marie went out to the back porch to begin her butter-making. A
brisk wind had come up and was driving puffy white clouds across the
sky. The orchard was sparkling and rippling in the sun. Marie stood
looking toward it wistfully, her hand on the lid of the churn, when she
heard a sharp ring in the air, the merry sound of the whetstone on the
scythe. That invitation decided her. She ran into the house, put on a
short skirt and a pair of her husbands boots, caught up a tin pail and
started for the orchard. Emil had already begun work and was mowing
vigorously. When he saw her coming, he stopped and wiped his brow. His
yellow canvas leggings and khaki trousers were splashed to the knees.
Dont let me disturb you, Emil. Im going to pick cherries. Isnt
everything beautiful after the rain? Oh, but Im glad to get this place
mowed! When I heard it raining in the night, I thought maybe you would
come and do it for me to-day. The wind wakened me. Didnt it blow
dreadfully? Just smell the wild roses! They are always so spicy after a
rain. We never had so many of them in here before. I suppose its the
wet season. Will you have to cut them, too?
If I cut the grass, I will, Emil said teasingly. Whats the matter
with you? What makes you so flighty?
Am I flighty? I suppose thats the wet season, too, then. Its
exciting to see everything growing so fast,and to get the grass cut!
Please leave the roses till last, if you must cut them. Oh, I dont
mean all of them, I mean that low place down by my tree, where there
are so many. Arent you splashed! Look at the spider-webs all over the
grass. Good-bye. Ill call you if I see a snake.
She tripped away and Emil stood looking after her. In a few moments he
heard the cherries dropping smartly into the pail, and he began to
swing his scythe with that long, even stroke that few American boys
ever learn. Marie picked cherries and sang softly to herself, stripping
one glittering branch after another, shivering when she caught a shower
of raindrops on her neck and hair. And Emil mowed his way slowly down
toward the cherry trees.
That summer the rains had been so many and opportune that it was almost
more than Shabata and his man could do to keep up with the corn; the
orchard was a neglected wilderness. All sorts of weeds and herbs and
flowers had grown up there; splotches of wild larkspur, pale
green-and-white spikes of hoarhound, plantations of wild cotton,
tangles of foxtail and wild wheat. South of the apricot trees,
cornering on the wheatfield, was Franks alfalfa, where myriads of
white and yellow butterflies were always fluttering above the purple
blossoms. When Emil reached the lower corner by the hedge, Marie was
sitting under her white mulberry tree, the pailful of cherries beside
her, looking off at the gentle, tireless swelling of the wheat. | 1,094 |
PG24 | 34 | Emil, she said suddenlyhe was mowing quietly about under the tree so
as not to disturb herwhat religion did the Swedes have away back,
before they were Christians?
Emil paused and straightened his back. I dont know. About like the
Germans, wasnt it?
Marie went on as if she had not heard him. The Bohemians, you know,
were tree worshipers before the missionaries came. Father says the
people in the mountains still do queer things, sometimes,they believe
that trees bring good or bad luck.
Emil looked superior. Do they? Well, which are the lucky trees? Id
like to know.
I dont know all of them, but I know lindens are. The old people in
the mountains plant lindens to purify the forest, and to do away with
the spells that come from the old trees they say have lasted from
heathen times. Im a good Catholic, but I think I could get along with
caring for trees, if I hadnt anything else.
Thats a poor saying, said Emil, stooping over to wipe his hands in
the wet grass.
Why is it? If I feel that way, I feel that way. I like trees because
they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things
do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit
here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I
begin just where I left off.
Emil had nothing to say to this. He reached up among the branches and
began to pick the sweet, insipid fruit,long ivory-colored berries,
tipped with faint pink, like white coral, that fall to the ground
unheeded all summer through. He dropped a handful into her lap.
Do you like Mr. Linstrum? Marie asked suddenly.
Yes. Dont you?
Oh, ever so much; only he seems kind of staid and school-teachery.
But, of course, he is older than Frank, even. Im sure I dont want to
live to be more than thirty, do you? Do you think Alexandra likes him
very much?
I suppose so. They were old friends.
Oh, Emil, you know what I mean! Marie tossed her head impatiently.
Does she really care about him? When she used to tell me about him, I
always wondered whether she wasnt a little in love with him.
Who, Alexandra? Emil laughed and thrust his hands into his trousers
pockets. Alexandras never been in love, you crazy! He laughed again.
She wouldnt know how to go about it. The idea!
Marie shrugged her shoulders. Oh, you dont know Alexandra as well as
you think you do! If you had any eyes, you would see that she is very
fond of him. It would serve you all right if she walked off with Carl.
I like him because he appreciates her more than you do.
Emil frowned. What are you talking about, Marie? Alexandras all
right. She and I have always been good friends. What more do you want?
I like to talk to Carl about New York and what a fellow can do there.
Oh, Emil! Surely you are not thinking of going off there?
Why not? I must go somewhere, mustnt I? The young man took up his
scythe and leaned on it. Would you rather I went off in the sand hills
and lived like Ivar?
Maries face fell under his brooding gaze. She looked down at his wet
leggings. Im sure Alexandra hopes you will stay on here, she
murmured.
Then Alexandra will be disappointed, the young man said roughly.
What do I want to hang around here for? Alexandra can run the farm all
right, without me. I dont want to stand around and look on. I want to
be doing something on my own account.
Thats so, Marie sighed. There are so many, many things you can do.
Almost anything you choose.
And there are so many, many things I cant do. Emil echoed her tone
sarcastically. Sometimes I dont want to do anything at all, and
sometimes I want to pull the four corners of the Divide together,he
threw out his arm and brought it back with a jerk,so, like a
table-cloth. I get tired of seeing men and horses going up and down, up
and down.
Marie looked up at his defiant figure and her face clouded. I wish you
werent so restless, and didnt get so worked up over things, she said
sadly.
Thank you, he returned shortly.
She sighed despondently. Everything I say makes you cross, dont it?
And you never used to be cross to me. | 1,013 |
PG24 | 35 | Emil took a step nearer and stood frowning down at her bent head. He
stood in an attitude of self-defense, his feet well apart, his hands
clenched and drawn up at his sides, so that the cords stood out on his
bare arms. I cant play with you like a little boy any more, he said
slowly. Thats what you miss, Marie. Youll have to get some other
little boy to play with. He stopped and took a deep breath. Then he
went on in a low tone, so intense that it was almost threatening:
Sometimes you seem to understand perfectly, and then sometimes you
pretend you dont. You dont help things any by pretending. Its then
that I want to pull the corners of the Divide together. If you WONT
understand, you know, I could make you!
Marie clasped her hands and started up from her seat. She had grown
very pale and her eyes were shining with excitement and distress. But,
Emil, if I understand, then all our good times are over, we can never
do nice things together any more. We shall have to behave like Mr.
Linstrum. And, anyhow, theres nothing to understand! She struck the
ground with her little foot fiercely. That wont last. It will go
away, and things will be just as they used to. I wish you were a
Catholic. The Church helps people, indeed it does. I pray for you, but
thats not the same as if you prayed yourself.
She spoke rapidly and pleadingly, looked entreatingly into his face.
Emil stood defiant, gazing down at her.
I cant pray to have the things I want, he said slowly, and I wont
pray not to have them, not if Im damned for it.
Marie turned away, wringing her hands. Oh, Emil, you wont try! Then
all our good times are over.
Yes; over. I never expect to have any more.
Emil gripped the hand-holds of his scythe and began to mow. Marie took
up her cherries and went slowly toward the house, crying bitterly.
IX
On Sunday afternoon, a month after Carl Linstrums arrival, he rode
with Emil up into the French country to attend a Catholic fair. He sat
for most of the afternoon in the basement of the church, where the fair
was held, talking to Marie Shabata, or strolled about the gravel
terrace, thrown up on the hillside in front of the basement doors,
where the French boys were jumping and wrestling and throwing the
discus. Some of the boys were in their white baseball suits; they had
just come up from a Sunday practice game down in the ballgrounds.
Amde, the newly married, Emils best friend, was their pitcher,
renowned among the country towns for his dash and skill. Amde was a
little fellow, a year younger than Emil and much more boyish in
appearance; very lithe and active and neatly made, with a clear brown
and white skin, and flashing white teeth. The Sainte-Agnes boys were to
play the Hastings nine in a fortnight, and Amdes lightning balls
were the hope of his team. The little Frenchman seemed to get every
ounce there was in him behind the ball as it left his hand.
Youd have made the battery at the University for sure, Mde, Emil
said as they were walking from the ball-grounds back to the church on
the hill. Youre pitching better than you did in the spring.
Amde grinned. Sure! A married man dont lose his head no more. He
slapped Emil on the back as he caught step with him. Oh, Emil, you
wanna get married right off quick! Its the greatest thing ever!
Emil laughed. How am I going to get married without any girl?
Amde took his arm. Pooh! There are plenty girls will have you. You
wanna get some nice French girl, now. She treat you well; always be
jolly. See,he began checking off on his fingers,there is Svrine,
and Alphosen, and Josphine, and Hectorine, and Louise, and
Malvinawhy, I could love any of them girls! Why dont you get after
them? Are you stuck up, Emil, or is anything the matter with you? I
never did know a boy twenty-two years old before that didnt have no
girl. You wanna be a priest, maybe? Not-a for me! Amde swaggered. I
bring many good Catholics into this world, I hope, and thats a way I
help the Church.
Emil looked down and patted him on the shoulder. Now youre windy,
Mde. You Frenchies like to brag. | 1,019 |
PG24 | 36 | But Amde had the zeal of the newly married, and he was not to be
lightly shaken off. Honest and true, Emil, dont you want ANY girl?
Maybe theres some young lady in Lincoln, now, very grand,Amde
waved his hand languidly before his face to denote the fan of heartless
beauty,and you lost your heart up there. Is that it?
Maybe, said Emil.
But Amde saw no appropriate glow in his friends face. Bah! he
exclaimed in disgust. I tell all the French girls to keep way from
you. You gotta rock in there, thumping Emil on the ribs.
When they reached the terrace at the side of the church, Amde, who
was excited by his success on the ball-grounds, challenged Emil to a
jumping-match, though he knew he would be beaten. They belted
themselves up, and Raoul Marcel, the choir tenor and Father Duchesnes
pet, and Jean Bordelau, held the string over which they vaulted. All
the French boys stood round, cheering and humping themselves up when
Emil or Amde went over the wire, as if they were helping in the lift.
Emil stopped at five-feet-five, declaring that he would spoil his
appetite for supper if he jumped any more.
Anglique, Amdes pretty bride, as blonde and fair as her name, who
had come out to watch the match, tossed her head at Emil and said:
Mde could jump much higher than you if he were as tall. And anyhow,
he is much more graceful. He goes over like a bird, and you have to
hump yourself all up.
Oh, I do, do I? Emil caught her and kissed her saucy mouth squarely,
while she laughed and struggled and called, Mde! Mde!
There, you see your Mde isnt even big enough to get you away from
me. I could run away with you right now and he could only sit down and
cry about it. Ill show you whether I have to hump myself! Laughing
and panting, he picked Anglique up in his arms and began running about
the rectangle with her. Not until he saw Marie Shabatas tiger eyes
flashing from the gloom of the basement doorway did he hand the
disheveled bride over to her husband. There, go to your graceful; I
havent the heart to take you away from him.
Anglique clung to her husband and made faces at Emil over the white
shoulder of Amdes ball-shirt. Emil was greatly amused at her air of
proprietorship and at Amdes shameless submission to it. He was
delighted with his friends good fortune. He liked to see and to think
about Amdes sunny, natural, happy love.
He and Amde had ridden and wrestled and larked together since they
were lads of twelve. On Sundays and holidays they were always arm in
arm. It seemed strange that now he should have to hide the thing that
Amde was so proud of, that the feeling which gave one of them such
happiness should bring the other such despair. It was like that when
Alexandra tested her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears
that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into
the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from
the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.
X
While Emil and Carl were amusing themselves at the fair, Alexandra was
at home, busy with her account-books, which had been neglected of late.
She was almost through with her figures when she heard a cart drive up
to the gate, and looking out of the window she saw her two older
brothers. They had seemed to avoid her ever since Carl Linstrums
arrival, four weeks ago that day, and she hurried to the door to
welcome them. She saw at once that they had come with some very
definite purpose. They followed her stiffly into the sitting-room.
Oscar sat down, but Lou walked over to the window and remained
standing, his hands behind him.
You are by yourself? he asked, looking toward the doorway into the
parlor.
Yes. Carl and Emil went up to the Catholic fair.
For a few moments neither of the men spoke.
Then Lou came out sharply. How soon does he intend to go away from
here?
I dont know, Lou. Not for some time, I hope. Alexandra spoke in an
even, quiet tone that often exasperated her brothers. They felt that
she was trying to be superior with them.
Oscar spoke up grimly. We thought we ought to tell you that people
have begun to talk, he said meaningly. | 1,024 |
PG24 | 37 | Alexandra looked at him. What about?
Oscar met her eyes blankly. About you, keeping him here so long. It
looks bad for him to be hanging on to a woman this way. People think
youre getting taken in.
Alexandra shut her account-book firmly. Boys, she said seriously,
dont lets go on with this. We wont come out anywhere. I cant take
advice on such a matter. I know you mean well, but you must not feel
responsible for me in things of this sort. If we go on with this talk
it will only make hard feeling.
Lou whipped about from the window. You ought to think a little about
your family. Youre making us all ridiculous.
How am I?
People are beginning to say you want to marry the fellow.
Well, and what is ridiculous about that?
Lou and Oscar exchanged outraged looks. Alexandra! Cant you see hes
just a tramp and hes after your money? He wants to be taken care of,
he does!
Well, suppose I want to take care of him? Whose business is it but my
own?
Dont you know hed get hold of your property?
Hed get hold of what I wished to give him, certainly.
Oscar sat up suddenly and Lou clutched at his bristly hair.
Give him? Lou shouted. Our property, our homestead?
I dont know about the homestead, said Alexandra quietly. I know you
and Oscar have always expected that it would be left to your children,
and Im not sure but what youre right. But Ill do exactly as I please
with the rest of my land, boys.
The rest of your land! cried Lou, growing more excited every minute.
Didnt all the land come out of the homestead? It was bought with
money borrowed on the homestead, and Oscar and me worked ourselves to
the bone paying interest on it.
Yes, you paid the interest. But when you married we made a division of
the land, and you were satisfied. Ive made more on my farms since Ive
been alone than when we all worked together.
Everything youve made has come out of the original land that us boys
worked for, hasnt it? The farms and all that comes out of them belongs
to us as a family.
Alexandra waved her hand impatiently. Come now, Lou. Stick to the
facts. You are talking nonsense. Go to the county clerk and ask him who
owns my land, and whether my titles are good.
Lou turned to his brother. This is what comes of letting a woman
meddle in business, he said bitterly. We ought to have taken things
in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored
her. We thought you had good sense, Alexandra. We never thought youd
do anything foolish.
Alexandra rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles. Listen,
Lou. Dont talk wild. You say you ought to have taken things into your
own hands years ago. I suppose you mean before you left home. But how
could you take hold of what wasnt there? Ive got most of what I have
now since we divided the property; Ive built it up myself, and it has
nothing to do with you.
Oscar spoke up solemnly. The property of a family really belongs to
the men of the family, no matter about the title. If anything goes
wrong, its the men that are held responsible.
Yes, of course, Lou broke in. Everybody knows that. Oscar and me
have always been easy-going and weve never made any fuss. We were
willing you should hold the land and have the good of it, but you got
no right to part with any of it. We worked in the fields to pay for the
first land you bought, and whatevers come out of it has got to be kept
in the family.
Oscar reinforced his brother, his mind fixed on the one point he could
see. The property of a family belongs to the men of the family,
because they are held responsible, and because they do the work.
Alexandra looked from one to the other, her eyes full of indignation.
She had been impatient before, but now she was beginning to feel angry.
And what about my work? she asked in an unsteady voice.
Lou looked at the carpet. Oh, now, Alexandra, you always took it
pretty easy! Of course we wanted you to. You liked to manage round, and
we always humored you. We realize you were a great deal of help to us.
Theres no woman anywhere around that knows as much about business as
you do, and weve always been proud of that, and thought you were
pretty smart. But, of course, the real work always fell on us. Good
advice is all right, but it dont get the weeds out of the corn. | 1,029 |
PG24 | 38 | Maybe not, but it sometimes puts in the crop, and it sometimes keeps
the fields for corn to grow in, said Alexandra dryly. Why, Lou, I can
remember when you and Oscar wanted to sell this homestead and all the
improvements to old preacher Ericson for two thousand dollars. If Id
consented, youd have gone down to the river and scraped along on poor
farms for the rest of your lives. When I put in our first field of
alfalfa you both opposed me, just because I first heard about it from a
young man who had been to the University. You said I was being taken in
then, and all the neighbors said so. You know as well as I do that
alfalfa has been the salvation of this country. You all laughed at me
when I said our land here was about ready for wheat, and I had to raise
three big wheat crops before the neighbors quit putting all their land
in corn. Why, I remember you cried, Lou, when we put in the first big
wheat-planting, and said everybody was laughing at us.
Lou turned to Oscar. Thats the woman of it; if she tells you to put
in a crop, she thinks shes put it in. It makes women conceited to
meddle in business. I shouldnt think youd want to remind us how hard
you were on us, Alexandra, after the way you baby Emil.
Hard on you? I never meant to be hard. Conditions were hard. Maybe I
would never have been very soft, anyhow; but I certainly didnt choose
to be the kind of girl I was. If you take even a vine and cut it back
again and again, it grows hard, like a tree.
Lou felt that they were wandering from the point, and that in
digression Alexandra might unnerve him. He wiped his forehead with a
jerk of his handkerchief. We never doubted you, Alexandra. We never
questioned anything you did. Youve always had your own way. But you
cant expect us to sit like stumps and see you done out of the property
by any loafer who happens along, and making yourself ridiculous into
the bargain.
Oscar rose. Yes, he broke in, everybodys laughing to see you get
took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows hes nearly five years
younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Alexandra, you are
forty years old!
All that doesnt concern anybody but Carl and me. Go to town and ask
your lawyers what you can do to restrain me from disposing of my own
property. And I advise you to do what they tell you; for the authority
you can exert by law is the only influence you will ever have over me
again. Alexandra rose. I think I would rather not have lived to find
out what I have to-day, she said quietly, closing her desk.
Lou and Oscar looked at each other questioningly. There seemed to be
nothing to do but to go, and they walked out.
You cant do business with women, Oscar said heavily as he clambered
into the cart. But anyhow, weve had our say, at last.
Lou scratched his head. Talk of that kind might come too high, you
know; but shes apt to be sensible. You hadnt ought to said that about
her age, though, Oscar. Im afraid that hurt her feelings; and the
worst thing we can do is to make her sore at us. Shed marry him out of
contrariness.
I only meant, said Oscar, that she is old enough to know better, and
she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done it long ago, and
not go making a fool of herself now.
Lou looked anxious, nevertheless. Of course, he reflected hopefully
and inconsistently, Alexandra aint much like other women-folks. Maybe
it wont make her sore. Maybe shed as soon be forty as not!
XI
Emil came home at about half-past seven oclock that evening. Old Ivar
met him at the windmill and took his horse, and the young man went
directly into the house. He called to his sister and she answered from
her bedroom, behind the sitting-room, saying that she was lying down.
Emil went to her door.
Can I see you for a minute? he asked. I want to talk to you about
something before Carl comes.
Alexandra rose quickly and came to the door. Where is Carl?
Lou and Oscar met us and said they wanted to talk to him, so he rode
over to Oscars with them. Are you coming out? Emil asked impatiently. | 1,000 |
PG24 | 39 | Yes, sit down. Ill be dressed in a moment.
Alexandra closed her door, and Emil sank down on the old slat lounge
and sat with his head in his hands. When his sister came out, he looked
up, not knowing whether the interval had been short or long, and he was
surprised to see that the room had grown quite dark. That was just as
well; it would be easier to talk if he were not under the gaze of those
clear, deliberate eyes, that saw so far in some directions and were so
blind in others. Alexandra, too, was glad of the dusk. Her face was
swollen from crying.
Emil started up and then sat down again. Alexandra, he said slowly,
in his deep young baritone, I dont want to go away to law school this
fall. Let me put it off another year. I want to take a year off and
look around. Its awfully easy to rush into a profession you dont
really like, and awfully hard to get out of it. Linstrum and I have
been talking about that.
Very well, Emil. Only dont go off looking for land. She came up and
put her hand on his shoulder. Ive been wishing you could stay with me
this winter.
Thats just what I dont want to do, Alexandra. Im restless. I want
to go to a new place. I want to go down to the City of Mexico to join
one of the University fellows whos at the head of an electrical plant.
He wrote me he could give me a little job, enough to pay my way, and I
could look around and see what I want to do. I want to go as soon as
harvest is over. I guess Lou and Oscar will be sore about it.
I suppose they will. Alexandra sat down on the lounge beside him.
They are very angry with me, Emil. We have had a quarrel. They will
not come here again.
Emil scarcely heard what she was saying; he did not notice the sadness
of her tone. He was thinking about the reckless life he meant to live
in Mexico.
What about? he asked absently.
About Carl Linstrum. They are afraid I am going to marry him, and that
some of my property will get away from them.
Emil shrugged his shoulders. What nonsense! he murmured. Just like
them.
Alexandra drew back. Why nonsense, Emil?
Why, youve never thought of such a thing, have you? They always have
to have something to fuss about.
Emil, said his sister slowly, you ought not to take things for
granted. Do you agree with them that I have no right to change my way
of living?
Emil looked at the outline of his sisters head in the dim light. They
were sitting close together and he somehow felt that she could hear his
thoughts. He was silent for a moment, and then said in an embarrassed
tone, Why, no, certainly not. You ought to do whatever you want to.
Ill always back you.
But it would seem a little bit ridiculous to you if I married Carl?
Emil fidgeted. The issue seemed to him too far-fetched to warrant
discussion. Why, no. I should be surprised if you wanted to. I cant
see exactly why. But thats none of my business. You ought to do as you
please. Certainly you ought not to pay any attention to what the boys
say.
Alexandra sighed. I had hoped you might understand, a little, why I do
want to. But I suppose thats too much to expect. Ive had a pretty
lonely life, Emil. Besides Marie, Carl is the only friend I have ever
had.
Emil was awake now; a name in her last sentence roused him. He put out
his hand and took his sisters awkwardly. You ought to do just as you
wish, and I think Carls a fine fellow. He and I would always get on. I
dont believe any of the things the boys say about him, honest I dont.
They are suspicious of him because hes intelligent. You know their
way. Theyve been sore at me ever since you let me go away to college.
Theyre always trying to catch me up. If I were you, I wouldnt pay any
attention to them. Theres nothing to get upset about. Carls a
sensible fellow. He wont mind them.
I dont know. If they talk to him the way they did to me, I think
hell go away. | 962 |
PG24 | 40 | Emil grew more and more uneasy. Think so? Well, Marie said it would
serve us all right if you walked off with him.
Did she? Bless her little heart! SHE would. Alexandras voice broke.
Emil began unlacing his leggings. Why dont you talk to her about it?
Theres Carl, I hear his horse. I guess Ill go upstairs and get my
boots off. No, I dont want any supper. We had supper at five oclock,
at the fair.
Emil was glad to escape and get to his own room. He was a little
ashamed for his sister, though he had tried not to show it. He felt
that there was something indecorous in her proposal, and she did seem
to him somewhat ridiculous. There was trouble enough in the world, he
reflected, as he threw himself upon his bed, without people who were
forty years old imagining they wanted to get married. In the darkness
and silence Emil was not likely to think long about Alexandra. Every
image slipped away but one. He had seen Marie in the crowd that
afternoon. She sold candy at the fair. _Why_ had she ever run away with
Frank Shabata, and how could she go on laughing and working and taking
an interest in things? Why did she like so many people, and why had she
seemed pleased when all the French and Bohemian boys, and the priest
himself, crowded round her candy stand? Why did she care about any one
but him? Why could he never, never find the thing he looked for in her
playful, affectionate eyes?
Then he fell to imagining that he looked once more and found it there,
and what it would be like if she loved him,she who, as Alexandra said,
could give her whole heart. In that dream he could lie for hours, as if
in a trance. His spirit went out of his body and crossed the fields to
Marie Shabata.
At the University dances the girls had often looked wonderingly at the
tall young Swede with the fine head, leaning against the wall and
frowning, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on the ceiling or the floor.
All the girls were a little afraid of him. He was
distinguished-looking, and not the jollying kind. They felt that he was
too intense and preoccupied. There was something queer about him.
Emils fraternity rather prided itself upon its dances, and sometimes
he did his duty and danced every dance. But whether he was on the floor
or brooding in a corner, he was always thinking about Marie Shabata.
For two years the storm had been gathering in him.
XII
Carl came into the sitting-room while Alexandra was lighting the lamp.
She looked up at him as she adjusted the shade. His sharp shoulders
stooped as if he were very tired, his face was pale, and there were
bluish shadows under his dark eyes. His anger had burned itself out and
left him sick and disgusted.
You have seen Lou and Oscar? Alexandra asked.
Yes. His eyes avoided hers.
Alexandra took a deep breath. And now you are going away. I thought
so.
Carl threw himself into a chair and pushed the dark lock back from his
forehead with his white, nervous hand. What a hopeless position you
are in, Alexandra! he exclaimed feverishly. It is your fate to be
always surrounded by little men. And I am no better than the rest. I am
too little to face the criticism of even such men as Lou and Oscar.
Yes, I am going away; to-morrow. I cannot even ask you to give me a
promise until I have something to offer you. I thought, perhaps, I
could do that; but I find I cant.
What good comes of offering people things they dont need? Alexandra
asked sadly. I dont need money. But I have needed you for a great
many years. I wonder why I have been permitted to prosper, if it is
only to take my friends away from me.
I dont deceive myself, Carl said frankly. I know that I am going
away on my own account. I must make the usual effort. I must have
something to show for myself. To take what you would give me, I should
have to be either a very large man or a very small one, and I am only
in the middle class.
Alexandra sighed. I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not
come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have
to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always
easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours, if you care enough
about me to take it. | 1,011 |
PG24 | 41 | Carl rose and looked up at the picture of John Bergson. But I cant,
my dear, I cant! I will go North at once. Instead of idling about in
California all winter, I shall be getting my bearings up there. I wont
waste another week. Be patient with me, Alexandra. Give me a year!
As you will, said Alexandra wearily. All at once, in a single day, I
lose everything; and I do not know why. Emil, too, is going away. Carl
was still studying John Bergsons face and Alexandras eyes followed
his. Yes, she said, if he could have seen all that would come of the
task he gave me, he would have been sorry. I hope he does not see me
now. I hope that he is among the old people of his blood and country,
and that tidings do not reach him from the New World.
PART III.
Winter Memories
I
Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which
Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the
fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone.
The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated.
The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbits run shivering from one
frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it to find
frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes roam the wintry
waste, howling for food. The variegated fields are all one color now;
the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray.
The hedgerows and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare
earth, whose slaty hue they have taken on. The ground is frozen so hard
that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the ploughed
fields. It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its
rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in that dead
landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.
Alexandra has settled back into her old routine. There are weekly
letters from Emil. Lou and Oscar she has not seen since Carl went away.
To avoid awkward encounters in the presence of curious spectators, she
has stopped going to the Norwegian Church and drives up to the Reform
Church at Hanover, or goes with Marie Shabata to the Catholic Church,
locally known as the French Church. She has not told Marie about
Carl, or her differences with her brothers. She was never very
communicative about her own affairs, and when she came to the point, an
instinct told her that about such things she and Marie would not
understand one another.
Old Mrs. Lee had been afraid that family misunderstandings might
deprive her of her yearly visit to Alexandra. But on the first day of
December Alexandra telephoned Annie that to-morrow she would send Ivar
over for her mother, and the next day the old lady arrived with her
bundles. For twelve years Mrs. Lee had always entered Alexandras
sitting-room with the same exclamation, Now we be yust-a like old
times! She enjoyed the liberty Alexandra gave her, and hearing her own
language about her all day long. Here she could wear her nightcap and
sleep with all her windows shut, listen to Ivar reading the Bible, and
here she could run about among the stables in a pair of Emils old
boots. Though she was bent almost double, she was as spry as a gopher.
Her face was as brown as if it had been varnished, and as full of
wrinkles as a washerwomans hands. She had three jolly old teeth left
in the front of her mouth, and when she grinned she looked very
knowing, as if when you found out how to take it, life wasnt half bad.
While she and Alexandra patched and pieced and quilted, she talked
incessantly about stories she read in a Swedish family paper, telling
the plots in great detail; or about her life on a dairy farm in
Gottland when she was a girl. Sometimes she forgot which were the
printed stories and which were the real stories, it all seemed so far
away. She loved to take a little brandy, with hot water and sugar,
before she went to bed, and Alexandra always had it ready for her. It
sends good dreams, she would say with a twinkle in her eye.
When Mrs. Lee had been with Alexandra for a week, Marie Shabata
telephoned one morning to say that Frank had gone to town for the day,
and she would like them to come over for coffee in the afternoon. Mrs.
Lee hurried to wash out and iron her new cross-stitched apron, which
she had finished only the night before; a checked gingham apron worked
with a design ten inches broad across the bottom; a hunting scene, with
fir trees and a stag and dogs and huntsmen. Mrs. Lee was firm with
herself at dinner, and refused a second helping of apple dumplings. I
ta-ank I save up, she said with a giggle. | 1,109 |
PG24 | 42 | At two oclock in the afternoon Alexandras cart drove up to the
Shabatas gate, and Marie saw Mrs. Lees red shawl come bobbing up the
path. She ran to the door and pulled the old woman into the house with
a hug, helping her to take off her wraps while Alexandra blanketed the
horse outside. Mrs. Lee had put on her best black satine dressshe
abominated woolen stuffs, even in winterand a crocheted collar,
fastened with a big pale gold pin, containing faded daguerreotypes of
her father and mother. She had not worn her apron for fear of rumpling
it, and now she shook it out and tied it round her waist with a
conscious air. Marie drew back and threw up her hands, exclaiming, Oh,
what a beauty! Ive never seen this one before, have I, Mrs. Lee?
The old woman giggled and ducked her head. No, yust las night I
ma-ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa-ash out, no fade. My sister
send from Sveden. I yust-a ta-ank you like dis.
Marie ran to the door again. Come in, Alexandra. I have been looking
at Mrs. Lees apron. Do stop on your way home and show it to Mrs.
Hiller. Shes crazy about cross-stitch.
While Alexandra removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Lee went out to the
kitchen and settled herself in a wooden rocking-chair by the stove,
looking with great interest at the table, set for three, with a white
cloth, and a pot of pink geraniums in the middle. My, a-ant you gotta
fine plants; such-a much flower. How you keep from freeze?
She pointed to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias and
geraniums.
I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Lee, and when its very cold I put
them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I only
put newspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me for fussing, but when
they dont bloom he says, Whats the matter with the darned
things?What do you hear from Carl, Alexandra?
He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose I wont
hear any more until spring. Before he left California he sent me a box
of orange flowers, but they didnt keep very well. I have brought a
bunch of Emils letters for you. Alexandra came out from the
sitting-room and pinched Maries cheek playfully. You dont look as if
the weather ever froze you up. Never have colds, do you? Thats a good
girl. She had dark red cheeks like this when she was a little girl,
Mrs. Lee. She looked like some queer foreign kind of a doll. Ive never
forgot the first time I saw you in Mieklejohns store, Marie, the time
father was lying sick. Carl and I were talking about that before he
went away.
I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you going to send
Emils Christmas box?
It ought to have gone before this. Ill have to send it by mail now,
to get it there in time.
Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket. I knit
this for him. Its a good color, dont you think? Will you please put
it in with your things and tell him its from me, to wear when he goes
serenading.
Alexandra laughed. I dont believe he goes serenading much. He says in
one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to be very beautiful, but
that dont seem to me very warm praise.
Marie tossed her head. Emil cant fool me. If hes bought a guitar, he
goes serenading. Who wouldnt, with all those Spanish girls dropping
flowers down from their windows! Id sing to them every night, wouldnt
you, Mrs. Lee?
The old lady chuckled. Her eyes lit up as Marie bent down and opened
the oven door. A delicious hot fragrance blew out into the tidy
kitchen. My, someting smell good! She turned to Alexandra with a
wink, her three yellow teeth making a brave show, I ta-ank dat stop my
yaw from ache no more! she said contentedly.
Marie took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with stewed
apricots, and began to dust them over with powdered sugar. I hope
youll like these, Mrs. Lee; Alexandra does. The Bohemians always like
them with their coffee. But if you dont, I have a coffee-cake with
nuts and poppy seeds. Alexandra, will you get the cream jug? I put it
in the window to keep cool. | 1,031 |
PG24 | 43 | The Bohemians, said Alexandra, as they drew up to the table,
certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than any other people
in the world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at the church supper that
she could make seven kinds of fancy bread, but Marie could make a
dozen.
Mrs. Lee held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown thumb and
forefinger and weighed it critically. Yust like-a fedders, she
pronounced with satisfaction. My, a-ant dis nice! she exclaimed as
she stirred her coffee. I yust ta-ake a liddle yelly now, too, I
ta-ank.
Alexandra and Marie laughed at her forehandedness, and fell to talking
of their own affairs. I was afraid you had a cold when I talked to you
over the telephone the other night, Marie. What was the matter, had you
been crying?
Maybe I had, Marie smiled guiltily. Frank was out late that night.
Dont you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when everybody has gone
away?
I thought it was something like that. If I hadnt had company, Id
have run over to see for myself. If you get down-hearted, what will
become of the rest of us? Alexandra asked.
I dont, very often. Theres Mrs. Lee without any coffee!
Later, when Mrs. Lee declared that her powers were spent, Marie and
Alexandra went upstairs to look for some crochet patterns the old lady
wanted to borrow. Better put on your coat, Alexandra. Its cold up
there, and I have no idea where those patterns are. I may have to look
through my old trunks. Marie caught up a shawl and opened the stair
door, running up the steps ahead of her guest. While I go through the
bureau drawers, you might look in those hat-boxes on the closet-shelf,
over where Franks clothes hang. There are a lot of odds and ends in
them.
She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Alexandra went
into the clothes-closet. Presently she came back, holding a slender
elastic yellow stick in her hand.
What in the world is this, Marie? You dont mean to tell me Frank ever
carried such a thing?
Marie blinked at it with astonishment and sat down on the floor. Where
did you find it? I didnt know he had kept it. I havent seen it for
years.
It really is a cane, then?
Yes. One he brought from the old country. He used to carry it when I
first knew him. Isnt it foolish? Poor Frank!
Alexandra twirled the stick in her fingers and laughed. He must have
looked funny!
Marie was thoughtful. No, he didnt, really. It didnt seem out of
place. He used to be awfully gay like that when he was a young man. I
guess people always get whats hardest for them, Alexandra. Marie
gathered the shawl closer about her and still looked hard at the cane.
Frank would be all right in the right place, she said reflectively.
He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one thing. Do you know,
Alexandra, I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman for
Franknow. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can
find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually its exactly the sort
you are not. Then what are you going to do about it? she asked
candidly.
Alexandra confessed she didnt know. However, she added, it seems to
me that you get along with Frank about as well as any woman Ive ever
seen or heard of could.
Marie shook her head, pursing her lips and blowing her warm breath
softly out into the frosty air. No; I was spoiled at home. I like my
own way, and I have a quick tongue. When Frank brags, I say sharp
things, and he never forgets. He goes over and over it in his mind; I
can feel him. Then Im too giddy. Franks wife ought to be timid, and
she ought not to care about another living thing in the world but just
Frank! I didnt, when I married him, but I suppose I was too young to
stay like that. Marie sighed.
Alexandra had never heard Marie speak so frankly about her husband
before, and she felt that it was wiser not to encourage her. No good,
she reasoned, ever came from talking about such things, and while Marie
was thinking aloud, Alexandra had been steadily searching the
hat-boxes. Arent these the patterns, Maria? | 1,000 |
PG24 | 44 | Maria sprang up from the floor. Sure enough, we were looking for
patterns, werent we? Id forgot about everything but Franks other
wife. Ill put that away.
She poked the cane behind Franks Sunday clothes, and though she
laughed, Alexandra saw there were tears in her eyes.
When they went back to the kitchen, the snow had begun to fall, and
Maries visitors thought they must be getting home. She went out to the
cart with them, and tucked the robes about old Mrs. Lee while Alexandra
took the blanket off her horse. As they drove away, Marie turned and
went slowly back to the house. She took up the package of letters
Alexandra had brought, but she did not read them. She turned them over
and looked at the foreign stamps, and then sat watching the flying snow
while the dusk deepened in the kitchen and the stove sent out a red
glow.
Marie knew perfectly well that Emils letters were written more for her
than for Alexandra. They were not the sort of letters that a young man
writes to his sister. They were both more personal and more
painstaking; full of descriptions of the gay life in the old Mexican
capital in the days when the strong hand of Porfirio Diaz was still
strong. He told about bull-fights and cock-fights, churches and
_fiestas_, the flower-markets and the fountains, the music and dancing,
the people of all nations he met in the Italian restaurants on San
Francisco Street. In short, they were the kind of letters a young man
writes to a woman when he wishes himself and his life to seem
interesting to her, when he wishes to enlist her imagination in his
behalf.
Marie, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the evening, often
thought about what it must be like down there where Emil was; where
there were flowers and street bands everywhere, and carriages rattling
up and down, and where there was a little blind boot-black in front of
the cathedral who could play any tune you asked for by dropping the
lids of blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When everything is done and
over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant to let the mind wander
forth and follow a young adventurer who has life before him. And if it
had not been for me, she thought, Frank might still be free like
that, and having a good time making people admire him. Poor Frank,
getting married wasnt very good for him either. Im afraid I do set
people against him, as he says. I seem, somehow, to give him away all
the time. Perhaps he would try to be agreeable to people again, if I
were not around. It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can
be.
Later in the winter, Alexandra looked back upon that afternoon as the
last satisfactory visit she had had with Marie. After that day the
younger woman seemed to shrink more and more into herself. When she was
with Alexandra she was not spontaneous and frank as she used to be. She
seemed to be brooding over something, and holding something back. The
weather had a good deal to do with their seeing less of each other than
usual. There had not been such snowstorms in twenty years, and the path
across the fields was drifted deep from Christmas until March. When the
two neighbors went to see each other, they had to go round by the
wagon-road, which was twice as far. They telephoned each other almost
every night, though in January there was a stretch of three weeks when
the wires were down, and when the postman did not come at all.
Marie often ran in to see her nearest neighbor, old Mrs. Hiller, who
was crippled with rheumatism and had only her son, the lame shoemaker,
to take care of her; and she went to the French Church, whatever the
weather. She was a sincerely devout girl. She prayed for herself and
for Frank, and for Emil, among the temptations of that gay, corrupt old
city. She found more comfort in the Church that winter than ever
before. It seemed to come closer to her, and to fill an emptiness that
ached in her heart. She tried to be patient with her husband. He and
his hired man usually played California Jack in the evening. Marie sat
sewing or crocheting and tried to take a friendly interest in the game,
but she was always thinking about the wide fields outside, where the
snow was drifting over the fences; and about the orchard, where the
snow was falling and packing, crust over crust. When she went out into
the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by
the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of
snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all
the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they
wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under
the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was
still safe, warm as the blood in ones heart; and the spring would come
again! Oh, it would come again! | 1,130 |
PG24 | 45 | II
If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what was
going on in Maries mind, and she would have seen long before what was
going on in Emils. But that, as Emil himself had more than once
reflected, was Alexandras blind side, and her life had not been of the
kind to sharpen her vision. Her training had all been toward the end of
making her proficient in what she had undertaken to do. Her personal
life, her own realization of herself, was almost a subconscious
existence; like an underground river that came to the surface only here
and there, at intervals months apart, and then sank again to flow on
under her own fields. Nevertheless, the underground stream was there,
and it was because she had so much personality to put into her
enterprises and succeeded in putting it into them so completely, that
her affairs prospered better than those of her neighbors.
There were certain days in her life, outwardly uneventful, which
Alexandra remembered as peculiarly happy; days when she was close to
the flat, fallow world about her, and felt, as it were, in her own body
the joyous germination in the soil. There were days, too, which she and
Emil had spent together, upon which she loved to look back. There had
been such a day when they were down on the river in the dry year,
looking over the land. They had made an early start one morning and had
driven a long way before noon. When Emil said he was hungry, they drew
back from the road, gave Brigham his oats among the bushes, and climbed
up to the top of a grassy bluff to eat their lunch under the shade of
some little elm trees. The river was clear there, and shallow, since
there had been no rain, and it ran in ripples over the sparkling sand.
Under the overhanging willows of the opposite bank there was an inlet
where the water was deeper and flowed so slowly that it seemed to sleep
in the sun. In this little bay a single wild duck was swimming and
diving and preening her feathers, disporting herself very happily in
the flickering light and shade. They sat for a long time, watching the
solitary bird take its pleasure. No living thing had ever seemed to
Alexandra as beautiful as that wild duck. Emil must have felt about it
as she did, for afterward, when they were at home, he used sometimes to
say, Sister, you know our duck down there Alexandra remembered that
day as one of the happiest in her life. Years afterward she thought of
the duck as still there, swimming and diving all by herself in the
sunlight, a kind of enchanted bird that did not know age or change.
Most of Alexandras happy memories were as impersonal as this one; yet
to her they were very personal. Her mind was a white book, with clear
writing about weather and beasts and growing things. Not many people
would have cared to read it; only a happy few. She had never been in
love, she had never indulged in sentimental reveries. Even as a girl
she had looked upon men as work-fellows. She had grown up in serious
times.
There was one fancy indeed, which persisted through her girlhood. It
most often came to her on Sunday mornings, the one day in the week when
she lay late abed listening to the familiar morning sounds; the
windmill singing in the brisk breeze, Emil whistling as he blacked his
boots down by the kitchen door. Sometimes, as she lay thus luxuriously
idle, her eyes closed, she used to have an illusion of being lifted up
bodily and carried lightly by some one very strong. It was a man,
certainly, who carried her, but he was like no man she knew; he was
much larger and stronger and swifter, and he carried her as easily as
if she were a sheaf of wheat. She never saw him, but, with eyes closed,
she could feel that he was yellow like the sunlight, and there was the
smell of ripe cornfields about him. She could feel him approach, bend
over her and lift her, and then she could feel herself being carried
swiftly off across the fields. After such a reverie she would rise
hastily, angry with herself, and go down to the bath-house that was
partitioned off the kitchen shed. There she would stand in a tin tub
and prosecute her bath with vigor, finishing it by pouring buckets of
cold well-water over her gleaming white body which no man on the Divide
could have carried very far. | 994 |
PG24 | 46 | As she grew older, this fancy more often came to her when she was tired
than when she was fresh and strong. Sometimes, after she had been in
the open all day, overseeing the branding of the cattle or the loading
of the pigs, she would come in chilled, take a concoction of spices and
warm home-made wine, and go to bed with her body actually aching with
fatigue. Then, just before she went to sleep, she had the old sensation
of being lifted and carried by a strong being who took from her all her
bodily weariness.
PART IV.
The White Mulberry Tree
I
The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes, stood upon a
hill. The high, narrow, red-brick building, with its tall steeple and
steep roof, could be seen for miles across the wheatfields, though the
little town of Sainte-Agnes was completely hidden away at the foot of
the hill. The church looked powerful and triumphant there on its
eminence, so high above the rest of the landscape, with miles of warm
color lying at its feet, and by its position and setting it reminded
one of some of the churches built long ago in the wheat-lands of middle
France.
Late one June afternoon Alexandra Bergson was driving along one of the
many roads that led through the rich French farming country to the big
church. The sunlight was shining directly in her face, and there was a
blaze of light all about the red church on the hill. Beside Alexandra
lounged a strikingly exotic figure in a tall Mexican hat, a silk sash,
and a black velvet jacket sewn with silver buttons. Emil had returned
only the night before, and his sister was so proud of him that she
decided at once to take him up to the church supper, and to make him
wear the Mexican costume he had brought home in his trunk. All the
girls who have stands are going to wear fancy costumes, she argued,
and some of the boys. Marie is going to tell fortunes, and she sent to
Omaha for a Bohemian dress her father brought back from a visit to the
old country. If you wear those clothes, they will all be pleased. And
you must take your guitar. Everybody ought to do what they can to help
along, and we have never done much. We are not a talented family.
The supper was to be at six oclock, in the basement of the church, and
afterward there would be a fair, with charades and an auction.
Alexandra had set out from home early, leaving the house to Signa and
Nelse Jensen, who were to be married next week. Signa had shyly asked
to have the wedding put off until Emil came home.
Alexandra was well satisfied with her brother. As they drove through
the rolling French country toward the westering sun and the stalwart
church, she was thinking of that time long ago when she and Emil drove
back from the river valley to the still unconquered Divide. Yes, she
told herself, it had been worth while; both Emil and the country had
become what she had hoped. Out of her fathers children there was one
who was fit to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the plow,
and who had a personality apart from the soil. And that, she reflected,
was what she had worked for. She felt well satisfied with her life.
When they reached the church, a score of teams were hitched in front of
the basement doors that opened from the hillside upon the sanded
terrace, where the boys wrestled and had jumping-matches. Amde
Chevalier, a proud father of one week, rushed out and embraced Emil.
Amde was an only son,hence he was a very rich young man,but he
meant to have twenty children himself, like his uncle Xavier. Oh,
Emil, he cried, hugging his old friend rapturously, why aint you
been up to see my boy? You come to-morrow, sure? Emil, you wanna get a
boy right off! Its the greatest thing ever! No, no, no! Angel not sick
at all. Everything just fine. That boy he come into this world
laughin, and he been laughin ever since. You come an see! He
pounded Emils ribs to emphasize each announcement.
Emil caught his arms. Stop, Amde. Youre knocking the wind out of
me. I brought him cups and spoons and blankets and moccasins enough for
an orphan asylum. Im awful glad its a boy, sure enough! | 997 |
PG24 | 47 | The young men crowded round Emil to admire his costume and to tell him
in a breath everything that had happened since he went away. Emil had
more friends up here in the French country than down on Norway Creek.
The French and Bohemian boys were spirited and jolly, liked variety,
and were as much predisposed to favor anything new as the Scandinavian
boys were to reject it. The Norwegian and Swedish lads were much more
self-centred, apt to be egotistical and jealous. They were cautious and
reserved with Emil because he had been away to college, and were
prepared to take him down if he should try to put on airs with them.
The French boys liked a bit of swagger, and they were always delighted
to hear about anything new: new clothes, new games, new songs, new
dances. Now they carried Emil off to show him the club room they had
just fitted up over the post-office, down in the village. They ran down
the hill in a drove, all laughing and chattering at once, some in
French, some in English.
Alexandra went into the cool, whitewashed basement where the women were
setting the tables. Marie was standing on a chair, building a little
tent of shawls where she was to tell fortunes. She sprang down and ran
toward Alexandra, stopping short and looking at her in disappointment.
Alexandra nodded to her encouragingly.
Oh, he will be here, Marie. The boys have taken him off to show him
something. You wont know him. He is a man now, sure enough. I have no
boy left. He smokes terrible-smelling Mexican cigarettes and talks
Spanish. How pretty you look, child. Where did you get those beautiful
earrings?
They belonged to fathers mother. He always promised them to me. He
sent them with the dress and said I could keep them.
Marie wore a short red skirt of stoutly woven cloth, a white bodice and
kirtle, a yellow silk turban wound low over her brown curls, and long
coral pendants in her ears. Her ears had been pierced against a piece
of cork by her great-aunt when she was seven years old. In those
germless days she had worn bits of broom-straw, plucked from the common
sweeping-broom, in the lobes until the holes were healed and ready for
little gold rings.
When Emil came back from the village, he lingered outside on the
terrace with the boys. Marie could hear him talking and strumming on
his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto. She was vexed with him for
staying out there. It made her very nervous to hear him and not to see
him; for, certainly, she told herself, she was not going out to look
for him. When the supper bell rang and the boys came trooping in to get
seats at the first table, she forgot all about her annoyance and ran to
greet the tallest of the crowd, in his conspicuous attire. She didnt
mind showing her embarrassment at all. She blushed and laughed
excitedly as she gave Emil her hand, and looked delightedly at the
black velvet coat that brought out his fair skin and fine blond head.
Marie was incapable of being lukewarm about anything that pleased her.
She simply did not know how to give a half-hearted response. When she
was delighted, she was as likely as not to stand on her tip-toes and
clap her hands. If people laughed at her, she laughed with them.
Do the men wear clothes like that every day, in the street? She
caught Emil by his sleeve and turned him about. Oh, I wish I lived
where people wore things like that! Are the buttons real silver? Put on
the hat, please. What a heavy thing! How do you ever wear it? Why dont
you tell us about the bull-fights?
She wanted to wring all his experiences from him at once, without
waiting a moment. Emil smiled tolerantly and stood looking down at her
with his old, brooding gaze, while the French girls fluttered about him
in their white dresses and ribbons, and Alexandra watched the scene
with pride. Several of the French girls, Marie knew, were hoping that
Emil would take them to supper, and she was relieved when he took only
his sister. Marie caught Franks arm and dragged him to the same table,
managing to get seats opposite the Bergsons, so that she could hear
what they were talking about. Alexandra made Emil tell Mrs. Xavier
Chevalier, the mother of the twenty, about how he had seen a famous
matador killed in the bull-ring. Marie listened to every word, only
taking her eyes from Emil to watch Franks plate and keep it filled.
When Emil finished his account,bloody enough to satisfy Mrs. Xavier
and to make her feel thankful that she was not a matador,Marie broke
out with a volley of questions. How did the women dress when they went
to bull-fights? Did they wear mantillas? Did they never wear hats? | 1,093 |
PG24 | 48 | After supper the young people played charades for the amusement of
their elders, who sat gossiping between their guesses. All the shops in
Sainte-Agnes were closed at eight oclock that night, so that the
merchants and their clerks could attend the fair. The auction was the
liveliest part of the entertainment, for the French boys always lost
their heads when they began to bid, satisfied that their extravagance
was in a good cause. After all the pincushions and sofa pillows and
embroidered slippers were sold, Emil precipitated a panic by taking out
one of his turquoise shirt studs, which every one had been admiring,
and handing it to the auctioneer. All the French girls clamored for it,
and their sweethearts bid against each other recklessly. Marie wanted
it, too, and she kept making signals to Frank, which he took a sour
pleasure in disregarding. He didnt see the use of making a fuss over a
fellow just because he was dressed like a clown. When the turquoise
went to Malvina Sauvage, the French bankers daughter, Marie shrugged
her shoulders and betook herself to her little tent of shawls, where
she began to shuffle her cards by the light of a tallow candle, calling
out, Fortunes, fortunes!
The young priest, Father Duchesne, went first to have his fortune read.
Marie took his long white hand, looked at it, and then began to run off
her cards. I see a long journey across water for you, Father. You will
go to a town all cut up by water; built on islands, it seems to be,
with rivers and green fields all about. And you will visit an old lady
with a white cap and gold hoops in her ears, and you will be very happy
there.
Mais, oui, said the priest, with a melancholy smile. Cest
LIsle-Adam, chez ma mre. Vous tes trs savante, ma fille. He patted
her yellow turban, calling, Venez donc, mes garons! Il y a ici une
vritable clairvoyante!
Marie was clever at fortune-telling, indulging in a light irony that
amused the crowd. She told old Brunot, the miser, that he would lose
all his money, marry a girl of sixteen, and live happily on a crust.
Sholte, the fat Russian boy, who lived for his stomach, was to be
disappointed in love, grow thin, and shoot himself from despondency.
Amde was to have twenty children, and nineteen of them were to be
girls. Amde slapped Frank on the back and asked him why he didnt see
what the fortune-teller would promise him. But Frank shook off his
friendly hand and grunted, She tell my fortune long ago; bad enough!
Then he withdrew to a corner and sat glowering at his wife.
Franks case was all the more painful because he had no one in
particular to fix his jealousy upon. Sometimes he could have thanked
the man who would bring him evidence against his wife. He had
discharged a good farm-boy, Jan Smirka, because he thought Marie was
fond of him; but she had not seemed to miss Jan when he was gone, and
she had been just as kind to the next boy. The farm-hands would always
do anything for Marie; Frank couldnt find one so surly that he would
not make an effort to please her. At the bottom of his heart Frank knew
well enough that if he could once give up his grudge, his wife would
come back to him. But he could never in the world do that. The grudge
was fundamental. Perhaps he could not have given it up if he had tried.
Perhaps he got more satisfaction out of feeling himself abused than he
would have got out of being loved. If he could once have made Marie
thoroughly unhappy, he might have relented and raised her from the
dust. But she had never humbled herself. In the first days of their
love she had been his slave; she had admired him abandonedly. But the
moment he began to bully her and to be unjust, she began to draw away;
at first in tearful amazement, then in quiet, unspoken disgust. The
distance between them had widened and hardened. It no longer contracted
and brought them suddenly together. The spark of her life went
somewhere else, and he was always watching to surprise it. He knew that
somewhere she must get a feeling to live upon, for she was not a woman
who could live without loving. He wanted to prove to himself the wrong
he felt. What did she hide in her heart? Where did it go? Even Frank
had his churlish delicacies; he never reminded her of how much she had
once loved him. For that Marie was grateful to him. | 1,053 |
PG24 | 49 | While Marie was chattering to the French boys, Amde called Emil to
the back of the room and whispered to him that they were going to play
a joke on the girls. At eleven oclock, Amde was to go up to the
switchboard in the vestibule and turn off the electric lights, and
every boy would have a chance to kiss his sweetheart before Father
Duchesne could find his way up the stairs to turn the current on again.
The only difficulty was the candle in Maries tent; perhaps, as Emil
had no sweetheart, he would oblige the boys by blowing out the candle.
Emil said he would undertake to do that.
At five minutes to eleven he sauntered up to Maries booth, and the
French boys dispersed to find their girls. He leaned over the
card-table and gave himself up to looking at her. Do you think you
could tell my fortune? he murmured. It was the first word he had had
alone with her for almost a year. My luck hasnt changed any. Its
just the same.
Marie had often wondered whether there was anyone else who could look
his thoughts to you as Emil could. To-night, when she met his steady,
powerful eyes, it was impossible not to feel the sweetness of the dream
he was dreaming; it reached her before she could shut it out, and hid
itself in her heart. She began to shuffle her cards furiously. Im
angry with you, Emil, she broke out with petulance. Why did you give
them that lovely blue stone to sell? You might have known Frank
wouldnt buy it for me, and I wanted it awfully!
Emil laughed shortly. People who want such little things surely ought
to have them, he said dryly. He thrust his hand into the pocket of his
velvet trousers and brought out a handful of uncut turquoises, as big
as marbles. Leaning over the table he dropped them into her lap.
There, will those do? Be careful, dont let any one see them. Now, I
suppose you want me to go away and let you play with them?
Marie was gazing in rapture at the soft blue color of the stones. Oh,
Emil! Is everything down there beautiful like these? How could you ever
come away?
At that instant Amde laid hands on the switchboard. There was a
shiver and a giggle, and every one looked toward the red blur that
Maries candle made in the dark. Immediately that, too, was gone.
Little shrieks and currents of soft laughter ran up and down the dark
hall. Marie started up,directly into Emils arms. In the same instant
she felt his lips. The veil that had hung uncertainly between them for
so long was dissolved. Before she knew what she was doing, she had
committed herself to that kiss that was at once a boys and a mans, as
timid as it was tender; so like Emil and so unlike any one else in the
world. Not until it was over did she realize what it meant. And Emil,
who had so often imagined the shock of this first kiss, was surprised
at its gentleness and naturalness. It was like a sigh which they had
breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of wakening
something in the other.
When the lights came on again, everybody was laughing and shouting, and
all the French girls were rosy and shining with mirth. Only Marie, in
her little tent of shawls, was pale and quiet. Under her yellow turban
the red coral pendants swung against white cheeks. Frank was still
staring at her, but he seemed to see nothing. Years ago, he himself had
had the power to take the blood from her cheeks like that. Perhaps he
did not rememberperhaps he had never noticed! Emil was already at the
other end of the hall, walking about with the shoulder-motion he had
acquired among the Mexicans, studying the floor with his intent,
deep-set eyes. Marie began to take down and fold her shawls. She did
not glance up again. The young people drifted to the other end of the
hall where the guitar was sounding. In a moment she heard Emil and
Raoul singing:
Across the Rio Grand-e
There lies a sunny land-e,
My bright-eyed Mexico!
Alexandra Bergson came up to the card booth. Let me help you, Marie.
You look tired.
She placed her hand on Maries arm and felt her shiver. Marie stiffened
under that kind, calm hand. Alexandra drew back, perplexed and hurt. | 987 |
PG24 | 50 | There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the
fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot feel
that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy of storms;
unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.
II
Signas wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome little
Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony, were saying
good-night. Old Ivar was hitching the horses to the wagon to take the
wedding presents and the bride and groom up to their new home, on
Alexandras north quarter. When Ivar drove up to the gate, Emil and
Marie Shabata began to carry out the presents, and Alexandra went into
her bedroom to bid Signa good-bye and to give her a few words of good
counsel. She was surprised to find that the bride had changed her
slippers for heavy shoes and was pinning up her skirts. At that moment
Nelse appeared at the gate with the two milk cows that Alexandra had
given Signa for a wedding present.
Alexandra began to laugh. Why, Signa, you and Nelse are to ride home.
Ill send Ivar over with the cows in the morning.
Signa hesitated and looked perplexed. When her husband called her, she
pinned her hat on resolutely. I ta-ank I better do yust like he say,
she murmured in confusion.
Alexandra and Marie accompanied Signa to the gate and saw the party set
off, old Ivar driving ahead in the wagon and the bride and groom
following on foot, each leading a cow. Emil burst into a laugh before
they were out of hearing.
Those two will get on, said Alexandra as they turned back to the
house. They are not going to take any chances. They will feel safer
with those cows in their own stable. Marie, I am going to send for an
old woman next. As soon as I get the girls broken in, I marry them
off.
Ive no patience with Signa, marrying that grumpy fellow! Marie
declared. I wanted her to marry that nice Smirka boy who worked for us
last winter. I think she liked him, too.
Yes, I think she did, Alexandra assented, but I suppose she was too
much afraid of Nelse to marry any one else. Now that I think of it,
most of my girls have married men they were afraid of. I believe there
is a good deal of the cow in most Swedish girls. You high-strung
Bohemian cant understand us. Were a terribly practical people, and I
guess we think a cross man makes a good manager.
Marie shrugged her shoulders and turned to pin up a lock of hair that
had fallen on her neck. Somehow Alexandra had irritated her of late.
Everybody irritated her. She was tired of everybody. Im going home
alone, Emil, so you neednt get your hat, she said as she wound her
scarf quickly about her head. Good-night, Alexandra, she called back
in a strained voice, running down the gravel walk.
Emil followed with long strides until he overtook her. Then she began
to walk slowly. It was a night of warm wind and faint starlight, and
the fireflies were glimmering over the wheat.
Marie, said Emil after they had walked for a while, I wonder if you
know how unhappy I am?
Marie did not answer him. Her head, in its white scarf, drooped forward
a little.
Emil kicked a clod from the path and went on:
I wonder whether you are really shallow-hearted, like you seem?
Sometimes I think one boy does just as well as another for you. It
never seems to make much difference whether it is me or Raoul Marcel or
Jan Smirka. Are you really like that?
Perhaps I am. What do you want me to do? Sit round and cry all day?
When Ive cried until I cant cry any more, thenthen I must do
something else.
Are you sorry for me? he persisted.
No, Im not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldnt let anything
make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at the fair, I wouldnt go
lovering after no woman. Id take the first train and go off and have
all the fun there is.
I tried that, but it didnt do any good. Everything reminded me. The
nicer the place was, the more I wanted you. They had come to the stile
and Emil pointed to it persuasively. Sit down a moment, I want to ask
you something. Marie sat down on the top step and Emil drew nearer.
Would you tell me something thats none of my business if you thought
it would help me out? Well, then, tell me, _please_ tell me, why you
ran away with Frank Shabata! | 1,047 |
PG24 | 51 | Marie drew back. Because I was in love with him, she said firmly.
Really? he asked incredulously.
Yes, indeed. Very much in love with him. I think I was the one who
suggested our running away. From the first it was more my fault than
his.
Emil turned away his face.
And now, Marie went on, Ive got to remember that. Frank is just the
same now as he was then, only then I would see him as I wanted him to
be. I would have my own way. And now I pay for it.
You dont do all the paying.
Thats it. When one makes a mistake, theres no telling where it will
stop. But you can go away; you can leave all this behind you.
Not everything. I cant leave you behind. Will you go away with me,
Marie?
Marie started up and stepped across the stile. Emil! How wickedly you
talk! I am not that kind of a girl, and you know it. But what am I
going to do if you keep tormenting me like this! she added
plaintively.
Marie, I wont bother you any more if you will tell me just one thing.
Stop a minute and look at me. No, nobody can see us. Everybodys
asleep. That was only a firefly. Marie, _stop_ and tell me!
Emil overtook her and catching her by the shoulders shook her gently,
as if he were trying to awaken a sleepwalker.
Marie hid her face on his arm. Dont ask me anything more. I dont
know anything except how miserable I am. And I thought it would be all
right when you came back. Oh, Emil, she clutched his sleeve and began
to cry, what am I to do if you dont go away? I cant go, and one of
us must. Cant you see?
Emil stood looking down at her, holding his shoulders stiff and
stiffening the arm to which she clung. Her white dress looked gray in
the darkness. She seemed like a troubled spirit, like some shadow out
of the earth, clinging to him and entreating him to give her peace.
Behind her the fireflies were weaving in and out over the wheat. He put
his hand on her bent head. On my honor, Marie, if you will say you
love me, I will go away.
She lifted her face to his. How could I help it? Didnt you know?
Emil was the one who trembled, through all his frame. After he left
Marie at her gate, he wandered about the fields all night, till morning
put out the fireflies and the stars.
III
One evening, a week after Signas wedding, Emil was kneeling before a
box in the sitting-room, packing his books. From time to time he rose
and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and bringing
them listlessly back to his box. He was packing without enthusiasm. He
was not very sanguine about his future. Alexandra sat sewing by the
table. She had helped him pack his trunk in the afternoon. As Emil came
and went by her chair with his books, he thought to himself that it had
not been so hard to leave his sister since he first went away to
school. He was going directly to Omaha, to read law in the office of a
Swedish lawyer until October, when he would enter the law school at Ann
Arbor. They had planned that Alexandra was to come to Michigana long
journey for herat Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him.
Nevertheless, he felt that this leave-taking would be more final than
his earlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with his old
home and the beginning of something newhe did not know what. His ideas
about the future would not crystallize; the more he tried to think
about it, the vaguer his conception of it became. But one thing was
clear, he told himself; it was high time that he made good to
Alexandra, and that ought to be incentive enough to begin with.
As he went about gathering up his books he felt as if he were uprooting
things. At last he threw himself down on the old slat lounge where he
had slept when he was little, and lay looking up at the familiar cracks
in the ceiling.
Tired, Emil? his sister asked.
Lazy, he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her. He studied
Alexandras face for a long time in the lamplight. It had never
occurred to him that his sister was a handsome woman until Marie
Shabata had told him so. Indeed, he had never thought of her as being a
woman at all, only a sister. As he studied her bent head, he looked up
at the picture of John Bergson above the lamp. No, he thought to
himself, she didnt get it there. I suppose I am more like that. | 1,061 |
PG24 | 52 | Alexandra, he said suddenly, that old walnut secretary you use for a
desk was fathers, wasnt it?
Alexandra went on stitching. Yes. It was one of the first things he
bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance in those
days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old country. He had
many friends there, and they wrote to him up to the time he died. No
one ever blamed him for grandfathers disgrace. I can see him now,
sitting there on Sundays, in his white shirt, writing pages and pages,
so carefully. He wrote a fine, regular hand, almost like engraving.
Yours is something like his, when you take pains.
Grandfather was really crooked, was he?
He married an unscrupulous woman, and thenthen Im afraid he was
really crooked. When we first came here father used to have dreams
about making a great fortune and going back to Sweden to pay back to
the poor sailors the money grandfather had lost.
Emil stirred on the lounge. I say, that would have been worth while,
wouldnt it? Father wasnt a bit like Lou or Oscar, was he? I cant
remember much about him before he got sick.
Oh, not at all! Alexandra dropped her sewing on her knee. He had
better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something of
himself. He was a quiet man, but he was very intelligent. You would
have been proud of him, Emil.
Alexandra felt that he would like to know there had been a man of his
kin whom he could admire. She knew that Emil was ashamed of Lou and
Oscar, because they were bigoted and self-satisfied. He never said much
about them, but she could feel his disgust. His brothers had shown
their disapproval of him ever since he first went away to school. The
only thing that would have satisfied them would have been his failure
at the University. As it was, they resented every change in his speech,
in his dress, in his point of view; though the latter they had to
conjecture, for Emil avoided talking to them about any but family
matters. All his interests they treated as affectations.
Alexandra took up her sewing again. I can remember father when he was
quite a young man. He belonged to some kind of a musical society, a
male chorus, in Stockholm. I can remember going with mother to hear
them sing. There must have been a hundred of them, and they all wore
long black coats and white neckties. I was used to seeing father in a
blue coat, a sort of jacket, and when I recognized him on the platform,
I was very proud. Do you remember that Swedish song he taught you,
about the ship boy?
Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anything different.
Emil paused. Father had a hard fight here, didnt he? he added
thoughtfully.
Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed in
the land.
And in you, I guess, Emil said to himself. There was another period
of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect understanding,
in which Emil and Alexandra had spent many of their happiest
half-hours.
At last Emil said abruptly, Lou and Oscar would be better off if they
were poor, wouldnt they?
Alexandra smiled. Maybe. But their children wouldnt. I have great
hopes of Milly.
Emil shivered. I dont know. Seems to me it gets worse as it goes on.
The worst of the Swedes is that theyre never willing to find out how
much they dont know. It was like that at the University. Always so
pleased with themselves! Theres no getting behind that conceited
Swedish grin. The Bohemians and Germans were so different.
Come, Emil, dont go back on your own people. Father wasnt conceited,
Uncle Otto wasnt. Even Lou and Oscar werent when they were boys.
Emil looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He turned on
his back and lay still for a long time, his hands locked under his
head, looking up at the ceiling. Alexandra knew that he was thinking of
many things. She felt no anxiety about Emil. She had always believed in
him, as she had believed in the land. He had been more like himself
since he got back from Mexico; seemed glad to be at home, and talked to
her as he used to do. She had no doubt that his wandering fit was over,
and that he would soon be settled in life. | 994 |
PG24 | 53 | Alexandra, said Emil suddenly, do you remember the wild duck we saw
down on the river that time?
His sister looked up. I often think of her. It always seems to me
shes there still, just like we saw her.
I know. Its queer what things one remembers and what things one
forgets. Emil yawned and sat up. Well, its time to turn in. He
rose, and going over to Alexandra stooped down and kissed her lightly
on the cheek. Good-night, sister. I think you did pretty well by us.
Emil took up his lamp and went upstairs. Alexandra sat finishing his
new nightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his trunk.
IV
The next morning Anglique, Amdes wife, was in the kitchen baking
pies, assisted by old Mrs. Chevalier. Between the mixing-board and the
stove stood the old cradle that had been Amdes, and in it was his
black-eyed son. As Anglique, flushed and excited, with flour on her
hands, stopped to smile at the baby, Emil Bergson rode up to the
kitchen door on his mare and dismounted.
Mde is out in the field, Emil, Anglique called as she ran across
the kitchen to the oven. He begins to cut his wheat to-day; the first
wheat ready to cut anywhere about here. He bought a new header, you
know, because all the wheats so short this year. I hope he can rent it
to the neighbors, it cost so much. He and his cousins bought a steam
thresher on shares. You ought to go out and see that header work. I
watched it an hour this morning, busy as I am with all the men to feed.
He has a lot of hands, but hes the only one that knows how to drive
the header or how to run the engine, so he has to be everywhere at
once. Hes sick, too, and ought to be in his bed.
Emil bent over Hector Baptiste, trying to make him blink his round,
bead-like black eyes. Sick? Whats the matter with your daddy, kid?
Been making him walk the floor with you?
Anglique sniffed. Not much! We dont have that kind of babies. It was
his father that kept Baptiste awake. All night I had to be getting up
and making mustard plasters to put on his stomach. He had an awful
colic. He said he felt better this morning, but I dont think he ought
to be out in the field, overheating himself.
Anglique did not speak with much anxiety, not because she was
indifferent, but because she felt so secure in their good fortune. Only
good things could happen to a rich, energetic, handsome young man like
Amde, with a new baby in the cradle and a new header in the field.
Emil stroked the black fuzz on Baptistes head. I say, Anglique, one
of Mdes grandmothers, way back, must have been a squaw. This kid
looks exactly like the Indian babies.
Anglique made a face at him, but old Mrs. Chevalier had been touched
on a sore point, and she let out such a stream of fiery _patois_ that
Emil fled from the kitchen and mounted his mare.
Opening the pasture gate from the saddle, Emil rode across the field to
the clearing where the thresher stood, driven by a stationary engine
and fed from the header boxes. As Amde was not on the engine, Emil
rode on to the wheatfield, where he recognized, on the header, the
slight, wiry figure of his friend, coatless, his white shirt puffed out
by the wind, his straw hat stuck jauntily on the side of his head. The
six big work-horses that drew, or rather pushed, the header, went
abreast at a rapid walk, and as they were still green at the work they
required a good deal of management on Amdes part; especially when
they turned the corners, where they divided, three and three, and then
swung round into line again with a movement that looked as complicated
as a wheel of artillery. Emil felt a new thrill of admiration for his
friend, and with it the old pang of envy at the way in which Amde
could do with his might what his hand found to do, and feel that,
whatever it was, it was the most important thing in the world. Ill
have to bring Alexandra up to see this thing work, Emil thought; its
splendid!
When he saw Emil, Amde waved to him and called to one of his twenty
cousins to take the reins. Stepping off the header without stopping it,
he ran up to Emil who had dismounted. Come along, he called. I have
to go over to the engine for a minute. I gotta green man running it,
and I gotta to keep an eye on him. | 1,064 |
PG24 | 54 | Emil thought the lad was unnaturally flushed and more excited than even
the cares of managing a big farm at a critical time warranted. As they
passed behind a last years stack, Amde clutched at his right side
and sank down for a moment on the straw.
Ouch! I got an awful pain in me, Emil. Somethings the matter with my
insides, for sure.
Emil felt his fiery cheek. You ought to go straight to bed, Mde,
and telephone for the doctor; thats what you ought to do.
Amde staggered up with a gesture of despair. How can I? I got no
time to be sick. Three thousand dollars worth of new machinery to
manage, and the wheat so ripe it will begin to shatter next week. My
wheats short, but its gotta grand full berries. Whats he slowing
down for? We havent got header boxes enough to feed the thresher, I
guess.
Amde started hot-foot across the stubble, leaning a little to the
right as he ran, and waved to the engineer not to stop the engine.
Emil saw that this was no time to talk about his own affairs. He
mounted his mare and rode on to Sainte-Agnes, to bid his friends there
good-bye. He went first to see Raoul Marcel, and found him innocently
practising the Gloria for the big confirmation service on Sunday
while he polished the mirrors of his fathers saloon.
As Emil rode homewards at three oclock in the afternoon, he saw Amde
staggering out of the wheatfield, supported by two of his cousins. Emil
stopped and helped them put the boy to bed.
V
When Frank Shabata came in from work at five oclock that evening, old
Moses Marcel, Raouls father, telephoned him that Amde had had a
seizure in the wheatfield, and that Doctor Paradis was going to operate
on him as soon as the Hanover doctor got there to help. Frank dropped a
word of this at the table, bolted his supper, and rode off to
Sainte-Agnes, where there would be sympathetic discussion of Amdes
case at Marcels saloon.
As soon as Frank was gone, Marie telephoned Alexandra. It was a comfort
to hear her friends voice. Yes, Alexandra knew what there was to be
known about Amde. Emil had been there when they carried him out of
the field, and had stayed with him until the doctors operated for
appendicitis at five oclock. They were afraid it was too late to do
much good; it should have been done three days ago. Amde was in a
very bad way. Emil had just come home, worn out and sick himself. She
had given him some brandy and put him to bed.
Marie hung up the receiver. Poor Amdes illness had taken on a new
meaning to her, now that she knew Emil had been with him. And it might
so easily have been the other wayEmil who was ill and Amde who was
sad! Marie looked about the dusky sitting-room. She had seldom felt so
utterly lonely. If Emil was asleep, there was not even a chance of his
coming; and she could not go to Alexandra for sympathy. She meant to
tell Alexandra everything, as soon as Emil went away. Then whatever was
left between them would be honest.
But she could not stay in the house this evening. Where should she go?
She walked slowly down through the orchard, where the evening air was
heavy with the smell of wild cotton. The fresh, salty scent of the wild
roses had given way before this more powerful perfume of midsummer.
Wherever those ashes-of-rose balls hung on their milky stalks, the air
about them was saturated with their breath. The sky was still red in
the west and the evening star hung directly over the Bergsons
wind-mill. Marie crossed the fence at the wheatfield corner, and walked
slowly along the path that led to Alexandras. She could not help
feeling hurt that Emil had not come to tell her about Amde. It seemed
to her most unnatural that he should not have come. If she were in
trouble, certainly he was the one person in the world she would want to
see. Perhaps he wished her to understand that for her he was as good as
gone already.
Marie stole slowly, flutteringly, along the path, like a white
night-moth out of the fields. The years seemed to stretch before her
like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same
patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the
same yearning, the same pulling at the chainuntil the instinct to live
had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the
chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. Marie
walked on, her face lifted toward the remote, inaccessible evening
star. | 1,075 |
PG24 | 55 | When she reached the stile she sat down and waited. How terrible it was
to love people when you could not really share their lives!
Yes, in so far as she was concerned, Emil was already gone. They
couldnt meet any more. There was nothing for them to say. They had
spent the last penny of their small change; there was nothing left but
gold. The day of love-tokens was past. They had now only their hearts
to give each other. And Emil being gone, what was her life to be like?
In some ways, it would be easier. She would not, at least, live in
perpetual fear. If Emil were once away and settled at work, she would
not have the feeling that she was spoiling his life. With the memory he
left her, she could be as rash as she chose. Nobody could be the worse
for it but herself; and that, surely, did not matter. Her own case was
clear. When a girl had loved one man, and then loved another while that
man was still alive, everybody knew what to think of her. What happened
to her was of little consequence, so long as she did not drag other
people down with her. Emil once away, she could let everything else go
and live a new life of perfect love.
Marie left the stile reluctantly. She had, after all, thought he might
come. And how glad she ought to be, she told herself, that he was
asleep. She left the path and went across the pasture. The moon was
almost full. An owl was hooting somewhere in the fields. She had
scarcely thought about where she was going when the pond glittered
before her, where Emil had shot the ducks. She stopped and looked at
it. Yes, there would be a dirty way out of life, if one chose to take
it. But she did not want to die. She wanted to live and dreama hundred
years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as
long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt as the
pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it encircled and
swelled with that image of gold.
In the morning, when Emil came down-stairs, Alexandra met him in the
sitting-room and put her hands on his shoulders. Emil, I went to your
room as soon as it was light, but you were sleeping so sound I hated to
wake you. There was nothing you could do, so I let you sleep. They
telephoned from Sainte-Agnes that Amde died at three oclock this
morning.
VI
The Church has always held that life is for the living. On Saturday,
while half the village of Sainte-Agnes was mourning for Amde and
preparing the funeral black for his burial on Monday, the other half
was busy with white dresses and white veils for the great confirmation
service to-morrow, when the bishop was to confirm a class of one
hundred boys and girls. Father Duchesne divided his time between the
living and the dead. All day Saturday the church was a scene of
bustling activity, a little hushed by the thought of Amde. The choir
were busy rehearsing a mass of Rossini, which they had studied and
practised for this occasion. The women were trimming the altar, the
boys and girls were bringing flowers.
On Sunday morning the bishop was to drive overland to Sainte-Agnes from
Hanover, and Emil Bergson had been asked to take the place of one of
Amdes cousins in the cavalcade of forty French boys who were to ride
across country to meet the bishops carriage. At six oclock on Sunday
morning the boys met at the church. As they stood holding their horses
by the bridle, they talked in low tones of their dead comrade. They
kept repeating that Amde had always been a good boy, glancing toward
the red brick church which had played so large a part in Amdes life,
had been the scene of his most serious moments and of his happiest
hours. He had played and wrestled and sung and courted under its
shadow. Only three weeks ago he had proudly carried his baby there to
be christened. They could not doubt that that invisible arm was still
about Amde; that through the church on earth he had passed to the
church triumphant, the goal of the hopes and faith of so many hundred
years.
When the word was given to mount, the young men rode at a walk out of
the village; but once out among the wheatfields in the morning sun,
their horses and their own youth got the better of them. A wave of zeal
and fiery enthusiasm swept over them. They longed for a Jerusalem to
deliver. The thud of their galloping hoofs interrupted many a country
breakfast and brought many a woman and child to the door of the
farmhouses as they passed. Five miles east of Sainte-Agnes they met the
bishop in his open carriage, attended by two priests. Like one man the
boys swung off their hats in a broad salute, and bowed their heads as
the handsome old man lifted his two fingers in the episcopal blessing.
The horsemen closed about the carriage like a guard, and whenever a
restless horse broke from control and shot down the road ahead of the
body, the bishop laughed and rubbed his plump hands together. What
fine boys! he said to his priests. The Church still has her cavalry. | 1,193 |
PG24 | 56 | As the troop swept past the graveyard half a mile east of the town,the
first frame church of the parish had stood there,old Pierre Seguin was
already out with his pick and spade, digging Amdes grave. He knelt
and uncovered as the bishop passed. The boys with one accord looked
away from old Pierre to the red church on the hill, with the gold cross
flaming on its steeple.
Mass was at eleven. While the church was filling, Emil Bergson waited
outside, watching the wagons and buggies drive up the hill. After the
bell began to ring, he saw Frank Shabata ride up on horseback and tie
his horse to the hitch-bar. Marie, then, was not coming. Emil turned
and went into the church. Amdes was the only empty pew, and he sat
down in it. Some of Amdes cousins were there, dressed in black and
weeping. When all the pews were full, the old men and boys packed the
open space at the back of the church, kneeling on the floor. There was
scarcely a family in town that was not represented in the confirmation
class, by a cousin, at least. The new communicants, with their clear,
reverent faces, were beautiful to look upon as they entered in a body
and took the front benches reserved for them. Even before the Mass
began, the air was charged with feeling. The choir had never sung so
well and Raoul Marcel, in the Gloria, drew even the bishops eyes to
the organ loft. For the offertory he sang Gounods Ave Maria,always
spoken of in Sainte-Agnes as the Ave Maria.
Emil began to torture himself with questions about Marie. Was she ill?
Had she quarreled with her husband? Was she too unhappy to find comfort
even here? Had she, perhaps, thought that he would come to her? Was she
waiting for him? Overtaxed by excitement and sorrow as he was, the
rapture of the service took hold upon his body and mind. As he listened
to Raoul, he seemed to emerge from the conflicting emotions which had
been whirling him about and sucking him under. He felt as if a clear
light broke upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was,
after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men. He
seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture in which he could
love forever without faltering and without sin. He looked across the
heads of the people at Frank Shabata with calmness. That rapture was
for those who could feel it; for people who could not, it was
non-existent. He coveted nothing that was Frank Shabatas. The spirit
he had met in music was his own. Frank Shabata had never found it;
would never find it if he lived beside it a thousand years; would have
destroyed it if he had found it, as Herod slew the innocents, as Rome
slew the martyrs.
Sancta Mari-i-i-a,
wailed Raoul from the organ loft;
Ora pro no-o-bis!
And it did not occur to Emil that any one had ever reasoned thus
before, that music had ever before given a man this equivocal
revelation.
The confirmation service followed the Mass. When it was over, the
congregation thronged about the newly confirmed. The girls, and even
the boys, were kissed and embraced and wept over. All the aunts and
grandmothers wept with joy. The housewives had much ado to tear
themselves away from the general rejoicing and hurry back to their
kitchens. The country parishioners were staying in town for dinner, and
nearly every house in Sainte-Agnes entertained visitors that day.
Father Duchesne, the bishop, and the visiting priests dined with Fabien
Sauvage, the banker. Emil and Frank Shabata were both guests of old
Moise Marcel. After dinner Frank and old Moise retired to the rear room
of the saloon to play California Jack and drink their cognac, and Emil
went over to the bankers with Raoul, who had been asked to sing for
the bishop.
At three oclock, Emil felt that he could stand it no longer. He
slipped out under cover of The Holy City, followed by Malvinas
wistful eye, and went to the stable for his mare. He was at that height
of excitement from which everything is foreshortened, from which life
seems short and simple, death very near, and the soul seems to soar
like an eagle. As he rode past the graveyard he looked at the brown
hole in the earth where Amde was to lie, and felt no horror. That,
too, was beautiful, that simple doorway into forgetfulness. The heart,
when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has
no fear of death. It is the old and the poor and the maimed who shrink
from that brown hole; its wooers are found among the young, the
passionate, the gallant-hearted. It was not until he had passed the
graveyard that Emil realized where he was going. It was the hour for
saying good-bye. It might be the last time that he would see her alone,
and today he could leave her without rancor, without bitterness. | 1,169 |
PG24 | 57 | Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was full of the
smell of the ripe wheat, like the smell of bread baking in an oven. The
breath of the wheat and the sweet clover passed him like pleasant
things in a dream. He could feel nothing but the sense of diminishing
distance. It seemed to him that his mare was flying, or running on
wheels, like a railway train. The sunlight, flashing on the
window-glass of the big red barns, drove him wild with joy. He was like
an arrow shot from the bow. His life poured itself out along the road
before him as he rode to the Shabata farm.
When Emil alighted at the Shabatas gate, his horse was in a lather. He
tied her in the stable and hurried to the house. It was empty. She
might be at Mrs. Hillers or with Alexandra. But anything that reminded
him of her would be enough, the orchard, the mulberry tree... When he
reached the orchard the sun was hanging low over the wheatfield. Long
fingers of light reached through the apple branches as through a net;
the orchard was riddled and shot with gold; light was the reality, the
trees were merely interferences that reflected and refracted light.
Emil went softly down between the cherry trees toward the wheatfield.
When he came to the corner, he stopped short and put his hand over his
mouth. Marie was lying on her side under the white mulberry tree, her
face half hidden in the grass, her eyes closed, her hands lying limply
where they had happened to fall. She had lived a day of her new life of
perfect love, and it had left her like this. Her breast rose and fell
faintly, as if she were asleep. Emil threw himself down beside her and
took her in his arms. The blood came back to her cheeks, her amber eyes
opened slowly, and in them Emil saw his own face and the orchard and
the sun. I was dreaming this, she whispered, hiding her face against
him, dont take my dream away!
VII
When Frank Shabata got home that night, he found Emils mare in his
stable. Such an impertinence amazed him. Like everybody else, Frank had
had an exciting day. Since noon he had been drinking too much, and he
was in a bad temper. He talked bitterly to himself while he put his own
horse away, and as he went up the path and saw that the house was dark
he felt an added sense of injury. He approached quietly and listened on
the doorstep. Hearing nothing, he opened the kitchen door and went
softly from one room to another. Then he went through the house again,
upstairs and down, with no better result. He sat down on the bottom
step of the box stairway and tried to get his wits together. In that
unnatural quiet there was no sound but his own heavy breathing.
Suddenly an owl began to hoot out in the fields. Frank lifted his head.
An idea flashed into his mind, and his sense of injury and outrage
grew. He went into his bedroom and took his murderous 405 Winchester
from the closet.
When Frank took up his gun and walked out of the house, he had not the
faintest purpose of doing anything with it. He did not believe that he
had any real grievance. But it gratified him to feel like a desperate
man. He had got into the habit of seeing himself always in desperate
straits. His unhappy temperament was like a cage; he could never get
out of it; and he felt that other people, his wife in particular, must
have put him there. It had never more than dimly occurred to Frank that
he made his own unhappiness. Though he took up his gun with dark
projects in his mind, he would have been paralyzed with fright had he
known that there was the slightest probability of his ever carrying any
of them out.
Frank went slowly down to the orchard gate, stopped and stood for a
moment lost in thought. He retraced his steps and looked through the
barn and the hayloft. Then he went out to the road, where he took the
foot-path along the outside of the orchard hedge. The hedge was twice
as tall as Frank himself, and so dense that one could see through it
only by peering closely between the leaves. He could see the empty path
a long way in the moonlight. His mind traveled ahead to the stile,
which he always thought of as haunted by Emil Bergson. But why had he
left his horse? | 996 |
PG24 | 58 | At the wheatfield corner, where the orchard hedge ended and the path
led across the pasture to the Bergsons, Frank stopped. In the warm,
breathless night air he heard a murmuring sound, perfectly
inarticulate, as low as the sound of water coming from a spring, where
there is no fall, and where there are no stones to fret it. Frank
strained his ears. It ceased. He held his breath and began to tremble.
Resting the butt of his gun on the ground, he parted the mulberry
leaves softly with his fingers and peered through the hedge at the dark
figures on the grass, in the shadow of the mulberry tree. It seemed to
him that they must feel his eyes, that they must hear him breathing.
But they did not. Frank, who had always wanted to see things blacker
than they were, for once wanted to believe less than he saw. The woman
lying in the shadow might so easily be one of the Bergsons
farm-girls.... Again the murmur, like water welling out of the ground.
This time he heard it more distinctly, and his blood was quicker than
his brain. He began to act, just as a man who falls into the fire
begins to act. The gun sprang to his shoulder, he sighted mechanically
and fired three times without stopping, stopped without knowing why.
Either he shut his eyes or he had vertigo. He did not see anything
while he was firing. He thought he heard a cry simultaneous with the
second report, but he was not sure. He peered again through the hedge,
at the two dark figures under the tree. They had fallen a little apart
from each other, and were perfectly stillNo, not quite; in a white
patch of light, where the moon shone through the branches, a mans hand
was plucking spasmodically at the grass.
Suddenly the woman stirred and uttered a cry, then another, and
another. She was living! She was dragging herself toward the hedge!
Frank dropped his gun and ran back along the path, shaking, stumbling,
gasping. He had never imagined such horror. The cries followed him.
They grew fainter and thicker, as if she were choking. He dropped on
his knees beside the hedge and crouched like a rabbit, listening;
fainter, fainter; a sound like a whine; againa moananothersilence.
Frank scrambled to his feet and ran on, groaning and praying. From
habit he went toward the house, where he was used to being soothed when
he had worked himself into a frenzy, but at the sight of the black,
open door, he started back. He knew that he had murdered somebody, that
a woman was bleeding and moaning in the orchard, but he had not
realized before that it was his wife. The gate stared him in the face.
He threw his hands over his head. Which way to turn? He lifted his
tormented face and looked at the sky. Holy Mother of God, not to
suffer! She was a good girlnot to suffer!
Frank had been wont to see himself in dramatic situations; but now,
when he stood by the windmill, in the bright space between the barn and
the house, facing his own black doorway, he did not see himself at all.
He stood like the hare when the dogs are approaching from all sides.
And he ran like a hare, back and forth about that moonlit space, before
he could make up his mind to go into the dark stable for a horse. The
thought of going into a doorway was terrible to him. He caught Emils
horse by the bit and led it out. He could not have buckled a bridle on
his own. After two or three attempts, he lifted himself into the saddle
and started for Hanover. If he could catch the one oclock train, he
had money enough to get as far as Omaha.
While he was thinking dully of this in some less sensitized part of his
brain, his acuter faculties were going over and over the cries he had
heard in the orchard. Terror was the only thing that kept him from
going back to her, terror that she might still be she, that she might
still be suffering. A woman, mutilated and bleeding in his orchardit
was because it was a woman that he was so afraid. It was inconceivable
that he should have hurt a woman. He would rather be eaten by wild
beasts than see her move on the ground as she had moved in the orchard.
Why had she been so careless? She knew he was like a crazy man when he
was angry. She had more than once taken that gun away from him and held
it, when he was angry with other people. Once it had gone off while
they were struggling over it. She was never afraid. But, when she knew
him, why hadnt she been more careful? Didnt she have all summer
before her to love Emil Bergson in, without taking such chances?
Probably she had met the Smirka boy, too, down there in the orchard. He
didnt care. She could have met all the men on the Divide there, and
welcome, if only she hadnt brought this horror on him. | 1,126 |
PG24 | 59 | There was a wrench in Franks mind. He did not honestly believe that of
her. He knew that he was doing her wrong. He stopped his horse to admit
this to himself the more directly, to think it out the more clearly. He
knew that he was to blame. For three years he had been trying to break
her spirit. She had a way of making the best of things that seemed to
him a sentimental affectation. He wanted his wife to resent that he was
wasting his best years among these stupid and unappreciative people;
but she had seemed to find the people quite good enough. If he ever got
rich he meant to buy her pretty clothes and take her to California in a
Pullman car, and treat her like a lady; but in the mean time he wanted
her to feel that life was as ugly and as unjust as he felt it. He had
tried to make her life ugly. He had refused to share any of the little
pleasures she was so plucky about making for herself. She could be gay
about the least thing in the world; but she must be gay! When she first
came to him, her faith in him, her adorationFrank struck the mare with
his fist. Why had Marie made him do this thing; why had she brought
this upon him? He was overwhelmed by sickening misfortune. All at once
he heard her cries againhe had forgotten for a moment. Maria, he
sobbed aloud, Maria!
When Frank was halfway to Hanover, the motion of his horse brought on a
violent attack of nausea. After it had passed, he rode on again, but he
could think of nothing except his physical weakness and his desire to
be comforted by his wife. He wanted to get into his own bed. Had his
wife been at home, he would have turned and gone back to her meekly
enough.
VIII
When old Ivar climbed down from his loft at four oclock the next
morning, he came upon Emils mare, jaded and lather-stained, her bridle
broken, chewing the scattered tufts of hay outside the stable door. The
old man was thrown into a fright at once. He put the mare in her stall,
threw her a measure of oats, and then set out as fast as his bow-legs
could carry him on the path to the nearest neighbor.
Something is wrong with that boy. Some misfortune has come upon us. He
would never have used her so, in his right senses. It is not his way to
abuse his mare, the old man kept muttering, as he scuttled through the
short, wet pasture grass on his bare feet.
While Ivar was hurrying across the fields, the first long rays of the
sun were reaching down between the orchard boughs to those two
dew-drenched figures. The story of what had happened was written
plainly on the orchard grass, and on the white mulberries that had
fallen in the night and were covered with dark stain. For Emil the
chapter had been short. He was shot in the heart, and had rolled over
on his back and died. His face was turned up to the sky and his brows
were drawn in a frown, as if he had realized that something had
befallen him. But for Marie Shabata it had not been so easy. One ball
had torn through her right lung, another had shattered the carotid
artery. She must have started up and gone toward the hedge, leaving a
trail of blood. There she had fallen and bled. From that spot there was
another trail, heavier than the first, where she must have dragged
herself back to Emils body. Once there, she seemed not to have
struggled any more. She had lifted her head to her lovers breast,
taken his hand in both her own, and bled quietly to death. She was
lying on her right side in an easy and natural position, her cheek on
Emils shoulder. On her face there was a look of ineffable content. Her
lips were parted a little; her eyes were lightly closed, as if in a
day-dream or a light slumber. After she lay down there, she seemed not
to have moved an eyelash. The hand she held was covered with dark
stains, where she had kissed it.
But the stained, slippery grass, the darkened mulberries, told only
half the story. Above Marie and Emil, two white butterflies from
Franks alfalfa-field were fluttering in and out among the interlacing
shadows; diving and soaring, now close together, now far apart; and in
the long grass by the fence the last wild roses of the year opened
their pink hearts to die. | 1,026 |
PG24 | 60 | When Ivar reached the path by the hedge, he saw Shabatas rifle lying
in the way. He turned and peered through the branches, falling upon his
knees as if his legs had been mowed from under him. Merciful God! he
groaned.
Alexandra, too, had risen early that morning, because of her anxiety
about Emil. She was in Emils room upstairs when, from the window, she
saw Ivar coming along the path that led from the Shabatas. He was
running like a spent man, tottering and lurching from side to side.
Ivar never drank, and Alexandra thought at once that one of his spells
had come upon him, and that he must be in a very bad way indeed. She
ran downstairs and hurried out to meet him, to hide his infirmity from
the eyes of her household. The old man fell in the road at her feet and
caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head. Mistress,
mistress, he sobbed, it has fallen! Sin and death for the young ones!
God have mercy upon us!
PART V.
Alexandra
I
Ivar was sitting at a cobblers bench in the barn, mending harness by
the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm. It was
only five oclock of a mid-October day, but a storm had come up in the
afternoon, bringing black clouds, a cold wind and torrents of rain. The
old man wore his buffalo-skin coat, and occasionally stopped to warm
his fingers at the lantern. Suddenly a woman burst into the shed, as if
she had been blown in, accompanied by a shower of rain-drops. It was
Signa, wrapped in a mans overcoat and wearing a pair of boots over her
shoes. In time of trouble Signa had come back to stay with her
mistress, for she was the only one of the maids from whom Alexandra
would accept much personal service. It was three months now since the
news of the terrible thing that had happened in Frank Shabatas orchard
had first run like a fire over the Divide. Signa and Nelse were staying
on with Alexandra until winter.
Ivar, Signa exclaimed as she wiped the rain from her face, do you
know where she is?
The old man put down his cobblers knife. Who, the mistress?
Yes. She went away about three oclock. I happened to look out of the
window and saw her going across the fields in her thin dress and
sun-hat. And now this storm has come on. I thought she was going to
Mrs. Hillers, and I telephoned as soon as the thunder stopped, but she
had not been there. Im afraid she is out somewhere and will get her
death of cold.
Ivar put on his cap and took up the lantern. _Ja_, _ja_, we will see.
I will hitch the boys mare to the cart and go.
Signa followed him across the wagon-shed to the horses stable. She was
shivering with cold and excitement. Where do you suppose she can be,
Ivar?
The old man lifted a set of single harness carefully from its peg. How
should I know?
But you think she is at the graveyard, dont you? Signa persisted.
So do I. Oh, I wish she would be more like herself! I cant believe
its Alexandra Bergson come to this, with no head about anything. I
have to tell her when to eat and when to go to bed.
Patience, patience, sister, muttered Ivar as he settled the bit in
the horses mouth. When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of
the spirit are open. She will have a message from those who are gone,
and that will bring her peace. Until then we must bear with her. You
and I are the only ones who have weight with her. She trusts us.
How awful its been these last three months. Signa held the lantern
so that he could see to buckle the straps. It dont seem right that we
must all be so miserable. Why do we all have to be punished? Seems to
me like good times would never come again.
Ivar expressed himself in a deep sigh, but said nothing. He stooped and
took a sandburr from his toe.
Ivar, Signa asked suddenly, will you tell me why you go barefoot?
All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask you. Is it for a
penance, or what?
No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my youth up I
have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to every kind
of temptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged. It was
necessary to make some allowances; and the feet, as I understand it,
are free members. There is no divine prohibition for them in the Ten
Commandments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the heart, all the
bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but the feet are free
members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even to trampling in
filth when my desires are low. They are quickly cleaned again. | 1,121 |
PG24 | 61 | Signa did not laugh. She looked thoughtful as she followed Ivar out to
the wagon-shed and held the shafts up for him, while he backed in the
mare and buckled the hold-backs. You have been a good friend to the
mistress, Ivar, she murmured.
And you, God be with you, replied Ivar as he clambered into the cart
and put the lantern under the oilcloth lap-cover. Now for a ducking,
my girl, he said to the mare, gathering up the reins.
As they emerged from the shed, a stream of water, running off the
thatch, struck the mare on the neck. She tossed her head indignantly,
then struck out bravely on the soft ground, slipping back again and
again as she climbed the hill to the main road. Between the rain and
the darkness Ivar could see very little, so he let Emils mare have the
rein, keeping her head in the right direction. When the ground was
level, he turned her out of the dirt road upon the sod, where she was
able to trot without slipping.
Before Ivar reached the graveyard, three miles from the house, the
storm had spent itself, and the downpour had died into a soft, dripping
rain. The sky and the land were a dark smoke color, and seemed to be
coming together, like two waves. When Ivar stopped at the gate and
swung out his lantern, a white figure rose from beside John Bergsons
white stone.
The old man sprang to the ground and shuffled toward the gate calling,
Mistress, mistress!
Alexandra hurried to meet him and put her hand on his shoulder.
_Tyst!_ Ivar. Theres nothing to be worried about. Im sorry if Ive
scared you all. I didnt notice the storm till it was on me, and I
couldnt walk against it. Im glad youve come. I am so tired I didnt
know how Id ever get home.
Ivar swung the lantern up so that it shone in her face. _Gud!_ You are
enough to frighten us, mistress. You look like a drowned woman. How
could you do such a thing!
Groaning and mumbling he led her out of the gate and helped her into
the cart, wrapping her in the dry blankets on which he had been
sitting.
Alexandra smiled at his solicitude. Not much use in that, Ivar. You
will only shut the wet in. I dont feel so cold now; but Im heavy and
numb. Im glad you came.
Ivar turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her feet sent
back a continual spatter of mud.
Alexandra spoke to the old man as they jogged along through the sullen
gray twilight of the storm. Ivar, I think it has done me good to get
cold clear through like this, once. I dont believe I shall suffer so
much any more. When you get so near the dead, they seem more real than
the living. Worldly thoughts leave one. Ever since Emil died, Ive
suffered so when it rained. Now that Ive been out in it with him, I
shant dread it. After you once get cold clear through, the feeling of
the rain on you is sweet. It seems to bring back feelings you had when
you were a baby. It carries you back into the dark, before you were
born; you cant see things, but they come to you, somehow, and you know
them and arent afraid of them. Maybe its like that with the dead. If
they feel anything at all, its the old things, before they were born,
that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does when they
are little.
Mistress, said Ivar reproachfully, those are bad thoughts. The dead
are in Paradise.
Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was in
Paradise.
When they got home, Signa had a fire burning in the sitting-room stove.
She undressed Alexandra and gave her a hot footbath, while Ivar made
ginger tea in the kitchen. When Alexandra was in bed, wrapped in hot
blankets, Ivar came in with his tea and saw that she drank it. Signa
asked permission to sleep on the slat lounge outside her door.
Alexandra endured their attentions patiently, but she was glad when
they put out the lamp and left her. As she lay alone in the dark, it
occurred to her for the first time that perhaps she was actually tired
of life. All the physical operations of life seemed difficult and
painful. She longed to be free from her own body, which ached and was
so heavy. And longing itself was heavy: she yearned to be free of that. | 1,032 |
PG24 | 62 | As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than for
many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and
carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with her a long while
this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms she felt free from
pain. When he laid her down on her bed again, she opened her eyes, and,
for the first time in her life, she saw him, saw him clearly, though
the room was dark, and his face was covered. He was standing in the
doorway of her room. His white cloak was thrown over his face, and his
head was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as the
foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark
and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of
the mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had
waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very
well. Then she went to sleep.
Alexandra wakened in the morning with nothing worse than a hard cold
and a stiff shoulder. She kept her bed for several days, and it was
during that time that she formed a resolution to go to Lincoln to see
Frank Shabata. Ever since she last saw him in the courtroom, Franks
haggard face and wild eyes had haunted her. The trial had lasted only
three days. Frank had given himself up to the police in Omaha and
pleaded guilty of killing without malice and without premeditation. The
gun was, of course, against him, and the judge had given him the full
sentence,ten years. He had now been in the State Penitentiary for a
month.
Frank was the only one, Alexandra told herself, for whom anything could
be done. He had been less in the wrong than any of them, and he was
paying the heaviest penalty. She often felt that she herself had been
more to blame than poor Frank. From the time the Shabatas had first
moved to the neighboring farm, she had omitted no opportunity of
throwing Marie and Emil together. Because she knew Frank was surly
about doing little things to help his wife, she was always sending Emil
over to spade or plant or carpenter for Marie. She was glad to have
Emil see as much as possible of an intelligent, city-bred girl like
their neighbor; she noticed that it improved his manners. She knew that
Emil was fond of Marie, but it had never occurred to her that Emils
feeling might be different from her own. She wondered at herself now,
but she had never thought of danger in that direction. If Marie had
been unmarried,oh, yes! Then she would have kept her eyes open. But
the mere fact that she was Shabatas wife, for Alexandra, settled
everything. That she was beautiful, impulsive, barely two years older
than Emil, these facts had had no weight with Alexandra. Emil was a
good boy, and only bad boys ran after married women.
Now, Alexandra could in a measure realize that Marie was, after all,
Marie; not merely a married woman. Sometimes, when Alexandra thought
of her, it was with an aching tenderness. The moment she had reached
them in the orchard that morning, everything was clear to her. There
was something about those two lying in the grass, something in the way
Marie had settled her cheek on Emils shoulder, that told her
everything. She wondered then how they could have helped loving each
other; how she could have helped knowing that they must. Emils cold,
frowning face, the girls contentAlexandra had felt awe of them, even
in the first shock of her grief.
The idleness of those days in bed, the relaxation of body which
attended them, enabled Alexandra to think more calmly than she had done
since Emils death. She and Frank, she told herself, were left out of
that group of friends who had been overwhelmed by disaster. She must
certainly see Frank Shabata. Even in the courtroom her heart had
grieved for him. He was in a strange country, he had no kinsmen or
friends, and in a moment he had ruined his life. Being what he was, she
felt, Frank could not have acted otherwise. She could understand his
behavior more easily than she could understand Maries. Yes, she must
go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata. | 981 |
PG24 | 63 | The day after Emils funeral, Alexandra had written to Carl Linstrum; a
single page of notepaper, a bare statement of what had happened. She
was not a woman who could write much about such a thing, and about her
own feelings she could never write very freely. She knew that Carl was
away from post-offices, prospecting somewhere in the interior. Before
he started he had written her where he expected to go, but her ideas
about Alaska were vague. As the weeks went by and she heard nothing
from him, it seemed to Alexandra that her heart grew hard against Carl.
She began to wonder whether she would not do better to finish her life
alone. What was left of life seemed unimportant.
II
Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Alexandra Bergson,
dressed in a black suit and traveling-hat, alighted at the Burlington
depot in Lincoln. She drove to the Lindell Hotel, where she had stayed
two years ago when she came up for Emils Commencement. In spite of her
usual air of sureness and self-possession, Alexandra felt ill at ease
in hotels, and she was glad, when she went to the clerks desk to
register, that there were not many people in the lobby. She had her
supper early, wearing her hat and black jacket down to the dining-room
and carrying her handbag. After supper she went out for a walk.
It was growing dark when she reached the university campus. She did not
go into the grounds, but walked slowly up and down the stone walk
outside the long iron fence, looking through at the young men who were
running from one building to another, at the lights shining from the
armory and the library. A squad of cadets were going through their
drill behind the armory, and the commands of their young officer rang
out at regular intervals, so sharp and quick that Alexandra could not
understand them. Two stalwart girls came down the library steps and out
through one of the iron gates. As they passed her, Alexandra was
pleased to hear them speaking Bohemian to each other. Every few moments
a boy would come running down the flagged walk and dash out into the
street as if he were rushing to announce some wonder to the world.
Alexandra felt a great tenderness for them all. She wished one of them
would stop and speak to her. She wished she could ask them whether they
had known Emil.
As she lingered by the south gate she actually did encounter one of the
boys. He had on his drill cap and was swinging his books at the end of
a long strap. It was dark by this time; he did not see her and ran
against her. He snatched off his cap and stood bareheaded and panting.
Im awfully sorry, he said in a bright, clear voice, with a rising
inflection, as if he expected her to say something.
Oh, it was my fault! said Alexandra eagerly. Are you an old student
here, may I ask?
No, maam. Im a Freshie, just off the farm. Cherry County. Were you
hunting somebody?
No, thank you. That is Alexandra wanted to detain him. That is, I
would like to find some of my brothers friends. He graduated two years
ago.
Then youd have to try the Seniors, wouldnt you? Lets see; I dont
know any of them yet, but therell be sure to be some of them around
the library. That red building, right there, he pointed.
Thank you, Ill try there, said Alexandra lingeringly.
Oh, thats all right! Good-night. The lad clapped his cap on his head
and ran straight down Eleventh Street. Alexandra looked after him
wistfully.
She walked back to her hotel unreasonably comforted. What a nice voice
that boy had, and how polite he was. I know Emil was always like that
to women. And again, after she had undressed and was standing in her
nightgown, brushing her long, heavy hair by the electric light, she
remembered him and said to herself, I dont think I ever heard a nicer
voice than that boy had. I hope he will get on well here. Cherry
County; thats where the hay is so fine, and the coyotes can scratch
down to water.
At nine oclock the next morning Alexandra presented herself at the
wardens office in the State Penitentiary. The warden was a German, a
ruddy, cheerful-looking man who had formerly been a harness-maker.
Alexandra had a letter to him from the German banker in Hanover. As he
glanced at the letter, Mr. Schwartz put away his pipe. | 1,009 |
PG24 | 64 | That big Bohemian, is it? Sure, hes gettin along fine, said Mr.
Schwartz cheerfully.
I am glad to hear that. I was afraid he might be quarrelsome and get
himself into more trouble. Mr. Schwartz, if you have time, I would like
to tell you a little about Frank Shabata, and why I am interested in
him.
The warden listened genially while she told him briefly something of
Franks history and character, but he did not seem to find anything
unusual in her account.
Sure, Ill keep an eye on him. Well take care of him all right, he
said, rising. You can talk to him here, while I go to see to things in
the kitchen. Ill have him sent in. He ought to be done washing out his
cell by this time. We have to keep em clean, you know.
The warden paused at the door, speaking back over his shoulder to a
pale young man in convicts clothes who was seated at a desk in the
corner, writing in a big ledger.
Bertie, when 1037 is brought in, you just step out and give this lady
a chance to talk.
The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.
When Mr. Schwartz disappeared, Alexandra thrust her black-edged
handkerchief nervously into her handbag. Coming out on the streetcar
she had not had the least dread of meeting Frank. But since she had
been here the sounds and smells in the corridor, the look of the men in
convicts clothes who passed the glass door of the wardens office,
affected her unpleasantly.
The wardens clock ticked, the young convicts pen scratched busily in
the big book, and his sharp shoulders were shaken every few seconds by
a loose cough which he tried to smother. It was easy to see that he was
a sick man. Alexandra looked at him timidly, but he did not once raise
his eyes. He wore a white shirt under his striped jacket, a high
collar, and a necktie, very carefully tied. His hands were thin and
white and well cared for, and he had a seal ring on his little finger.
When he heard steps approaching in the corridor, he rose, blotted his
book, put his pen in the rack, and left the room without raising his
eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came in, bringing Frank
Shabata.
You the lady that wanted to talk to 1037? Here he is. Be on your good
behavior, now. He can set down, lady, seeing that Alexandra remained
standing. Push that white button when youre through with him, and
Ill come.
The guard went out and Alexandra and Frank were left alone.
Alexandra tried not to see his hideous clothes. She tried to look
straight into his face, which she could scarcely believe was his. It
was already bleached to a chalky gray. His lips were colorless, his
fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexandra sullenly, blinked
as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched
continually. She felt at once that this interview was a terrible ordeal
to him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his skull, gave
him a criminal look which he had not had during the trial.
Alexandra held out her hand. Frank, she said, her eyes filling
suddenly, I hope youll let me be friendly with you. I understand how
you did it. I dont feel hard toward you. They were more to blame than
you.
Frank jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers pocket. He had
begun to cry. He turned away from Alexandra. I never did mean to do
noting to dat woman, he muttered. I never mean to do noting to dat
boy. I aint had noting agin dat boy. I always like dat boy fine.
An then I find him He stopped. The feeling went out of his face and
eyes. He dropped into a chair and sat looking stolidly at the floor,
his hands hanging loosely between his knees, the handkerchief lying
across his striped leg. He seemed to have stirred up in his mind a
disgust that had paralyzed his faculties.
I havent come up here to blame you, Frank. I think they were more to
blame than you. Alexandra, too, felt benumbed.
Frank looked up suddenly and stared out of the office window. I guess
dat place all go to hell what I work so hard on, he said with a slow,
bitter smile. I not care a damn. He stopped and rubbed the palm of
his hand over the light bristles on his head with annoyance. I no can
tink without my hair, he complained. I forget English. We not talk
here, except swear. | 1,040 |
PG24 | 65 | Alexandra was bewildered. Frank seemed to have undergone a change of
personality. There was scarcely anything by which she could recognize
her handsome Bohemian neighbor. He seemed, somehow, not altogether
human. She did not know what to say to him.
You do not feel hard to me, Frank? she asked at last.
Frank clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. I not feel hard
at no woman. I tell you I not that kind-a man. I never hit my wife. No,
never I hurt her when she devil me something awful! He struck his fist
down on the wardens desk so hard that he afterward stroked it
absently. A pale pink crept over his neck and face. Two, tree years I
know dat woman don care no more bout me, Alexandra Bergson. I know
she after some other man. I know her, oo-oo! An I aint never hurt
her. I never would-a done dat, if I aint had dat gun along. I don
know what in hell make me take dat gun. She always say I aint no man
to carry gun. If she been in dat house, where she ought-a beenBut das
a foolish talk.
Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had stopped before.
Alexandra felt that there was something strange in the way he chilled
off, as if something came up in him that extinguished his power of
feeling or thinking.
Yes, Frank, she said kindly. I know you never meant to hurt Marie.
Frank smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears. You
know, I most forgit dat womans name. She aint got no name for me no
more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman what make me do datHonest to
God, but I hate her! I no man to fight. I don want to kill no boy and
no woman. I not care how many men she take under dat tree. I no care
for noting but dat fine boy I kill, Alexandra Bergson. I guess I go
crazy sure nough.
Alexandra remembered the little yellow cane she had found in Franks
clothes-closet. She thought of how he had come to this country a gay
young fellow, so attractive that the prettiest Bohemian girl in Omaha
had run away with him. It seemed unreasonable that life should have
landed him in such a place as this. She blamed Marie bitterly. And why,
with her happy, affectionate nature, should she have brought
destruction and sorrow to all who had loved her, even to poor old Joe
Tovesky, the uncle who used to carry her about so proudly when she was
a little girl? That was the strangest thing of all. Was there, then,
something wrong in being warm-hearted and impulsive like that?
Alexandra hated to think so. But there was Emil, in the Norwegian
graveyard at home, and here was Frank Shabata. Alexandra rose and took
him by the hand.
Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get you
pardoned. Ill never give the Governor any peace. I know I can get you
out of this place.
Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from her
face. Alexandra, he said earnestly, if I git out-a here, I not
trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from; see my
mother.
Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it
nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button on her
black jacket. Alexandra, he said in a low tone, looking steadily at
the button, you ain tink I use dat girl awful bad before
No, Frank. We wont talk about that, Alexandra said, pressing his
hand. I cant help Emil now, so Im going to do what I can for you.
You know I dont go away from home often, and I came up here on purpose
to tell you this.
The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexandra nodded,
and he came in and touched the white button on his desk. The guard
appeared, and with a sinking heart Alexandra saw Frank led away down
the corridor. After a few words with Mr. Schwartz, she left the prison
and made her way to the street-car. She had refused with horror the
wardens cordial invitation to go through the institution. As the car
lurched over its uneven roadbed, back toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought
of how she and Frank had been wrecked by the same storm and of how,
although she could come out into the sunlight, she had not much more
left in her life than he. She remembered some lines from a poem she had
liked in her schooldays: | 1,027 |
PG24 | 66 | Henceforth the world will only be
A wider prison-house to me,
and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some such feeling
as had twice frozen Frank Shabatas features while they talked
together. She wished she were back on the Divide.
When Alexandra entered her hotel, the clerk held up one finger and
beckoned to her. As she approached his desk, he handed her a telegram.
Alexandra took the yellow envelope and looked at it in perplexity, then
stepped into the elevator without opening it. As she walked down the
corridor toward her room, she reflected that she was, in a manner,
immune from evil tidings. On reaching her room she locked the door, and
sitting down on a chair by the dresser, opened the telegram. It was
from Hanover, and it read:
Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here until you come. Please
hurry.
CARL LINSTRUM.
Alexandra put her head down on the dresser and burst into tears.
III
The next afternoon Carl and Alexandra were walking across the fields
from Mrs. Hillers. Alexandra had left Lincoln after midnight, and Carl
had met her at the Hanover station early in the morning. After they
reached home, Alexandra had gone over to Mrs. Hillers to leave a
little present she had bought for her in the city. They stayed at the
old ladys door but a moment, and then came out to spend the rest of
the afternoon in the sunny fields.
Alexandra had taken off her black traveling suit and put on a white
dress; partly because she saw that her black clothes made Carl
uncomfortable and partly because she felt oppressed by them herself.
They seemed a little like the prison where she had worn them yesterday,
and to be out of place in the open fields. Carl had changed very
little. His cheeks were browner and fuller. He looked less like a tired
scholar than when he went away a year ago, but no one, even now, would
have taken him for a man of business. His soft, lustrous black eyes,
his whimsical smile, would be less against him in the Klondike than on
the Divide. There are always dreamers on the frontier.
Carl and Alexandra had been talking since morning. Her letter had never
reached him. He had first learned of her misfortune from a San
Francisco paper, four weeks old, which he had picked up in a saloon,
and which contained a brief account of Frank Shabatas trial. When he
put down the paper, he had already made up his mind that he could reach
Alexandra as quickly as a letter could; and ever since he had been on
the way; day and night, by the fastest boats and trains he could catch.
His steamer had been held back two days by rough weather.
As they came out of Mrs. Hillers garden they took up their talk again
where they had left it.
But could you come away like that, Carl, without arranging things?
Could you just walk off and leave your business? Alexandra asked.
Carl laughed. Prudent Alexandra! You see, my dear, I happen to have an
honest partner. I trust him with everything. In fact, its been his
enterprise from the beginning, you know. Im in it only because he took
me in. Ill have to go back in the spring. Perhaps you will want to go
with me then. We havent turned up millions yet, but weve got a start
thats worth following. But this winter Id like to spend with you. You
wont feel that we ought to wait longer, on Emils account, will you,
Alexandra?
Alexandra shook her head. No, Carl; I dont feel that way about it.
And surely you neednt mind anything Lou and Oscar say now. They are
much angrier with me about Emil, now, than about you. They say it was
all my fault. That I ruined him by sending him to college.
No, I dont care a button for Lou or Oscar. The moment I knew you were
in trouble, the moment I thought you might need me, it all looked
different. Youve always been a triumphant kind of person. Carl
hesitated, looking sidewise at her strong, full figure. But you do
need me now, Alexandra?
She put her hand on his arm. I needed you terribly when it happened,
Carl. I cried for you at night. Then everything seemed to get hard
inside of me, and I thought perhaps I should never care for you again.
But when I got your telegram yesterday, thenthen it was just as it
used to be. You are all I have in the world, you know. | 1,003 |
PG24 | 67 | Carl pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the Shabatas empty
house now, but they avoided the orchard path and took one that led over
by the pasture pond.
Can you understand it, Carl? Alexandra murmured. I have had nobody
but Ivar and Signa to talk to. Do talk to me. Can you understand it?
Could you have believed that of Marie Tovesky? I would have been cut to
pieces, little by little, before I would have betrayed her trust in
me!
Carl looked at the shining spot of water before them. Maybe she was
cut to pieces, too, Alexandra. I am sure she tried hard; they both did.
That was why Emil went to Mexico, of course. And he was going away
again, you tell me, though he had only been home three weeks. You
remember that Sunday when I went with Emil up to the French Church
fair? I thought that day there was some kind of feeling, something
unusual, between them. I meant to talk to you about it. But on my way
back I met Lou and Oscar and got so angry that I forgot everything
else. You mustnt be hard on them, Alexandra. Sit down here by the pond
a minute. I want to tell you something.
They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Carl told her how he had
seen Emil and Marie out by the pond that morning, more than a year ago,
and how young and charming and full of grace they had seemed to him.
It happens like that in the world sometimes, Alexandra, he added
earnestly. Ive seen it before. There are women who spread ruin around
them through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too full
of life and love. They cant help it. People come to them as people go
to a warm fire in winter. I used to feel that in her when she was a
little girl. Do you remember how all the Bohemians crowded round her in
the store that day, when she gave Emil her candy? You remember those
yellow sparks in her eyes?
Alexandra sighed. Yes. People couldnt help loving her. Poor Frank
does, even now, I think; though hes got himself in such a tangle that
for a long time his love has been bitterer than his hate. But if you
saw there was anything wrong, you ought to have told me, Carl.
Carl took her hand and smiled patiently. My dear, it was something one
felt in the air, as you feel the spring coming, or a storm in summer. I
didnt _see_ anything. Simply, when I was with those two young things,
I felt my blood go quicker, I felthow shall I say it?an acceleration
of life. After I got away, it was all too delicate, too intangible, to
write about.
Alexandra looked at him mournfully. I try to be more liberal about
such things than I used to be. I try to realize that we are not all
made alike. Only, why couldnt it have been Raoul Marcel, or Jan
Smirka? Why did it have to be my boy?
Because he was the best there was, I suppose. They were both the best
you had here.
The sun was dropping low in the west when the two friends rose and took
the path again. The straw-stacks were throwing long shadows, the owls
were flying home to the prairie-dog town. When they came to the corner
where the pastures joined, Alexandras twelve young colts were
galloping in a drove over the brow of the hill.
Carl, said Alexandra, I should like to go up there with you in the
spring. I havent been on the water since we crossed the ocean, when I
was a little girl. After we first came out here I used to dream
sometimes about the shipyard where father worked, and a little sort of
inlet, full of masts. Alexandra paused. After a moments thought she
said, But you would never ask me to go away for good, would you?
Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about this
country as well as you do yourself. Carl took her hand in both his own
and pressed it tenderly.
Yes, I still feel that way, though Emil is gone. When I was on the
train this morning, and we got near Hanover, I felt something like I
did when I drove back with Emil from the river that time, in the dry
year. I was glad to come back to it. Ive lived here a long time. There
is great peace here, Carl, and freedom.... I thought when I came out of
that prison, where poor Frank is, that I should never feel free again.
But I do, here. Alexandra took a deep breath and looked off into the
red west. | 1,040 |
PG27 | 0 | When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were
within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to
mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon
his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising
sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man
of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good
character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to a
postponing treatment of things, whose best clothes and
seven-and-sixpenny umbrella were always hampering him: upon the whole,
one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of
Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Sacrament people of the
parish and the drunken division of its inhabitantsthat is, he went to
church, but yawned privately by the time the congegation reached the
Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he
meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it
stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were
in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were
pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man
whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oaks
appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his ownthe mental
picture formed by his neighbours always presenting him as dressed in
that way when their imaginations answered to the thought Gabriel Oak.
He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming
upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr.
Johnsons; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather
leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy
apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day
long and know nothing about ittheir maker being a conscientious man
who always endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by
unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small
silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention,
and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older
than Oaks grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or
not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round
on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision,
nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The
stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes,
when it always went on again immediately, and he escaped any evil
consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with
and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close
to the glass of his neighbours windows when passing their houses, till
he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within.
It may be mentioned that Oaks fob being difficult of access, by reason
of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which
also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a
necessity pulled out by throwing the body extremely to one side,
compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account
of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a
bucket from a well.
But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his
fields on a certain December morningsunny and exceedingly mildmight
have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one
might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on
to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of
the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his
presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But
there is a way some men have, rural and urban alikefor which the mind
is more responsible than flesh and sinewa way of curtailing their
dimensions by their manner of showing them; and from a quiet modesty
that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress
upon him that he had no great claim on the worlds room, Oak walked
unassumingly, and with a faintly perceptible bend, quite distinct from
a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an
individual if he depends for his valuation as a total more upon his
appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not. He
had just reached the time of life at which young is ceasing to be the
prefix of man in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of
masculine life, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly
separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth
indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had
not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the
character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In
short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor. | 1,138 |
PG27 | 1 | The field he was in sloped steeply to a ridge called Norcombe Hill.
Through a spur of this hill ran the highway from Norcombe to
Casterbridge, sunk in a deep cutting. Casually glancing over the hedge,
Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon,
painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner
walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden
with household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole
sat a woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for
more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill
just beneath his eyes.
The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss, said the waggoner.
Then I heard it fall, said the girl, in a soft, though not
particularly low voice. I heard a noise I could not account for when
we were coming up the hill.
Ill run back.
Do, she answered.
The sensible horses stood perfectly still, and the waggoners steps
sank fainter and fainter in the distance.
The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables
and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle, and
ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses,
together with a caged canaryall probably from the windows of the house
just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, from the
partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and
affectionately surveyed the small birds around.
The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only
sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up and down
the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentively downwards. It
was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an oblong package tied
in paper, and lying between them. She turned her head to learn if the
waggoner were coming. He was not yet in sight; and her eyes crept back
to the package, her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. At
length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper
covering; a small swing looking-glass was disclosed, in which she
proceeded to survey herself attentively. Then she parted her lips and
smiled.
It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the
crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright face
and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed around her
were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the
whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl with a peculiar
charm of rarity. What possessed her to indulge in such a performance in
the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were
alone its spectatorswhether the smile began as a factitious one, to
test her capacity in that art, nobody knows; it ended certainly in a
real smile. She blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush,
blushed the more.
The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an
actfrom the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out of
doorslent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess.
The picture was a delicate one. Womans prescriptive infirmity had
stalked into the sunlight, which had invested it with the freshness of
an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak as
he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been. There
was no necessity whatever for her looking in the glass. She did not
adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do
one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in
taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of
Nature in the feminine direction, her expressions seeming to glide into
far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a partvistas of
probable triumphsthe smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts
were imagined as lost and won. Still, this was but conjecture, and the
whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to
assert that intention had any part in them at all.
The waggoners steps were heard returning. She put the glass in the
paper, and the whole again into its place.
When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of
espial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the
turnpike-gate at the bottom of the hill, where the object of his
contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. About twenty steps
still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. It
was a difference concerning twopence between the persons with the
waggon and the man at the toll-bar. | 1,091 |
PG27 | 3 | CHAPTER II.
NIGHTTHE FLOCKAN INTERIORANOTHER INTERIOR
It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomass, the shortest day in
the year. A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill
whereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the
sunshine of a few days earlier.
Norcombe Hillforming part of Norcombe Eweleasewas one of the spots
which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape
approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth.
It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soilan ordinary specimen
of those smoothly outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain
undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights
and dizzy granite precipices topple down.
The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying
plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest,
fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. To-night these
trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote
the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or
gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in
the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air
occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the
grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst this dead multitude
had remained on the twigs which bore them till this very mid-winter
time, and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps.
Between this half-wooded, half-naked hill, and the vague, still horizon
its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of fathomless
shadethe sounds only from which suggested that what it concealed bore
some humble resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or
less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing
powers and almost differing naturesone rubbing the blades heavily,
another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft
broom. The instinctive act of human-kind was to stand and listen, and
learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or
chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir;
how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering
it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into
the south, to be heard no more.
The sky was clearremarkably clearand the twinkling of all the stars
seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. The North
star was directly in the winds eye, and since evening the Bear had
swung round it outwardly to the east, till it was now at a right angle
with the meridian. A difference of colour in the starsoftener read of
than seen in Englandwas really perceptible here. The kingly brilliancy
of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called
Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as
this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The
sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past
earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or
by a fancy that the better outlook upon space afforded by a hill
emphasizes terrestrial revolution, or by the wind, or by the solitude;
but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and
abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the
epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a
small hour of the night, and, first enlarging the consciousness with a
sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are
horizontal and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long
and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a
nocturnal reconnoitre among these astral clusters, aloft from the
customary haunts of thought and vision, some men may feel raised to a
capability for eternity at once.
Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place
up against the sky. They had a clearness which was to be found nowhere
in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature.
They were the notes of Farmer Oaks flute.
The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air, but it seemed
muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to
spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small dark object
under the plantation hedgea shepherds hutnow presenting an outline
to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either
meaning or use. | 1,086 |
PG27 | 4 | The image as a whole was that of a small Noahs Ark on a small Ararat,
allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark which
are followed by toymakersand by these means are established in mens
imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressionsto pass
as an approximate pattern. The hut stood on small wheels, which raised
its floor about a foot from the ground. Such shepherds huts are
dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on, to shelter
the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance.
It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel Farmer
Oak. During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled by
sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the
small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock it
with two hundred sheep. Previously he had been a bailiff for a short
time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his childhood
assisted his father in tending the flocks of large proprietors, till
old Gabriel sank to rest.
This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master
and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a
critical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognized his position
clearly. The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of his
ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he wisely
refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this season to a
hireling or a novice.
The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the
flute-playing ceased. A rectangular space of light appeared in the side
of the hut, and in the opening the outline of Farmer Oaks figure. He
carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door behind him, came
forward and busied himself about this nook of the field for nearly
twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and disappearing here and
there, and brightening him or darkening him as he stood before or
behind it.
Oaks motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their
deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the
basis of all beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings
and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. Yet, although
if occasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a
dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his
special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing
little or nothing to momentum, as a rule.
A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight
only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a
wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose
this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the
ground at various scattered points, amid and under which the whitish
forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled. The ring of the sheep-bell,
which had been silent during his absence, recommenced, in tones that
had more mellowness than clearness, owing to an increasing growth of
surrounding wool, and continued till Oak withdrew again from the flock.
He returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a new-born lamb,
consisting of four legs large enough for a full-grown sheep, united by
an unimportant membrane about half the substance of the legs
collectively, which constituted the animals entire body just at
present.
The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small
stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern
by blowing into it and then pinching out the snuff, the cot being
lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard couch,
formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered half the
floor of this little habitation, and here the young man stretched
himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his eyes. In
about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would have
decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.
The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and
alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle,
reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung
associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools. In the corner
stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were ranged
bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to ovine
surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger,
and castor-oil being the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner
stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was
supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute,
whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to
beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes,
like the lights of a cabin, with wood slides. | 1,123 |
PG27 | 5 | The lamb, revived by the warmth, began to bleat, and the sound entered
Gabriels ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected sounds
will. Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness
with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse operation, he
looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had shifted again, put on
his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried it into the darkness.
After placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and
carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the
altitudes of the stars.
The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were
half way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which
gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it swung
itself forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with
their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy
Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away
through the plantation, Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the
leafless trees, and Cassiopeias chair stood daintily poised on the
uppermost boughs.
One oclock, said Gabriel.
Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some
beauty in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as
a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a
work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed
with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete
abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human
shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not,
and there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no
sentient being save himself; he could fancy them all gone round to the
sunny side.
Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived that
what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the outskirts
of the plantation was in reality no such thing. It was an artificial
light, almost close at hand.
To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable
and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far
to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when
intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability,
inductionevery kind of evidence in the logicians listhave united to
persuade consciousness that it is quite alone.
Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower
boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under the slope reminded him that
a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the slope
of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level with
the ground. In front it was formed of boards nailed to posts and
covered with tar as a preservative. Through crevices in the roof and
side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made up
the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind, where,
leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he
could see into the interior clearly.
The place contained two women and two cows. By the side of the latter a
steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket. One of the women was past middle
age. Her companion was apparently young and graceful; he could form no
decided opinion upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his
eye, so that he saw her in a birds-eye arial view, as Miltons Satan
first saw Paradise. She wore no bonnet or hat, but had enveloped
herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung over her head as a
covering.
There, now well go home, said the elder of the two, resting her
knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole. I
do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I have never been more
frightened in my life, but I dont mind breaking my rest if she
recovers.
The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall
together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without parting
her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught the
infection and slightly yawned in sympathy. I wish we were rich enough
to pay a man to do these things, she said.
As we are not, we must do them ourselves, said the other; for you
must help me if you stay.
Well, my hat is gone, however, continued the younger. It went over
the hedge, I think. The idea of such a slight wind catching it. | 1,018 |
PG27 | 6 | The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a
tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to
tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long
back being mathematically level. The other was spotted, grey and white.
Beside her, Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old, looking
idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been
accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning to the
lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited instinct
having as yet had little time for correction by experience. Between the
sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill lately.
I think we had better send for some oatmeal, said the elder woman;
theres no more bran.
Yes, aunt; and Ill ride over for it as soon as it is light.
But theres no side-saddle.
I can ride on the other: trust me.
Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her
features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of
the cloak, and by her forehead coming in the way of what the cloak did
not cover, he felt himself drawing upon his fancy for their details. In
making even horizontal and clear inspections, we colour and mould
according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. Had
Gabriel been able from the first to get a distinct view of her
countenance, his estimate of it as very handsome or slightly so would
have been as his soul required a divinity at the moment or was ready
supplied with one. Having for some time known the want of a
satisfactory form to fill an increasing void within him, his position
moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he painted her a
beauty.
By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy
mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn
and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and forth
tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. Oak knew her instantly
as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and looking-glass:
prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.
They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern, and
went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more than a
nebula. Gabriel Oak returned to his flock. | 540 |
PG27 | 7 | CHAPTER III.
A GIRL ON HORSEBACKCONVERSATION
The sluggish day began to break. Even its position terrestrially is one
of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save
that the incident of the night had occurred there, Oak went again into
the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a
horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an
auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past
the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of the night before. Gabriel
instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having lost in the
wind; possibly she had come to look for it. He hastily scanned the
ditch, and after walking about ten yards along it, found the hat among
the leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his hut. Here
he ensconced himself, and looked through the loophole in the direction
of the riders approach.
She came up and looked aroundthen on the other side of the hedge.
Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article, when an
unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for the
present. The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the plantation.
It was not a bridle-pathmerely a pedestrians track, and the boughs
spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet above the
ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them. The girl,
who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a moment, as if to assure
herself that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped
backwards flat upon the ponys back, her head over its tail, her feet
against its shoulder, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her
glide into this position was that of a kingfisherits noiselessness
that of a hawk. Gabriels eyes had scarcely been able to follow her.
The tall lank pony seemed used to such phenomena, and ambled along
unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs.
The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horses head and
its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having ceased
with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt another, even
more obviously convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and
it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather beneath
her was unattainable sideways. Springing to her accustomed
perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying herself that nobody
was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle,
though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction
of Tewnell Mill.
Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat in
his hut, went again among his ewes. 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 a soft spirt, alternating with a loud spirt, came in regular
succession from within the shed. They were the 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 summer, when the whole would have
been revealed. 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 recognized power. It was
with some surprise that she saw Gabriels face rising like the moon
behind the hedge.
The adjustment of the farmers 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 Englishwomen 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 of eight heads usually goes off into random facial
curves. Without throwing a Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be
said that here criticism checked itself in examining details to return
to where it began, and 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 it may be
stated that 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. | 1,245 |
PG27 | 8 | That the girls thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as she
caught Oaks 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 hastily brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been
irritating its pink surface with a straw, 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 oclock this morning?
Wellit was. She was surprised. How did you know? she said.
I was here.
You are Farmer Oak, are you not?
That or thereabouts. Im 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.
Heregoing 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 colloquists eyes.
A perception caused him to withdraw his own 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. 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
Maidens Blush, through all varieties of the Provence down to the
Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oaks 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 whiteness 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 Oaks person. His want of tact
had deeply offended hernot by seeing what he could not help, but by
letting her know that he had seen it. For, as without law there is no
sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel that
Gabriels 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.
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 yeaning ewes, he entered the hut and heaped more fuel upon
the stove. The wind came in at the bottom of the door, to prevent which
Oak wheeled the cot round a little more to the south. Then the wind
spouted in at a ventilating holeof which there was one on each side of
the hut. | 1,051 |
PG27 | 9 | Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door
closed one of these must be kept openthat 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 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
fearfullysomebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his
neckerchief.
[Illustration: 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
thisastonishingly morehis 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 a sensation of mirth, but of too insignificant
a kind to start the capacity of enjoyment.
Nothing now, she answered, since you are not dead. It was a wonder
you were not suffocated in this hut of yours.
Ah, the hut! murmured Gabriel. I gave ten pounds for that hut. But
Ill sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old times,
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, speaking in a
tone which showed her to be that novelty among womenone 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 herhis head upon
her dressbefore the event passed on into the heap of bygone things. 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 ye? 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 Gabriels 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, Daisys 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 dress. 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
harmonize with the dignity of such a deedand she shunned it.
I believe you saved my life, Miss I dont know your name. I know
your aunts, but not yours.
I would just as soon not tell itrather not. There is no reason either
why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with me. | 1,002 |
PG27 | 11 | CHAPTER IV.
GABRIELS RESOLVETHE VISITTHE MISTAKE
The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as
a rule, that of the unconscious kind, but a superiority which
recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting at the same time
possibilities of impropriation to the subordinated man.
This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon
the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.
Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit,
spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure
passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially, is at the
bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning his feelings were
as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his chances. His
dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which Oak waited for
the girls presence, that the farmer was quite struck with the
resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. However,
he continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming, and
thus his sentiments towards her were deepened without any corresponding
effect being produced upon herself. Oak had nothing finished and ready
to say as yet, and not being able to frame love-phrases which end where
they begin; passionate tales
Full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing
he said no word at all.
By making inquiries he found that the girls name was Bathsheba
Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. He dreaded
the eight day.
At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give milk for that
year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more. Gabriel had
reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated a short
time before. He liked saying Bathsheba as a private enjoyment instead
of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn
by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he
filled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love is a possible
strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into
a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in
direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began
now to see light in this direction, and said to himself, Ill make her
my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!
All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he
might consistently visit the cottage of Bathshebas aunt.
He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living
lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitutiona fine
January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible to make
cheerfully disposed people wish for more, and an occasional sunshiny
gleam of silvery whiteness, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday
basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the
auntGeorge, the dog, walking behind, with a countenance of great
concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking.
Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with
strange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down the
chimney to the spot of its originseen the hearth and Bathsheba beside
itbeside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had worn on the
hill were by association equally with her person included in the
compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of his love a
necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba Everdene.
He had made a toilet of a nicely adjusted kindof a nature between the
carefully neat and the carelessly ornateof a degree between
fine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection. He thoroughly cleaned his
silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots,
looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the
plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his
way back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box,
put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an elegant
flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the defects
of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his usually dry,
sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened it to a
splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman cement, making
it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a
boulder after the ebb. | 1,032 |
PG27 | 12 | Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a
knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and
_tracasseries_ to be no less the staple subject of these little
coteries on roofs than of those under them. It seemed that the omen was
an unpropitious one, for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oaks
overtures, just as he arrived by the garden gate he saw a cat inside,
going into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight
of his dog George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age
at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of
breathin fact he never barked even at the sheep except to order, when
it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a liturgical
form of Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone
through once now and then just to frighten the flock for their own
good.
A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had run:
Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it!did he poor
dear!
I beg yer pardon, said Oak to the voice, but George was walking on
behind me with a temper as mild as milk.
Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving
as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and
he heard the person retreat among the bushes.
Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his
forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is
as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any
initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of
failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal
and the reality had had no common grounds of opening.
Bathshebas aunt was indoors. Will you tell Miss Everdene that
somebody would be glad to speak to her? said Mr. Oak. (Calling
yourself merely Somebody, and not giving a name, is not by any means to
be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it
springs from a refined sense of modesty, of which townspeople, with
their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.)
Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers.
Will you come in, Mr. Oak?
Oh, thank ye, said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. Ive
brought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I thought she might like one to rear:
girls do.
She might, said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; though shes only a visitor
here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in.
Yes, I will wait, said Gabriel, sitting down. The lamb isnt really
the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In short, I was going to ask her
if shed like to be married.
And were you indeed?
Yes. Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her. Dye
know if shes got any other young man hanging about her at all?
Let me think, said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously.
Yesbless you, ever so many young men. You see, Farmer Oak, shes so
good-looking, and an excellent scholar besidesshe was going to be a
governess once, you know, only she was too wild. Not that her young men
ever come herebut, Lord, in the nature of women, she must have a
dozen!
Thats unfortunate, said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the
stone floor with sorrow. Im only an every-day sort of man, and my
only chance was in being the first comer. . . . Well, theres no use in
my waiting, for that was all I came about: so Ill take myself off
home-along, Mrs. Hurst.
When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he heard
a hoi-hoi! uttered behind him, in a piping note of more treble
quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies itself when
shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girl racing after
him, waving a white handkerchief.
Oak stood stilland the runner drew nearer. It was Bathsheba Everdene.
Gabriels colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as it appeared,
from emotion, but from running.
Farmer OakI she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in
front of him with a slanted face, and putting her hand to her side.
I have just called to see you, said Gabriel, pending her further
speech. | 1,033 |
PG27 | 13 | YesI know that! she said, panting like a robin, her face red and
moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off
the dew. I didnt know you had come (pant) to ask to have me, or I
should have come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say
(pant) that my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me
(pant)
Gabriel expanded. Im sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear, he
said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. Wait a bit till youve
found your breath.
It was quite a mistakeaunts telling you I had a young man already.
Bathsheba went on. I havent a sweetheart at all (pant), and I never
had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was _such_ a
pity to send you away thinking that I had several.
Really and trewly I am glad to hear that! said Farmer Oak, smiling
one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He held out
his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by pressing
it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her
loud-beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so
that it slipped through his fingers like an eel.
I have a nice snug little farm, said Gabriel, with half a degree less
assurance than when he had seized her hand.
Yes; you have.
A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon be
paid off, and, though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have got on
a little since I was a boy. Gabriel uttered a little in a tone to
show her that it was the complacent form of a great deal. He
continued: When we are married, I am quite sure I can work twice as
hard as I do now.
He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba had
overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low, stunted holly-bush,
now laden with red berries. Seeing his advance take the form of an
attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her
person she edged off round the bush.
Why, Farmer Oak, she said, over the top, looking at him with rounded
eyes, I never said I was going to marry you.
Wellthat _is_ a tale! said Oak, with dismay. To run after anybody
like this, and then say you dont want me!
What I meant to tell you was only this, she said eagerly, and yet
half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for
herself; that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my
having a dozen, as my aunt said; I _hate_ to be thought mens property
in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if Id
wanted you I shouldnt have run after you like this; twould have been
the _forwardest_ thing! But there was no harm in hurrying to correct a
piece of false news that had been told you.
Oh, nono harm at all. But there is such a thing as being too
generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with a
more appreciative sense of all the circumstancesWell, I am not quite
certain it was no harm.
Indeed, I hadnt time to think before starting whether I wanted to
marry or not, for youd have been gone over the hill.
Come, said Gabriel, freshening again; think a minute or two. Ill
wait awhile, Miss Everdene. Will you marry me? Do, Bathsheba. I love
you far more than common!
Ill try to think, she observed, rather more timorously; if I can
think out of doors; but my mind spreads away so.
But you can give a guess.
Then give me time. Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the distance,
away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.
I can make you happy, said he to the back of her head, across the
bush. You shall have a piano in a year or twofarmers wives are
getting to have pianos nowand Ill practise up the flute right well to
play with you in the evenings.
Yes; I should like that.
And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for marketand nice
flowers, and birdscocks and hens I mean, because they are useful,
continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and verse.
I should like it very much. | 1,008 |
PG27 | 14 | And a frame for cucumberslike a gentleman and lady.
Yes.
And when the wedding was over, wed have it put in the newspaper list
of marriages.
Dearly I should like that.
And the babies in the birthsevery man jack of em! And at home by the
fire, whenever you look up, there I shall beand whenever I look up,
there will be you.
Wait, wait, and dont be improper!
Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He contemplated the
red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that
holly seemed in his after-life to be a cypher signifying a proposal of
marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him.
No; tis no use, she said. I dont want to marry you.
Try.
I have tried hard all the time Ive been thinking; for a marriage
would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me, and think
I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that, But a
husband
Well!
Why, hed always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there
hed be.
Of course he wouldI, that is.
Well, what I mean is that I shouldnt mind being a bride at a wedding,
if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman cant
show off in that way by herself, I shant marryat least yet.
Thats a terrible wooden story.
At this elegant criticism of her statement, Bathsheba made an addition
to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him.
Upon my heart and soul, I dont know what a maid can say stupider than
that, said Oak. But dearest, he continued in a palliative voice,
dont be like it! Oak sighed a deep honest sighnone the less so in
that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather
noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. Why wont you have me?
he said appealingly, creeping round the holly to reach her side.
I cannot, she said, retreating.
But why? he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever
reaching her, and facing over the bush.
Because I dont love you.
Yes, but
She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was
hardly ill-mannered at all. I dont love you, she said.
But I love youand, as for myself, I am content to be liked.
Oh, Mr. Oakthats very fine! Youd get to despise me.
Never, said Mr. Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by the
force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms. I
shall do one thing in this lifeone thing certainthat is, love you,
and long for you, and _keep wanting you_ till I die. His voice had a
genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled.
It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much, she
said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around for some
means of escape from her moral dilemma. How I wish I hadnt run after
you! However, she seemed to have a short cut for getting back to
cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness. It wouldnt do,
Mr. Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you
would never be able to, I know.
Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was useless
to attempt argument.
Mr. Oak, she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense, you
are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the worldI am staying
with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated than youand
I dont love you a bit: thats my side of the case. Now yours: you are
a farmer just begining, and you ought in common prudence, if you marry
at all (which you should certainly not think of doing at present) to
marry a woman with money, who would stock a larger farm for you than
you have now.
Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration.
Thats the very thing I had been thinking myself! he navely said.
Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to
succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of
honesty. Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted.
Well, then, why did you come and disturb me? she said, almost
angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek.
I cant do what I think would bewould be | 1,018 |
PG27 | 16 | CHAPTER V.
DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBAA PASTORAL TRAGEDY
The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene had
left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have
surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the
renunciation the less absolute its character.
It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out
of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a
short cut that way, but it has been known to fail. Separation, which
was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathshebas
disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humours, is apt
to idealize the removed object with othersnotably those whose
affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. Oak
belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and felt the secret
fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now
that she was gonethat was all.
His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure
of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathshebas movements was done
indirectly. It appeared that she had gone to a place called
Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacitywhether
as a visitor, or permanently, he could not discover.
Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped
nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in
random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty grey, but
the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out
of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish-brown, as if the
blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same
kind of colour in Turners pictures. In substance, it had originally
been hair, but long contact with sheep seemed to be turning it by
degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple.
This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and
dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact degrees
of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all descriptions
better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. Long experience
had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such
exclamations as Come in! and D ye, come in! that he knew to a
hairs breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes tails that each
call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep-crook was to be escaped.
Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still.
The young dog, Georges son, might possibly have been the image of his
mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and George. He
was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at the
flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the
rudiments as yetstill finding an insuperable difficulty in
distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well.
So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he had no name
in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant
interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it
so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the whole county
with the greatest pleasure if not called off, or reminded when to stop
by the example of old George.
Thus much for the dogs. On the further side of Norcombe Hill was a
chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and spread
over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the form of a V,
but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, which was
immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing.
One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there
would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called
as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the outhouse
till next morning. Only one respondedold George; the other could not
be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. Gabriel then remembered
that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb (a kind of
meat he usually kept from them, except when other food ran short), and
concluding that the young one had not finished his meal, he went
indoors to the luxury of a bed, which latterly he had only enjoyed on
Sundays.
It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking
by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To the shepherd, the
note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock to other people,
is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or
altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle tinkle which
signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in
the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening morn that note was heard
by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This
exceptional ringing may be caused in two waysby the rapid feeding of
the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture,
which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off
in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear
of Oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the
flock with great velocity. | 1,195 |
PG27 | 17 | He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy dawn,
and ascended the hill. The forward ewes were kept apart from those
among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred
of the latter class in Gabriels flock. These two hundred seemed to
have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were the fifty with their
lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest,
forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere. Gabriel called at the top
of his voice the shepherds call.
Ovey, ovey, ovey!
Not a single bleat. He went to the hedgea gap had been broken through
it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rather surprised
to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly
to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of which a great deal
grew in the plantation, he followed through the hedge. They were not in
the plantation. He called again: the valleys and furthest hills
resounded as when the sailors invoked the lost Hylas on the Mysian
shore; but no sheep. He passed through the trees and along the ridge of
the hill. On the extreme summit, where the ends of the two converging
hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow
of the chalk-pit, he saw the younger dog standing against the skydark
and motionless as Napoleon at St. Helena.
A horrible conviction darted through Oak. With a sensation of bodily
faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through, and
there he saw the footprints of his ewes. The dog came up, licked his
hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for
signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The ewes lay
dead and dying at its foota heap of two hundred mangled carcasses,
representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more.
Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in
pieces any politic intentions of his bordering on strategy, and carried
him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his
flock ended in muttonthat a day came and found every shepherd an
arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep. His first feeling now was one
of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn
lambs.
It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. The sheep were
not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a
blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid lowpossibly
for ever. Gabriels energies, patience, and industry had been so
severely taxed during the years of his life between eighteen and
eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of progress, that no more
seemed to be left in him. He leant down upon a rail, and covered his
face with his hands.
Stupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered from
his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one
sentence he uttered was in thankfulness:
Thank God I am not married: what would _she_ have done in the poverty
now coming upon me! Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could
do, listlessly surveyed the scene. By the outer margin of the pit was
an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a
chrome-yellow moon, which had only a few days to lastthe morning star
dogging her on the right hand. The pool glittered like a dead mans
eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the
reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of
the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. All this Oak saw and
remembered.
As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still
under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep,
the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal off
the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and spirits,
collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid creatures
through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of
worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the
rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge.
Georges son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too
good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at
twelve oclock that same dayanother instance of the untoward fate
which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a
train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly
consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. | 1,049 |
PG27 | 19 | CHAPTER VI.
THE FAIRTHE JOURNEYTHE FIRE
Two months passed away. We are brought on to a day in February, on
which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the town of
Casterbridge.
At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and
hearty labourers waiting upon Chanceall men of the stamp to whom
labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and
pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these,
carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord
twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw;
shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and thus the
situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.
In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior
appearance to the restin fact, his superiority was marked enough to
lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as
to a farmer, and to use Sir as a terminational word. His answer
always was,
I am looking for a place myselfa bailiffs. Do you know of anybody
who wants one?
Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative, and his
expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of
wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had
sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very
slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had
never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it
often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it
does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss
gain.
In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a sergeant
and his party had been beating up for recruits through the four
streets. As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself not hired,
Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone off to serve
his country. Weary of standing in the market-place, and not much
minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided to offer
himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff.
All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds. Sheep-tending was
Gabriels speciality. Turning down an obscure street and entering an
obscurer lane, he went up to a smiths shop.
How long would it take you to make a shepherds crook?
Twenty minutes.
How much?
Two shillings.
He sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into
the bargain.
He then went to a ready-made clothes shop, the owner of which had a
large rural connection. As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriels
money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for a
shepherds regulation smock-frock.
This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the
centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a
shepherd, crook in hand.
Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that
bailiffs were most in demand. However, two or three farmers noticed him
and drew near. Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined form:
Where do you come from?
Norcombe.
Thats a long way.
Twenty miles.
Whos farm were you upon last?
My own.
This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The inquiring
farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously. Gabriel, like his
dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never made advance beyond
this point.
It is better to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a
procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a
chance of using it. Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his colours as
a shepherd, but had instead laid himself out for anything in the whole
cycle of labour that was required in the fair. It grew dusk. Some merry
men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange. Gabriels hand,
which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock pocket, touched
his flute, which he carried there. Here was an opportunity for putting
his dearly bought wisdom into practice.
He drew out his flute and began to play Jockey to the Fair in the
style of a man who had never known moments sorrow. Oak could pipe with
Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes cheered his
own heart as well as those of the loungers. He played on with spirit,
and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small fortune to a
destitute man. | 1,048 |
PG27 | 20 | By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at Shottsford
the next day.
Where is Shottsford?
Eight miles tother 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 a footpath which had been recommended as a short cut
to the village in question.
The path wended 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 high-road 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
through a 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 on the
landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. He ascended a hill
and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up under a great
overhanging 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.
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. Charless Wain was getting
towards a right angle with the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it
must be about nine oclockin 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. | 1,023 |
PG27 | 21 | 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, shes a fine handsome body as fars looks be concerned.
But thats only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as
proud as a Lucifer in their insides.
Ayso a seem, Billy Smallburyso a 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 speakers larynx. It came from
the man who held the reins.
Shes a very vain feymellso tis said here and there.
Ah, now. If so be tis like that, I cant look her in the face. Lord,
no: not Iheh-heh-heh! Such a shy man as I be!
Yesshes very vain. Tis said that every night at going to bed she
looks in the glass to put on her nightcap 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.
Dye tell ot! A happy mercy for us, and I feel quite unspeakable! And
how do she pay?
That I dont know, Master Poorgrass.
On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed into
Gabriels 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 stile, 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
lightappearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow
increased. Something was on fire.
Gabriel again mounted the stile, 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-twigsthe light reaching him through a leafless intervening
hedgeand 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 Gabriels 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. | 1,069 |
PG27 | 22 | 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, manfire, fire! A good master and a bad servant is fire, fire!I
mane a bad servant and a good master Oh, Mark Clarkcome! And you,
Billy Smallburyand you, Maryann Moneyand you, Joseph Poorgrass, and
Matthew there, for his mercy endureth for ever! 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 companywhose
shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames,
and not at all by their owners movements. The assemblagebelonging to
that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of
feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotionset 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 hues from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the
fire once got _under_ this stack, all would be lost.
Get a tarpaulinquick! 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 Smallburyone of the men who had been on the waggonby 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 Oaks 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 as tall as fir-trees.
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 female, on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from
the fire, that the horse might not become restive.
Hes a shepherd, said the woman on foot. Yeshe is. See how his
crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock-frock is burnt
in two holes, I declare! A fine young shepherd he is too, maam.
Whose shepherd is he? said the equestrian in a clear voice.
Dont know, maam.
Dont any of the others know?
Nobody at allIve 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.
Dye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan? said the second woman,
passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction. | 1,023 |
PG27 | 23 | Safe nowleastwise I think so. If this rick had gone the barn would
have followed. Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done the most
goodhe 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.
Dont any of you know his name?
Never heard the mans name in my life, or seed his form afore.
The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriels 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.
Maryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the
ladder. She delivered her message.
Where is your master the farmer? asked Gabriel, kindling with the
idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.
Tisnt a master; tis a mistress, shepherd.
A woman farmer?
Ay, a blieve, and a rich one too! said a bystander. Lately a came
here from a distance. Took on her uncles farm, who died suddenly. Used
to measure his money in half-pint cups. They say now that sheve
business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks no more of playing
pitch-and-toss-sovereign than you and I do pitch-halfpennynot a bit in
the world, shepherd.
Thats she, back there upon the pony, said Maryann; wi her face
a-covered up in a cloth with holes in it.
Oak, his features black, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke and
heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes, dripping with water, the
ash-stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter than it had
been, 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, maam?
She lifted the Shetland 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, maam?
[Illustration: DO YOU HAPPEN TO WANT A SHEPPERD MAAM?] | 581 |
PG27 | 24 | CHAPTER VII.
RECOGNITIONA 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 Gabriels 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
Hes the very man, maam, 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.
Hes 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 fulness of romance.
The bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation
within his breast at discovering that this Ashtoreth of strange report
was only a modification of 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
yed send it to Warrens Malthouse, replied the spokesman.
Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on to
the village in twos and threesOak and the bailiff being left by the
rick alone.
And now, said the bailiff, finally, all is settled, I think, about
yer coming, and I am going home-along. Good-night to ye, shepherd.
Can you get me a lodging? inquired Gabriel.
That I cant, 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 Warrens Malthouse, where they are
all gone to have their snap of victuals, I dare say some of em will
tell you of a place. Good-night to ye, shepherd.
The bailiff, who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbours as
himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still
astonished at the rencontre 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 old chestnuts grew. There was a wide margin of grass along
here, and Gabriels 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 on the other side. 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.
Good-night to you, said Gabriel, heartily.
Good-night, 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.
Ill thank you to tell me if Im in the way for Warrens Malthouse?
Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get
more of the music.
Quite right. Its 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 Bucks Head Inn? She seemed to be won by Gabriels
heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.
I dont know where the Bucks Head is, or anything about it. Do you
think of going there to-night?
Yes. The female 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. | 1,065 |
PG27 | 26 | CHAPTER VIII.
THE MALTHOUSETHE CHATNEWS
Warrens Malthouse was inclosed 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.
Oaks 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, with the effect of the footlights upon the
features of her Majestys servants when they approach too near the
front. 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.
Gabriels 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
criticized 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 blieve.
We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but
werent sure twere not a dead leaf blowed across, said another. Come
in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we dont know yer name.
Gabriel Oak, thats my name, neighbours.
The ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned up thishis turning
being as the turning of a rusty crane.
Thats never Gable Oaks grandson over at Norcombenever! he said, as
a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed to take
literally.
My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,
said the shepherd, placidly.
Thought I knowed the mans face as I seed him on the rick!thought I
did! And where be ye trading ot to now, shepherd?
Im 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.
Ahand 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 brothersthat they were surewerent
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 usdidnt ye, Billy, afore ye left
Norcombe?
No, twas Andrew, said Jacobs 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 remember Andrew, said Oak, as being a man in the place when I was
quite a child.
Aythe other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at my
grandsons 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 traypse up to
the Vestryyes, this very mans family. | 1,084 |
PG27 | 27 | Come, shepherd, and drink. Tis gape and swaller with usa 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, 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 thereonformed 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:
this idea is, however, a mere guess.
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 smock-frock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger.
A clane cup for the shepherd, said the maltster commandingly.
Nonot at all, said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of considerateness.
I never fuss about dirt in its natural 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 wouldnt think of
giving such trouble to neighbours in washing up when theres so much
work to be done in the world already, continued Oak, in a moister
tone, after recovering from the stoppage of breath ever occasioned by
proper pulls at large mugs.
A right sensible man, said Jacob.
True, true, as the old woman said, observed a brisk young manMark
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 heres a mouthful of bread and bacon that misess have sent,
shepherd. The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. Dont
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 baint a particular man we see, shepherd.
True, truenot at all, said the friendly Oak.
Dont let yer teeth quite meet, and you wont feel the sandiness at
all. Ah! tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!
My own mind exactly, neighbour.
Ah, hes his grandfers own grandson!his grandfer were just such a
nice unparticular man! said the maltster.
Drink, Henry Fraydrink, 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 Henerystrenuously 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 toin 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
god-father in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind. | 1,054 |
PG27 | 28 | Come, Mark Clarkcome. Thers plenty more in the barrel, said Jan.
Aythat I will, as the doctor said, 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 partieshis
productions of this class being more noticeably advanced than Coggans,
inflicting a faint sense of reduplication and similitude upon the elder
members of such companies.
Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye hant had a drop! said Mr. Coggan to a
very shrinking man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.
Such a shy man as he is! said Jacob Smallbury. Why, yeve hardly had
strength of eye enough to look in our young misesss face, so I hear,
Joseph?
All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.
NoIve hardly looked at her at all, faltered 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.
Tis a curious nature for a man, said Jan Coggan.
Yes, continued Joseph Poorgrasshis shyness, which was so painful as
a defect, just beginning to fill him with a mild complacency now that
it was regarded in the light of an interesting study. Twere blush,
blush, blush with me every minute of the time, when she was speaking to
me.
I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very
bashful man.
Tis terrible bad for a man, poor soul, said the maltster. And how
long have ye suffered from it, Joseph?
Oh, ever since I was a boy. Yesmother was concerned to her heart
about ityes. But twas all nought.
Did ye ever take anything to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?
Oh ay, tried all sorts. They took me to Greenhill Fair, and into a
grate large jerry-go-nimble show, where there were women-folk riding
roundstanding upon horses, with hardly anything on but their smocks,
but it didnt cure me a morsel. And then I was put errand-man at the
Womens Skittle Alley at the back of the Tailors Arms in
Casterbridge. Twas a horrible gross situation, and altogether a very
curious place for a good man. I had to stand and look wicked people in
the face from morning till night; but twas no useI was just as bad as
ever after all. Blushes hev been in the family for generations. There,
tis a happy providence that I be no worse, so to speak ityes, a happy
thing, and I feel my few poor gratitudes.
True, said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder
view of the subject. Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have
been worse; but even as you be, tis a very bad affliction for ye,
Joseph. For ye see, shepherd, though tis very well for a woman, dang
it all, tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller. He appealed to
the shepherd by a heart-feeling glance.
Tistis, said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation as to whether
the saving to a mans soul in the run of a twelvemonth by saying dang
instead of what it stood for, made it worth while to use the word.
Yes, very awkward for the man.
Ay, and hes very timid, too, observed Jan Coggan. Once he had been
working late at Windleton, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his
way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didnt ye, Master
Poorgrass?
No, no, no; not that story! expostulated the modest man, forcing a
laugh to bury his concern, and forcing out too much for the
purposelaughing over the greater part of his skin, round to his ears,
and up among his hair, insomuch that Shepherd Oak, who was rather
sensitive himself, was surfeited, and felt that he would never adopt
that plan for hiding trepidation any more.
And so a lost himself quite, continued Mr Coggan, with an
impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide,
must run its course and would wait for no man. And as he was coming
along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find
his way out of the trees, nohow, a cried out, Man-a-lost!
man-a-lost! A owl in a tree happened to be crying Whoo-whoo-whoo! as
owls do, you know, shepherd (Gabriel nodded), and Joseph, all in a
tremble, said, Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!
No, no, nowthats too much! said the timid man, becoming a man of
brazen courage all of a sudden. I didnt say _sir_. Ill take my oath
I didnt say Joseph Poorgrass o Weatherbury, _sir_. No, no; whats
right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well
that no man of a gentlemans rank would be hollering there at that time
o night. Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,thats every word I said,
and I shouldnt ha said that if t hadnt been for Keeper Days
metheglin. There, twas a merciful thing it ended where it did, as I
may say, continued Joseph, swallowing his breath in content. | 1,245 |
PG27 | 29 | The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company,
Jan went on meditatively:
And hes the fearfullest man, baint ye, Joseph? Ay, another time ye
were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, werent ye, Joseph?
I was, replied Poorgrass, as if there were some matters too serious
even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one.
Yes; that were the middle of the night, too. The gate would not open,
try how he would, and knowing there was the Devils hand in it, he
kneeled down.
Ay, said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire,
the cider, and a growing perception of the narrative capabilities of
the experience alluded to. My heart died within me, that time; but I
kneeled down and said the Lords Prayer, and then the Belief right
through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer. But no, the
gate wouldnt open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved Brethren,
and, thinks I, this makes four, and tis all I know out of book, and if
this dont do it nothing will, and Im a lost man. Well, when I got to
Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found the gate would
openyes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as ever.
A meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and
during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit, which
glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun, shaping their
eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly from the depth
of the subject discussedeach man severally drawing upon the tablet of
his imagination a clear and correct picture of Joseph Poorgrass under
the remarkable conditions he had related, and surveying the position in
all its bearings with critical exactness.
Gabriel broke the silence. What sort of a place is this to live at,
and what sort of a misess is she to work under? Gabriels bosom
thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly the
innermost subject of his heart.
We d know little of hernothing. She only showed herself a few days
ago. Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his
world-wide skill; but he couldnt save the man. As I take it, shes
going to keep on the farm.
Thats about the shape ot, a blieve, said Jan Coggan. Ay, tis a
very good family. Id as soon be under em as under one here and there.
Her uncle was a very fair sort of man. Did ye know en, be under em as
under one here and there. Her uncle was a very fair sort of man. Did ye
know en, shepherda bachelor-man?
Not at all.
The inquirer paused a moment, and then continued his relation, which,
as did every remark he made, instead of being casual, seemed the result
of a slow convergence of forces that had commenced their operation, in
times far remote.
I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte, who was
his dairymaid. Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer Everdene, and
I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call and see her and
drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away anyoutside my skin
I mane, of course.
Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning.
And so you see twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his kindness
as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a
thimbleful, which would have been insulting the mans generosity
True, Master Coggan, twould so. corroborated Mark Clark.
And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the
time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basketso thorough dry that
that ale would slip downah, twould slip down sweet! Happy times!
heavenly times! Ay, twere like drinking blessedness itself. Pints and
pints! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house. You can
mind, Jacob? You used to go wi me sometimes.
I canI can, said Jacob. That one, too, that we had at Bucks Head
on a White Monday was a pretty tipple, indeed.
Twas. But for a drunk of really a noble class and on the highest
princliples, that brought you no nearer to the dark man than you were
afore you begun, there was none like those in Farmer Everdenes
kitchen. Not a single damn allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at
the most cheerful moment when all were blindest, though the good old
word of sin thrown in here and there would have been a great relief to
a merry soul. | 1,070 |
PG27 | 30 | True, said the maltster. Nature requires her swearing at the regular
times, or shes not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of
life.
But Charlotte, continued Coggannot a word of the sort would
Charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain. Ay, poor
Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into Heaven when
a died! But a was never much in lucks way, and perhaps a went
downwards after all, poor soul.
And did any of you know Miss Everdenes father and mother? inquired
the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation in
the desired channel.
I knew them a little, said Jacob Smallbury; but they were townsfolk,
and didnt live here. Theyve been dead for years. Father, what sort of
people were misess father and mother?
Well, said the maltster, he wasnt much to look at; but she was a
lovely woman. He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart.
Used to kiss her in scores and long-hundreds, so twas said here and
there, observed Coggan.
He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as Ive been
told, said the maltster.
Ay, said Coggan. He admired his wife so much, that he used to light
the candle three time every night to look at her.
Boundless love; I shouldnt have supposed it in the worlds universe!
murmered Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in his
moral reflections.
Well, to be sure, said Gabriel.
Oh, tis true enough. I knowed the man and woman both well. Levi
Everdenethat was the mans name, sure enough. Man, saith I in my
hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than thata was a
gentleman-tailor really, worth scores of pounds. And he became a very
celebrated bankrupt two or three times.
Oh, I thought he was quite a common man! said Joseph.
O no, no! That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and
silver.
The maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently
scrutinizing a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the
narrative, with a private twirl of his eye:
Well, now, youd hardly believe it, but that manour Miss Everdenes
fatherwas one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a while.
Understand, a didnt want to be fickle, but he couldnt help it. The
pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his
heart would rove, do what he would. Ay, a spoke to me in real
tribulation about it once. Coggan, he said, I could never wish for a
handsomer woman than Ive got, but feeling shes ticketed as my lawful
wife, I cant help my wicked heart wandering, do what I will. But at
last I believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and
calling her by her maiden name as they sat together after the shop was
shut, and so a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not
married to him at all. And so as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he
was doing wrong and committing the seventh, a got to like her as well
as ever, and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love.
Well, twas a most ungodly remedy, murmured Joseph Poorgrass; but we
ought to feel deep cheerfulness, as I may say, that a happy Providence
kept it from being any worse. You see, he might have gone the bad road
and given his eyes to unlawfulness entirelyyes, gross unlawfulness, so
to say it.
You see, said Billy Smallbury, with testimonial emphasis, the mans
will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didnt chime in.
He got so much better, that he was quite religious in his later years,
wasnt he, Jan? said Joseph Poorgrass. He got himself confirmed over
again in a more serious way, and took to saying Amen almost as loud
as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the
tombstones. He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light so
Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children that
had no father at all in the eye of matrimony, and he kept a missionary
box upon his table to nab folks unawares when they called; yes, and he
would box the charity-boys ears, if they laughed in church, till they
could hardly stand upright, and do other deeds of piety common to the
saintly inclined. | 1,044 |
PG27 | 31 | Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but righteousness, added Billy
Smallbury. One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, Good-morning,
Mister Everdene; tis a fine day! Amen said Everdene, quite
absent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson. Yes, he
was a very Christian man.
His second-cousin, John, was the most religious of the family,
however, said the old malster. None of the others were so pious as
he, for they never went past us Church people in their Christianity,
but Johns feelings growed as strong as a chapel members. A was a
watch and clock maker by trade, and thought of nothing but godliness,
poor man. I judge every clock according to his works, he used to say
when he were in his holy frame of mind. Ay, he likewise was a very
Christian man.
Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time, said
Henery Fray. Never should have thought shed have growed up such a
handsome body as she is.
Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face.
Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and
ourselves. Ah! Henery shook his head, gazed into the ashpit, and
smiled volumes of ironical knowledge.
A queer Christian, as the D said of the owl, volunteered Mark
Clark,
He is, said Henery, with a manner implying that irony must
necessarily cease at a certain point. Between we two, man and man, I
believe that man would as soon tell a lie Sundays as working-daysthat
I do so.
Good faith, you do talk! said Gabriel, with apprehension.
True enough, said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon the
company, with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener
appreciation of the untold miseries of life than ordinary men are
capable of. Ah, theres people of one sort, and people of another, but
that manbless your souls!
The company suspended consideration of whether they wanted their souls
blessed that moment, as the shortest way to the end of the story.
I believe that if so be that Baily Pennyways heart were put inside a
nutshell, hed rattle, continued Henery. Hell strain for money as a
salmon will strain for the rivers head. Tis a thief and a robber,
thats what tis.
Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. You must be a very aged
man, malster, to have sons growed mild and ancient, he remarked.
Fathers so old that a cant mind his age, can ye, father?
interposed Jacob. And hes growled terrible crooked, too, lately,
Jacob continued, surveying his fathers figure, which was rather more
bowed than his own. Really one may say that father there is
three-double.
Crooked folk will last a long while, said the maltster, grimly, and
not in the best humour.
Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, fatherwouldnt
ye, shepherd?
Ay that I should, said Gabriel, with the heartiness of a man who had
longed to hear it for several months. What may your age be, malster?
The maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis,
and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in
the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so
generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it,
Well, I dont mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon
up the places Ive lived at, and so get it that way. I bode at Juddle
Farm across there (nodding to the north) till I were eleven. I bode
seven at Lower Twifford (nodding to the east), where I took to
malting. I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted there two-and-twenty
years, and two-and-twenty years I was there turnip-hoeing and
harvesting. Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe, years afore you were
thought of, Master Oak (Oak smiled a corroboration of the fact). Then
I malted at Snoodly-under-Drool four year, and four year turnip-hoeing;
and I was fourteen times eleven months at Moreford St. Judes (nodding
north-west-by-north). Old Twills wouldnt hire me for more than eleven
months at a time, to keep me from being chargeable to the parish if so
be I was disabled. Then I was three year at Mellstock, and Ive been
here one-and-thirty year come Candlemas. How much is that?
Hundred and seventeen, chuckled another old gentleman, given to
mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat
unobserved in a corner. | 1,078 |
PG27 | 32 | Well, then, thats my age, said the maltster, emphatically.
Oh, no, father! Jacob remonstrated. Your turnip-hoeing were in the
summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye dont
ought to count both halves father.
Chok it all! I lived through the summers, didnt I? Thats my
question. I suppose yell say next I be no age at all to speak of?
Sure we shant, said Gabriel, soothingly.
Ye be a very old-aged person, malster, attested Jan Coggan, also
soothingly, We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented
constitution to be able to live so long, mustnt he, neighbours?
True, true; ye must, malster, a wonderful talented constitution, said
the meeting unanimously.
The maltster, being know pacified, was even generous enough to
voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a
great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of
was three years older than he.
While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oaks flute became
visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray exclaimed,
Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a grate flute by-now at
Casterbridge?
You did, said Gabriel, blushing faintly. Ive been in great trouble,
neighbours, and was driven to it. I used not to be so poor as I be
now.
Never mind, heart! said Mark Clark. You should take it
careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come. But we could thank ye
for a tune, if ye baint too tired?
Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard this Christmas, said Jan
Coggan. Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!
Ay, that I will, said Gabriel readily, pulling out his flute and
putting it together. A poor tool, neighbours; an everyday chap; but
such as I can do ye shall have and welcome.
Oak then struck up Jockey to the Fair, and played that sparkling
melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in a
most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and
tapping with his foot to beat time.
He can blow the flute very wellthat a can, said a young married
man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as Susan
Talls husband. He continued admiringly, Id as lief as not be able
to blow into a flute as well as that.
Hes a clever man, and tis a true comfort for us to have such a
shepherd, murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft and complacent cadence.
We ought to feel real thanksgiving that hes not a player of loose
songs instead of these merry tunes; for twould have been just as easy
for God to have made the shepherd a lewd low mana man of iniquity, so
to speak itas what he is. Yes, for our wives and daughters sakes we
should feel real thanksgiving.
True, true, as the old woman said, dashed in Mark Clark conclusively,
not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had only
heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.
Yes, added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; for
evil does thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in
the clanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp
upon the turnpike, if I may term it so.
Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd, said Henery Fray, criticising
Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second tune. Yesnow I
see ye blowing into the flute I know ye to be the same man I see play
at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped up and yer eyes a-staring
out like a strangled mansjust as they be now.
Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a
scarecrow, observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of
Gabriels countenance, the latter person jerking out unconcernedly,
with the ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of
Dame Durden:
Twas Moll and Bet, and Doll and Kate
And Dor-othy Drag-gle Tail.
I hope you dont mind that young man Mark Clarks bad manners in
naming your features? whispered Joseph to Gabriel privately.
Not at all, said Mr. Oak.
For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd, continued Joseph
Poorgrass, with winning sauvity.
Ay, that ye be, sheperd, said the company.
Thank you very much, said Oak, in the modest tone good manners
demanded, privately thinking, however, that he would never let
Bathsheba see him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a
discretion equal to that related to its sagacious inventress, the
divine Minerva herself. | 1,091 |
PG27 | 33 | Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church, said the old
maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject we
were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhoodeverybody said
so.
Danged if ye baint altered now, malster, said a voice with the
vigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkably evident truism. It
came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and
spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he
contributed to general laughs.
O no, no, said Gabriel.
Dont ye play no more shepherd, said Susan Talls husband, the young
married man who had spoken once before. I must be moving, and when
theres tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires. If I thought after
Id left that music was still playing, and I not there, I should be
quite melancholy-like.
Whats yer hurry then, Laban? inquired Coggan. You used to bide as
late as the latest.
Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and shes
my vocation now, and so ye see. . . . The young man halted lamely.
New Lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose, remarked Coggan,
with a very compressed countenance; that the frigidity implied by this
arrangement of facial muscles was not the true mood of his soul being
only discernible from a private glimmer in the outer corner of one of
his eyesthis eye being nearly closed, and the other only half open.
Ay, a blieveha, ha! said Susan Talls husband, in a tone intended
to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding them at all.
The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew.
Henery Fray was the first to follow. Then Gabriel arose and went off
with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging. A few minutes later,
when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray
came back again in a hurry. Flourishing his finger ominously he threw a
gaze teeming with tidings just where his glance alighted by accident,
which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrasss face.
Ohwhats the matter, whats the matter, Henery? said Joseph,
starting back.
Whats a-brewing, Henrey? asked Jacob and Mark Clark.
Baily PennywaysBaily PennywaysI said so; yes, I said so.
What, found out stealing anything?
Stealing it is. The news is, that after Miss Everdene got home she
went out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in
found Baily Pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a
bushel of barley. She flewed at him like a catnever such a tom-boy as
she isof course I speak with closed doors?
You doyou do, Henery.
She flewed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having
carried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute
him. Well, hes turned out neck and crop, and my question is, whos
going to be baily now?
The question was such a profound one that Henery was obliged to drink
there and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly
visible inside. Before he had replaced it on the table, in came the
young man, Susan Talls husband, in a still greater hurry.
Have ye heard the news thats all over parish?
About Baily Pennyways?
Ahbut besides that?
Nonot a morsel of it! they all replied, looking into the very midst
of Laban Tall, and, as at were, advancing their intelligence to meet
his words half way down his throat.
What a night of horrors! murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his hands
spasmodically. Ive had the news-bell ringing in my left ear quite bad
enough for a murder, and Ive seed a magpie all alone!
Fanny RobinMiss everdenes youngest servantcant be found. Theyve
been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she isnt come
in. And they dont know what to do about going to bed for fear of
locking her out. They wouldnt be so concerned if she hadnt been
noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d think
the beginning of a crowners inquest has happened to the poor girl.
Ohtis burnedtis burned! came from Joseph Poorgrass with dry lips.
Notis drowned! said Tall.
Or tis her fathers razor! suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid
sense of detail.
WellMiss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go to
bed. What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the girl,
misess is almost wild. | 1,057 |
PG27 | 34 | They all hastened up the rise to the farm-house, excepting the old
maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from
his hole. There, as the others footsteps died away, he sat down again,
and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red, bleared
eyes.
From the bed-room window above their heads Bathshebas head and
shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the
air.
Are any of my men among you? she said anxiously.
Yes, maam, several, said Susan Talls husband.
To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in the
villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin. Do it
quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet. She must have left whilst
we were all at the fire.
I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the
parish, maam? asked Jacob Smallbury.
I dont know, said Bathsheba.
Ive never heard of any such thing, maam, said two or three.
It is hardly likely, either, continued Bathsheba. For any lover of
hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable lad. The
most mysterious matter connected with her absenceindeed, the only
thing which gives me serious alarmis that she was seen to go out of
the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown onnot even a
bonnet.
And you mean, maam, excusing my words, that a young woman would
hardly go to see her young man without dressing up, said Jacob,
turning his mental vision upon past experiences. Thats trueshe would
not, maam.
She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldnt see very well, said a
female voice from another window, which seemed to belong to Maryann.
But she had no young man about here. Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I
believe hes a soldier.
Do you know his name? Bathsheba said.
No, mistress; she was very close about it.
Perhaps I might be able to find out if I went to Casterbridge
barracks, said William Smallbury.
Very well; if she doesnt return to-morrow, mind you go there and try
to discover which man it is, and see him. I feel more responsible than
I should if she had had any friends or relations alive. I do hope she
has come to no harm through a man of that kind. And then theres this
disgraceful affair of the bailiffbut I cant speak of him now.
Bathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did not
think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one. Do as I told
you, then, she said in conclusion, closing the casement.
Ay, ay, mistress; we will, they replied, and moved away.
That night at Coggans, Gabriel Oak, beneath the screen of closed
eyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river
flowing rapidly under its ice. Night had always been the time at which
he saw Bathsheba most vividly, and through the slow hours of shadow he
tenderly regarded her image now. It is rarely that the pleasures of the
imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness, but they
possibly did with Oak to-night, for the delight of merely seeing her
effaced for the time his perception of the great difference between
seeing and possessing.
He also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from
Norcombe. _The Young Mans Best Companion, The Farriers Sure Guide,
The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrims Progress, Robinson
Crusoe, Ashs Dictionary_, and _Walkingames Arithmetic_, constituted
his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had
acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of
opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves. | 880 |
PG27 | 35 | CHAPTER IX.
THE HOMESTEADA VISITORHALF CONFIDENCES
By daylight, the bower of Oaks new-found mistress, Bathsheba Everdene,
presented itself as a hoary building, of the Jacobean stage of Classic
Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion which told
at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the
manorial hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as
a distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident
landlord, which comprised several such modest demesnes.
Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front, and
above the roof pairs of chimneys were here and there linked by an arch,
some gables and other unmanageable features still retaining traces of
their Gothic extraction. Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen,
formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or
sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A
gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted at
the sides with more mosshere it was a silver-green varietythe
nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot or
two in the centre. This circumstance, and the generally sleepy air of
the whole prospect here, together with the animated and contrasting
state of the reverse faade, suggested to the imagination that on the
adaptation of the building for farming purposes the vital principle of
the house had turned round inside its body to face the other way.
Reversals of this kind, strange deformities, tremendous paralyses, are
often seen to be inflicted by trade upon edificeseither individual or
in the aggregate as streets and townswhich were originally planned for
pleasure alone.
Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the main
staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed-posts,
being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their century, the
handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs themselves
continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his
shoulder. Going up, we find the floors above to have a very irregular
surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys, and being at present
uncarpeted, the face of the boards is shown to be eaten into
innumerable vermiculations. Every window replies by a clang to the
opening and shutting of every door, a tremble follows every bustling
movement, and a creak accompanies a walker about the house, like a
spirit, wherever he goes.
In the room from which the conversation proceeded, Bathsheba and her
servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting upon
the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and
rubbish spread out thereonremnants from the household stores of the
late occupier. Liddy, the maltsters great-granddaughter, was about
Bathshebas equal in age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of
the light-hearted English country girl. The beauty her features might
have lacked in form was amply made up for by perfection of hue, which
at this winter-time was the softened ruddiness on a surface of high
rotundity that we meet in a Terburg or a Gerard Douw, and like the
presentations of those great colourists, it was a face which always
kept on the natural side of the boundary between comeliness and the
ideal. Though elastic in bearing, she was less daring than Bathsheba,
and occasionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of
genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty.
Through a partly-opened door, the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to
the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular
disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant
objects. To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak of her was
to raise the image of a dried Normandy-pippin.
Stop your scrubbing a moment, said Bathsheba through the door to her.
I hear something.
Maryann suspended the brush.
The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the
building. The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what was
most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door. The door was
tapped with the end of a whip or stick.
What impertinence! said Liddy, in a low voice. To ride up the
footpath like that! Why didnt he stop at the gate? Lord! tis a
gentleman! I see the top of his hat.
Be quiet! said Bathsheba.
The further expression of Liddys concern was continued by exhibition
instead of relation. | 1,070 |
PG27 | 36 | Why doesnt Mrs. Coggan go to the door? Bathsheba continued.
Rat-tat-tat-tat, resounded more decisively from Bathshebas oak.
Maryann, you go! said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of
romantic possibilities.
Oh, maamsee, heres a mess!
The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann.
Liddyyou must, said Bathsheba.
Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish
they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress.
ThereMrs. Coggan is going! said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief in
the form of a long breath, which had lain in her bosom a minute or
more.
The door opened, and a deep voice said,
Is Miss Everdene at home?
Ill see, sir, said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the
room.
Dear, what a universe this world is! continued Mrs. Coggan (a
wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark
according to the emotion involved: who could toss a pancake or twirl a
mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who appeared at this
moment showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted
with flour). I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but
one of two things happenseither my nose must needs begin tickling, and
I cant live without scratching it, or somebody knocks at the door.
Heres Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene.
A womans dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in
the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the
other, Bathsheba said at once,
I cant see him in this state. Whatever shall I do?
Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farm-houses, so
Liddy suggestedSay youre a fright with dust, and cant come down.
Yesthat sounds very well, said Mrs. Coggan, critically.
Say I cant see himthat will do.
Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested,
adding, however, on her own responsibility, Miss is dusting bottles,
sir, and is quite a objectthats why tis.
Oh, very well, said the deep voice, indifferently. All I wanted to
ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?
Nothing, sirbut we may know to-night. William Smallbury is gone to
Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the other
men be inquiring about everywhere.
The horses tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door closed.
Who is Mr. Boldwood? said Bathsheba.
A gentleman-farmer at Lower Weatherbury.
Married?
No, miss.
How old is he?
Forty, I should sayvery handsomerather stern-lookingand rich.
What a bother this dusting is! I am always in some unfortunate plight
or other, Bathsheba said, complainingly. Why should he inquire about
Fanny?
Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and
put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle. Hes a
very kind man that way, but Lordthere!
What?
Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! Hes been courted by sixes
and sevensall the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have
tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and
the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost Farmer Ivess
daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds worth of new clothes; but
Lordthe money might as well have been thrown out of the window.
A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. This child
was one of the Coggans (Smallburys and Coggans were as common among the
families of this district as the Avons and Derwents among our rivers),
and he always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to show to
particular friends, which he did with a complacent air of being thereby
elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanityto which
exhibition people were expected to say, Poor child! with a dash of
congratulation as well as pity.
Ive got a pen-nee! said Master Coggan in a scanning measure.
Wellwho gave it you, Teddy? said Liddy.
Mis-terr Bold-wood! He gave it to me for opening the gate.
What did he say?
He said, Where are you going, my little man? and I said, To Miss
Everdenes please; and he said, She is a staid woman, isnt she, my
little man? and I said, Yes.
You naughty child! What did you say that for?
Cause he gave me the penny!
What a pucker everything is in! said Bathsheba, discontentedly when
the child had gone. Get away, Maryann, or go on with your scrubbing, or
do something! You ought to be married by this time, and not here
troubling me. | 1,136 |
PG27 | 38 | CHAPTER X.
MISTRESS AND MEN
Half-an-hour later Bathsheba, in finished dress, and followed by Liddy,
entered the upper end of the old hall to find that her men had all
deposited themselves on a long form and a settle at the lower
extremity. She sat down at a table and opened the time-book, pen in her
hand, and a canvas money-bag beside her. From this she poured a small
heap of coin. Liddy took up a position at her elbow and began to sew,
sometimes pausing and looking round, or with the air of a privileged
person, taking up one of the half-sovereigns lying before her and
surveying it as a work of art merely, strictly preventing her
countenance from expressing any wish to possess it as money.
Now before I begin, men, said Bathsheba, I have two matters to speak
of. The first is that the bailiff is dismissed for thieving, and that I
have formed a resolution to have no bailiff at all, but to manage
everything with my own head and hands.
The men breathed an audible breath of amazement.
The next matter is, have you heard anything of Fanny?
Nothing, maam.
Have you done anything?
I met Farmer Boldwood, said Jacob Smallbury, and I went with him and
two of his men, and dragged Wood Pond, but we found nothing.
And the new shepherd have been to Bucks Head, thinking she had gone
there, but nobody had seed her, said Laban Tall.
Hasnt William Smallbury been to Casterbridge?
Yes, maam, but hes not yet come home. He promised to be back by
six.
It wants a quarter to six at present, said Bathsheba, looking at her
watch. I daresay hell be in directly. Well, now thenshe looked into
the bookJoseph Poorgrass, are you there?
Yes, sirmaam I mane, said the person addressed. I am the personal
name of Poorgrassa small matter who is nothing in his own eye. Perhaps
it is different in the eye of other peoplebut I dont say it; though
public thought will out.
What do you do on the farm?
I does carting things all the year, and in seed time I shoots the
rooks and sparrows, and helps at pig-killing, sir.
How much to you?
Please nine and ninepence and a good halfpenny where twas a bad one,
sirmaam I mane.
Quite correct. Now here are ten shillings in addition as a small
present, as I am a new comer.
Bathsheba blushed slightly at the sense of being generous in public,
and Henery Fray, who had drawn up towards her chair, lifted his
eyebrows and fingers to express amazement on a small scale.
How much do I owe youthat man in the cornerwhats your name?
continued Bathsheba.
Matthew Moon, maam, said a singular framework of clothes with
nothing of any consequence inside them, which advanced with the toes in
no definite direction forwards, but turned in or out as they chanced to
swing.
Matthew Mark, did you say?speak outI shall not hurt you, inquired
the young farmer, kindly.
Matthew Moon, mem, said Henery Fray, correctingly from behind her
chair, to which point he had edged himself.
Matthew Moon, murmured Bathsheba, turning her bright eyes to the
book. Ten and two-pence halfpenny is the sum put down to you, I see?
Yes, misess, said Matthew, as the rustle of wind among dead leaves.
Here it is and ten shillings. Now the nextAndrew Candle, you are a
new man, I hear. How come you to leave your last farm?
P-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-l-l-l-l-ease, maam, p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-please,
maam-pleasem-pleasem
As a stammering man, mem, said Henery Fray in an undertone, and
they turned him away because the only time he ever did speak plain he
said his soul was his own, and other iniquities, to the squire. A can
cuss, mem, as well as you or I, but a cant speak a common speech to
save his life.
Andrew Candle, heres yoursfinish thanking me in a day or two.
Temperance Milleroh, heres another, Sobernessboth women I suppose?
Yesm. Here we be, a blieve, was echoed in shrill unison.
What have you been doing?
Tending thrashing-machine, and wimbling haybonds, and saying Hoosh!
to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting Early
Flourballs and Thompsons Wonderfuls with a dibble.
YesI see. Are they satisfactory women? she inquired softly of Henery
Fray.
Oh, memdont ask me! Yielding women?as scarlet a pair as ever was!
groaned Henery under his breath.
Sit down.
Who, mem?
Sit down!
Joseph Poorgrass, in the background, twitched, and his lips became dry
with fear of some terrible consequences as he saw Bathsheba summarily
speaking, and Henery slinking off to a corner. | 1,149 |
PG27 | 39 | Now the next. Laban Tall. Youll stay on working for me?
For you or anybody that pays me well, maam, replied the young
married man.
Truethe man must live! said a woman in the back quarter, who had
just entered with clicking pattens.
What woman is that? Bathsheba asked.
I be his lawful wife! continued the voice with greater prominence of
manner and tone. This lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked
thirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty. She was a woman who
never, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public,
perhaps because she had none to show.
Oh, you are, said Bathsheba. Well, Laban, will you stay on?
Yes, hell stay, maam! said again the shrill tongue of Labans
lawful wife.
Well, he can speak for himself, I suppose.
O Lord, no, maam! A simple tool. Well enough, but a poor gawkhammer
mortal, the wife replied
Heh-heh-heh! laughed the married man with a hideous effort of
appreciation, for he was as irrepressibly good-humoured under ghastly
snubs as a parliamentary candidate on the hustings.
The names remaining were called in the same manner.
Now I think I have done with you, said Bathsheba, closing the book
and shaking back a stray twine of hair. Has William Smallbury
returned?
No, maam.
The new shepherd will want a man under him, suggested Henery Fray,
trying to make himself official again by a sideway approach towards her
chair.
Ohhe will. Who can he have?
Young Cain Ball is a very good lad, Henery said, and Shepherd Oak
dont mind his youth? he added, turning with an apologetic smile to
the shepherd, who had just appeared on the scene, and was now leaning
against the doorpost with his arms folded.
Oh, I dont mind that, said Gabriel.
How did Cain come by such a name? asked Bathsheba.
Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-read woman,
made a mistake at his christening, thinking twas Abel killed Cain, and
called en Cain, meaning Abel all the time. The parson put it right, but
twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in the parish.
Tis very unfortunate for the boy.
It is rather unfortunate.
Yes. However, we soften it down as much as we can, and call him Cainy.
Ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart out about it almost. She was
brought up by a very heathen father and mother, who never sent her to
church or school, and it shows how the sins of the parents are visited
upon the children, mem.
Mr. Fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of melancholy
required when the persons involved in the given misfortune do not
belong to your own family.
Very well then, Cainy Ball to be under-shepherd. And you quite
understand your duties?you I mean, Gabriel Oak?
Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene, said Shepard Oak from the
doorpost. If I dont, Ill inquire. Gabriel was rather staggered by
the remarkable coolness of her manner. Certainly nobody without
previous information would have dreamt that Oak and the handsome woman
before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers. But perhaps
her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which had advanced
her from a cottage to a large house and fields. The case is not
unexampled in high places. When, in the writings of the later poets,
Jove and his family are found to have moved from their cramped quarters
on the peak of Olympus into the wide sky above it their words show a
proportionate increase of arrogance and reserve.
Footsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their character the
qualities both of weight and measure, rather at the expense of
velocity.
(All.) Heres Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge.
And whats the news? said Bathsheba, as William, after marching to
the middle of the hall, took a handkerchief from his hat and wiped his
forehead from its centre to its remoter boundaries.
I should have been sooner, miss, he said, if it hadnt been for the
weather. He then stamped with each foot severely, and on looking down
his boots were perceived to be clogged with snow.
Come at last, is it? said Henery.
Well, what about Fanny? said Bathsheba.
Well, maam, in round numbers, shes run away with the soldiers, said
William.
No; not a steady girl like Fanny!
Ill tell ye all particulars. When I got to Casterbridge Barracks,
they said, The 11th Dragoon-Guards be gone away, and new troops have
come. The Eleventh left last week for Melchester. The Route came from
Government like a thief in the night, as is his nature to, and afore
the Eleventh knew it almost, they were on the march. | 1,109 |
PG27 | 40 | Gabriel had listened with interest. I saw them go, he said.
Yes, continued William, they pranced down the street playing The
Girl I Left Behind Me, so tis said, in glorious notes of triumph.
Every looker-ons inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his
deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among
the public-house people and the nameless women!
But theyre not gone to any war?
No, maam; but they be gone to take the places of them who may, which
is very close connected. And so I said to myself, Fannys young man was
one of the regiment, and shes gone after him. There, maam, thats it
in black and white.
Did you find out his name?
No; nobody knew it. I believe he was higher in rank than a private.
Gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt.
Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate, said
Bathsheba. But one of you had better run across to Farmer Boldwoods
and tell him that much.
She then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them with
a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness that
was hardly to be found in the words themselves.
Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I dont yet know my
powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if you
serve me well, so shall I serve you. Dont any unfair ones among you
(if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because Im a
woman I dont understand the difference between bad goings-on and
good.
(All.) Nom!
(Liddy.) Excellent well said.
I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are
up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I
shall astonish you all.
(All.) Yesm!
And so good-night.
(All.) Good-night, maam.
Then this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of
the hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging
them along with a scratching noise upon the floor. Liddy, elevating her
feelings to the occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated off behind
Bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from travesty, and
the door was closed. | 533 |
PG27 | 41 | CHAPTER XI.
MELCHESTER MOORSNOWA MEETING
For dreariness, nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of
the city of Melchester at a later hour on this same snowy eveningif
that may be called a prospect of which the chief constituent was
darkness.
It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing
any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love
becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope:
when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at
opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation
does not prompt to enterprise.
The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river,
behind which rose a high wall. On the right was a tract of land, partly
meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a wide
undulating heath.
The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind
than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just
as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are
less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of
the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not so stealthy and gradual
as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a
moor or heath. Winter, in coming to the place under notice, advanced in
some such well-marked stages as the following:
The retreat of the snakes.
The transformation of the ferns.
The filling of the pools.
A rising of fogs.
The embrowning by frost.
The collapse of the fungi.
An obliteration by snow.
This climax of the series had been reached to-night on Melchester Moor,
and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms
without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and
without more character than that of being the limit of something
elsethe lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyful
of crowding flakes the heath and moor momentarily received additional
clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. The vast dome
of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a
large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the
instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that
encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any
intervening stratum of air at all.
We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics. They were
flatness as regards the river, verticality as regards the wall behind
it, and darkness as regards both. These features made up the mass. If
anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall; and if anything
could be gloomier than the wall, it was the river beneath. The
indistinct summit of the faade was notched and pronged by chimneys
here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong
shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the
waters edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection.
An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their
regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy
atmosphere. It was a neighbouring clock striking ten. The bell was in
the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling snow,
had lost its voice for the time.
About this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had
fallen, then one had the room of ten. Not long after a form moved by
the brink of the river.
By its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer might
have seen that it was small. This was all that was positively
discoverable. Human it seemed.
The shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow,
though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep. At this time
some words were spoken aloud:
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Between each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen
yards. It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were being
counted. The word Five represented the fifth window from the end of
the wall.
Here the spot stopped, and dwindled small. The figure was stooping.
Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the fifth window.
It smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The
throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No
man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or squirrel in his childhood, could
possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here. | 1,021 |
PG27 | 42 | Another attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have become
pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow. At last one fragment struck
the fifth window.
The river would have been seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort
which races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any
irregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small
whirlpool. Nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle and
cluck of one of these invisible wheelstogether with a few small sounds
which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man
laughtercaused by the flapping of the waters against trifling objects
in other parts of the stream.
The window was struck again in the same manner.
Then a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the
window. This was followed by a voice from the same quarter.
Whos there?
The tones were masculine, and not those of surprise. The high wall
being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with disfavour
in the army, assignations and communications had probably been made
across the river before tonight.
Is it Sergeant Troy? said the blurred spot in the snow, tremulously.
This person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the other
speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have said the
wall was holding a conversation with the snow.
Yes, came suspiciously from the shadow. What girl are you?
Oh, Frankdont you know me? said the spot. Your wife, Fanny Robin.
Fanny! said the wall, in utter astonishment.
Yes, said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion.
There was a tone in the woman which is not that of the wife, and there
was a manner in the man which is rarely a husbands. The dialogue went
on.
How did you come here?
I asked which was your window. Forgive me!
I did not expect you to-night. Indeed, I did not think you would come
at all. It was a wonder you found me here. I am orderly to-morrow.
You said I was to come.
WellI said that you might.
Yes, I mean that I might. You are glad to see me, Frank?
O yesof course.
Can youcome to me!
My dear Fan, no! The bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are closed,
and I have no leave. We are all of us as good as in Melchester Gaol
till to-morrow morning.
Then I shant see you till then! The words were in a faltering tone
of disappointment.
How did you get here from Weatherbury?
I walkedsome part of the waythe rest by the carrier.
I am surprised.
Yesso am I. And Frank, when will it be?
What?
That you promised.
I dont quite recollect.
Oh you do! Dont speak like that. It weighs me to the earth. It makes
me say what ought to be said first by you.
Never mindsay it.
Oh, must I?it is, when shall we be married, Frank?
Oh, I see. Wellyou have to get proper clothes.
I have money. Will it be by banns or license?
Banns, I should think.
And we live in two parishes.
Do we? What then?
My lodgings are in St. Marys, and this is not. So they will have to
be published in both.
Is that the law?
Yes. O Frankyou think me forward, I am afraid! Dont, dear Frankwill
youfor I love you so. And you said lots of times you would marry me,
andandIII
Dont cry, now! It is foolish. If I said so, of course I will.
And shall I put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?
Yes
To-morrow?
Not to-morrow. Well settle in a few days.
You have the permission of the officers?
Nonot yet.
Ohhow is it? You said you almost had before you left Casterbridge.
The fact is, I forgot to ask. Your coming like this is so sudden and
unexpected.
Yesyesit is. It was wrong of me to worry you. Ill go away now. Will
you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twillss, in North Street? I
dont like to come to the Barracks. There are bad women about, and they
think me one.
Quite so. Ill come to you, my dear. Good-night.
Good-night, Frankgood-night!
And the noise was again heard of a window closing. The little spot
moved away. When she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was heard
inside the wall.
HohoSergeanthoho! An expostulation followed, but it was
indistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was
hardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools outside. | 1,067 |
PG27 | 44 | CHAPTER XII.
FARMERSA RULEAN EXCEPTION
The first public evidence of Bathshebas decision to be a farmer in her
own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following
market-day in. the corn-market at Casterbridge.
The low though extensive hall, supported by Tuscan pillars, and
latterly dignified by the name of Corn-Exchange, was thronged with hot
men who talked among each other in twos and threes, the speaker of the
minute looking sideways into his auditors face and concentrating his
argument by a contraction of one eyelid during delivery. The greater
number carried in their hands ground-ash saplings, using them partly as
walking-sticks and partly for poking up pigs, sheep, neighbours with
their backs turned, and restful things in general, which seemed to
require such treatment in the course of their peregrinations. During
conversations each subjected his sapling to great varieties of
usagebending it round his back, forming an arch of it between his two
hands, overweighting it on the ground till it reached nearly a
semi-circle; or perhaps it was hastily tucked under the arm whilst the
sample-bag was pulled forth and a handful of corn poured into the palm,
which, after criticism, was flung upon the floor, an issue of events
perfectly well known to half a dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as
usual crept into the building unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of
their anticipations with a high-stretched neck and oblique eye.
Among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided, the single one of
her sex that the room contained. She was prettily and even daintily
dressed. She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard
after them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a
breeze among furnaces. It had required a little determinationfar more
than she had at first imaginedto take up a position here, for at her
first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face had
been turned towards her, and those that were already turned rigidly
fixed there.
Two or three only of the farmers were personally known to Bathsheba,
and to these she had made her way. But if she was to be the practical
woman she had intended to show herself, business must be carried on,
introductions or none, and she ultimately acquired confidence enough to
speak and reply boldly to men merely known to her by hearsay. Bathsheba
too had her sample-bags, and by degrees adopted the professional pour
into the handholding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection,
in perfect Casterbridge manner.
Something in the exact arch of her upper unbroken row of teeth, and in
the keenly pointed corners of her red mouth when, with parted lips, she
somewhat defiantly turned up her face to argue a point with a tall man,
suggested that there was depth enough in that lithe slip of humanity
for alarming potentialities of exploit, and daring enough to carry them
out. But her eyes had a softnessinvariably a softnesswhich, had they
not been dark, would have seemed mistiness; as they were, it lowered an
expression that might have been piercing to simple clearness,
Strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigour, she always allowed
her interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with
hers. In arguing on prices, she held to her own firmly, as was natural
in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was inevitable in a
woman. But there was an elasticity in her firmness which removed it
from obstinacy, as there was a navet in her cheapening which saved it
from meanness.
Those of the farmers with whom she had no dealings (by far the greater
part) were continually asking each other, Who is she? The reply would
be,
Farmer Everdenes niece; took on Weatherbury Upper Farm; turned away
the baily, and swears shell do everything herself.
The other man would then shake his head.
Yes, tis a pity shes so headstrong, the first would say. But we
ought to be proud of her hereshe lightens up the old place. Tis such
a shapely maid, however, that shell soon get picked up.
It would be ungallant to suggest that the novelty of her engagement in
such an occupation had almost as much to do with the magnetism as had
the beauty of her face and movements. However, the interest was
general, and this Saturdays _dbt_ in the forum, whatever it may have
been to Bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was unquestionably
a triumph to her as the maiden. Indeed, the sensation was so pronounced
that her instinct on two or three occasions was to merely walk as a
queen among these gods of the fallow, like a little sister of a little
Jove, and to neglect closing prices altogether. | 1,075 |
PG27 | 45 | The numerous evidences of her power to attract were only thrown into
greater relief by a marked exception. Women seem to have eyes in their
ribbons for such matters as these. Bathsheba, without looking within a
right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the flock.
It perplexed her first. If there had been a respectable minority on
either side, the case would have been most natural. If nobody had
regarded her, she would have taken the matter indifferentlysuch cases
had occurred. If everybody, this man included, she would have taken it
as a matter of coursepeople had done so before. But the exception,
added to its smallness, made the mysteryjust as when the difference
between the state of an insignificant fleece and the state of all round
it, rather than any novelty in the states themselves, arrested the
attention of Gideon.
She soon knew thus much of the recusants appearance. He was a
gentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined Roman features, the
prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like richness of
tone. He was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour. One
characteristic pre-eminently marked himdignity.
Apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age at
which a mans aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of a dozen
years or so; and, artificially, a womans does likewise. Thirty-five
and fifty were his limits of variationhe might have been either, or
anywhere between the two.
It may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and generous
enough to fling passing glances at any specimen of moderate beauty they
may discern by the way. Probably, as with persons playing whist for
love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under any circumstances
from that worst possible ultimate, the having to pay, makes them unduly
speculative. Bathsheba was convinced that this unmoved person was not a
married man.
When marketing was over, she rushed off to Liddy, who was waiting for
her beside the yellow gig in which they had driven to town. The horse
was put in, and on they trottedBathshebas sugar, tea, and drapery
parcels being packed behind, and expressing in some indescribable
manner, by their colour, shape, and general lineaments, that they were
that young lady-farmers property, and the grocers and drapers no
more.
Ive been through it, Liddy, and it is over. I shant mind it again,
for they will all have grown accustomed to seeing me there; but this
morning it was as bad as being marriedeyes everywhere!
I knowed it would be, Liddy said. Men be such a terrible class of
society to look at a body.
But there was one man who had more sense than to waste his time upon
me. The information was put in this form that Liddy might not for a
moment suppose her mistress was at all piqued. A very good-looking
man, she continued, upright; about forty, I should think. Do you know
at all who he could be?
Liddy couldnt think.
Cant you guess at all? said Bathsheba with some disappointment.
I havent a notion; besides, tis no difference, since he took less
notice of you than any of the rest. Now, if hed taken more, it would
have mattered a great deal.
Bathsheba was suffering from the reverse feeling just then, and they
bowled along in silence. A low carriage, bowling along still more
rapidly behind a horse of unimpeachable breed, overtook and passed
them.
Why, there he is! she said.
Liddy looked. That! Thats Farmer Boldwoodof course tisthe man you
couldnt see the other day when he called.
Oh, Farmer Boldwood, murmured Bathsheba, and looked at him as he
outstripped them. The farmer had never turned his head once, but with
eyes fixed on the most advanced point along the road, passed as
unconsciously and abstractedly as if Bathsheba and her charms were thin
air.
Hes an interesting mandont you think so? she remarked.
Oh yes, very. Everybody owns it, replied Liddy.
I wonder why he is so wrapt up and indifferent, and seemingly so far
away from all he sees around him.
It is saidbut not known for certainthat he met with some bitter
disappointment when he was a young man and merry. A woman jilted him,
they say.
People always say thatand we know very well women scarcely ever jilt
men; tis the men who jilt us. I expect it is simply his nature to be
so reserved.
Simply his natureI expect so, missnothing else in the world. | 1,044 |
PG27 | 47 | CHAPTER XIII.
SORTES SANCTORUMTHE VALENTINE
It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of
February. Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better companion,
had asked Liddy to come and sit with her. The mouldy pile was dreary in
winter-time before the candles were lighted and the shutters closed;
the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the walls; every nook
behind the furniture had a temperature of its own, for the fire was not
kindled in this part of the house early in the day; and Bathshebas new
piano, which was an old one in other annals, looked particularly
sloping and out of level on the warped floor before night threw a shade
over its less prominent angles and hid the unpleasantness. Liddy, like
a little brook, though shallow, was always rippling; her presence had
not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to exercise it.
On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather. Liddy looking
at it said,
Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of
the Bible and key?
Dont be so foolish, Liddy. As if such things could be.
Well, theres a good deal in it, all the same.
Nonsense, child.
And it makes your heart beat fearfully. Some believe in it; some
dont; I do.
Very well, lets try it, said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat with
that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a
dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at once. Go and
get the front door key.
Liddy fetched it. I wish it wasnt Sunday, she said, on returning.
Perhaps tis wrong.
[Illustration: GET THE FRONT DOOR KEY. LIDDY FETCHED IT.]
Whats right week days is right Sundays, replied her companion in a
tone which was a proof in itself.
The book was openedthe leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away at
much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in former
days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to the
vision. The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by
Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye. They slightly thrilled
and abashed her. It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the
concrete. Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention,
and placed the key on the book. A rusty patch immediately upon the
verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told
that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the
purpose.
Now keep steady, and be silent, said Bathsheba.
The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed
guiltily.
Who did you try? said Liddy curiously.
I shall not tell you.
Did you notice Mr. Boldwoods doings in church this morning, miss?
Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had
taken.
No, indeed, said Bathsheba, with serene indifference
His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss.
I know it.
And you did not see his goings on?
Certainly I did not, I tell you.
Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively.
This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting. What did
he do? Bathsheba said perforce.
Didnt turn his head to look at you once all the service.
Why should he? again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look.
I didnt ask him to.
Oh no. But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he didnt.
There, tis like him. Rich and gentlemanly, what does he care?
Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had
opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddys comprehension, rather
than that she had nothing to say.
Dear meI had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday, she
exclaimed at length.
Valentine! who for, miss? said Liddy. Farmer Boldwood?
It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at this
moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right.
Well, no. It is only for little Teddy Coggan. I have promised him
something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him. Liddy, you may
as well bring me my desk and Ill direct it at once.
Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed
design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous market-day
at the chief stationers in Casterbridge. In the centre was a small
oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender might insert
tender words more appropriate to the special occasion than any
generalities by a printer could possibly be. | 1,075 |
PG27 | 48 | Heres a place for writing, said Bathsheba. What shall I put?
Something of this sort, I should think, returned Liddy promptly:
The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Carnations sweet,
And so are you.
Yes, that shall be it. It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child
like him, said Bathsheba. She inserted the words in a small though
legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped her
pen for the direction.
What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how he
would wonder! said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows, and
indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the
moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated.
Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length. Boldwoods had
begun to be a troublesome imagea species of Daniel in her kingdom who
persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said that
he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her the
official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. She was far
from being seriously concerned about his non-conformity. Still, it was
faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man in the
parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy should talk
about it. So Liddys idea was at first rather harassing than piquant.
No, I wont do that. He wouldnt see any humour in it.
Hed worry to death, said the persistent Liddy.
Really, I dont care particularly to send it to Teddy, remarked her
mistress. Hes rather a naughty child sometimes.
Yesthat he is.
Lets toss as men do, said Bathsheba, idly. Now then, head,
Boldwood; tail, Teddy. No, we wont toss money on a Sunday, that would
be tempting the devil indeed.
Toss this hymn-book; there cant be no sinfulness in that, miss.
Very well. Open, Boldwoodshut, Teddy. No; its more likely to fall
open. Open, Teddyshut, Boldwood.
The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut.
Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with off-hand
serenity directed the missive to Boldwood.
Now light a candle, Liddy. Which seal shall we use? Heres a unicorns
headtheres nothing in that. Whats this?two dovesno. It ought to be
something extraordinary, ought it not, Lidd? Heres one with a mottoI
remember it is some funny one, but I cant read it. Well try this, and
if it doesnt do well have another.
A large red seal was duly affixed. Bathsheba looked closely at the hot
wax to discover the words.
Capital! she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely.
Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerk too.
Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read
MARRY ME.
The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in
Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury
again in the morning.
So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love as a
spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she
knew nothing. | 739 |
PG27 | 49 | CHAPTER XIV.
EFFECT OF THE LETTERSUNRISE
At dusk, on the evening of St. Valentines Day, Boldwood sat down to
supper as usual, by a beaming fire of aged logs. Upon the mantel-shelf
before him was a time-piece, surmounted by a spread eagle, and upon the
eagles wings was the letter Bathsheba had sent. Here the bachelors
gaze was continually fastening itself, till the large red seal became
as a blot of blood on the retina of his eye; and as he ate and drank he
still read in fancy the words thereon, although they were too remote
for his sight,
MARRY ME.
The pert injunction was like those crystal substances which, colourless
themselves, assume the tone of objects about them. Here, in the quiet
of Boldwoods parlour, where everything that was not grave was
extraneous, and where the atmosphere was that of a Puritan Sunday
lasting all the week, the letter and its dictum changed their tenor
from the thoughtlessness of their origin to a deep solemnity, imbibed
from their accessories now.
Since the receipt of the missive in the morning, Boldwood had felt the
spherical completeness of his existence heretofore to be slowly
spreading into an abnormal distortion in the particular direction of an
ideal passion. The disturbance was as the first floating weed to
Columbusthe eontemptibly little suggesting possibilities of the
infinitely great.
The letter must have had an origin and a motive. That the latter was of
the smallest magnitude compatible with its existence at all, Boldwood,
of course, did not know. And such an explanation did not strike him as
a possibility even. It is foreign to a mystified condition of mind to
realize of the mystifier that the very dissimilar processes of
approving a course suggested by circumstance, and striking out a course
from inner impulse and intention purely, would look the same in the
result. The vast difference between starting a train of events, and
directing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely
apparent to the person confounded by the issue.
When Boldwood went to bed he placed the valentine in the corner of the
looking-glass. He was conscious of its presence, even when his back was
turned upon it. It was the first time in Boldwoods life that such an
event had occurred. The same fascination that caused him to think it an
act which had a deliberate motive prevented him from regarding it as an
impertinence. He looked again at the direction. The mysterious
influences of night invested the writing with the presence of the
unknown writer. Somebodys some _womans_hand had travelled softly
over the paper bearing his name; her unrevealed eyes had watched every
curve as she formed it: her brain had seen him in imagination the
while. Why should she have imagined him? Her mouthwere the lips red or
pale, plump or creased?had curved itself to a certain expression as
the pen went onthe corners had moved with all their natural
tremulousness: what had been the expression?
The vision of the woman writing, as a supplement to the words written,
had no individuality. She was a misty shape, and well she might be,
considering that her original was at that moment sound asleep and
oblivious of all love and letter-writing under the sky. Whenever
Boldwood dozed she took a form, and comparatively ceased to be a
vision: when he awoke there was the letter justifying the dream.
The moon shone to-night, and its light was not of a customary kind. His
window only admitted a reflection of its rays, and the pale sheen had
that reversed direction which snow gives, coming upward and lighting up
his ceiling in a phenomenal way, casting shadows in strange places, and
putting lights where shadows had used to be.
The substance of the epistle had occupied him but little in comparison
with the fact of its arrival. He suddenly wondered if anything more
might be found in the envelope than what he had withdrawn. He jumped
out of bed in the weird light, took the letter, pulled out the flimsy
sheet, shook the envelopesearched it. Nothing more was there. Boldwood
looked, as he had a hundred times the preceding day, at the insistent
red seal: Marry me, he said aloud.
The solemn and reserved yeoman again closed the letter, and stuck it in
the frame of the glass. In doing so he caught sight of his reflected
features, wan in expression, and insubstantial in form. He saw how
closely compressed was his mouth, and that his eyes were wide-spread
and vacant. Feeling uneasy and dissatisfied with himself for this
nervous excitability, he returned to bed. | 1,045 |
PG27 | 50 | Then the dawn drew on. The full power of the clear heaven was not equal
to that of a cloudy sky at noon, when Boldwood arose and dressed
himself. He descended the stairs and went out towards the gate of a
field to the east, leaning over which he paused and looked around.
It was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the year, and the
sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to the northward, and murky
to the east, where, over the snowy down or ewe-lease on Weatherbury
Upper Farm, and apparently resting upon the ridge, the only half of the
sun yet visible burnt incandescent and rayless, like a red and
flameless fire shining over a white hearthstone. The whole effect
resembled a sunset as childhood resembles age.
In other directions, the fields and sky were so much of one colour by
the snow, that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts
the horizon occurred; and in general there was here, too, that
before-mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which
attends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky is
found on the earth, and the shades of earth are in the sky. Over the
west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow, like
tarnished brass.
Boldwood was listlessly noting how the frost had hardened and glazed
the surface of the snow, till it shone in the red eastern light with
the polish of marble; how, in some portions of the slope, withered
grass-bents, encased in icicles, bristled through the smooth wan
coverlit in the twisted and curved shapes of old Venetian glass; and
how the footprints of a few birds, which had hopped over the snow
whilst it lay in the state of a soft fleece, were now frozen to a short
permanency. A half-muffled noise of light wheels interrupted him.
Boldwood turned back into the road. It was the mail-carta crazy,
two-wheeled vehicle, hardly heavy enough to resist a puff of wind. The
driver held out a letter. Boldwood seized it and opened it, expecting
another anonymous one. So greatly are peoples ideas of probability a
mere sense that precedent will repeat itself, that they often do not
stop to think whether the fact of an event having once occurred is not
in many cases the very circumstance which makes its repetition
unlikely.
I dont think it is for you, sir, said the man, when he saw
Boldwoods action. Though there is no name, I think it is for your
shepherd.
Boldwood looked then at the address:
_To the New Shepherd,
Weatherbury Farm,
Near Casterbridge_.
Ohwhat a mistake!it is not mine. Nor is it for my shepherd. It is
for Miss Everdenes. You had better take it on to himGabriel Oakand
say I opened it in mistake.
At this moment, on the ridge, up against the blazing sky, a figure was
visible, like the black snuff in the midst of a candle-flame. Then it
moved and began to bustle about vigorously from place to place,
carrying square skeleton masses, which were riddled by the same rays. A
small figure on all fours followed behind. The tall form was that of
Gabriel Oak; the small one that of George; the articles in course of
transit were hurdles.
Wait, said Boldwood. Thats the man on the hill. Ill take the
letter to him myself.
To Boldwood it was now no longer merely a letter to another man. It was
an opportunity. Exhibiting a face pregnant with intention, he entered
the snowy field.
Gabriel, at that minute, descended the hill towards the right. The glow
stretched down in this direction now, and touched the distant roof of
Warrens Malthousewhither the shepherd was apparently bent. Boldwood
followed at a distance. | 856 |
PG27 | 51 | CHAPTER XV.
A MORNING MEETINGTHE LETTER AGAIN
The scarlet and orange light outside the malthouse did not penetrate to
its interior, which was, as usual, lighted by a rival glow of similar
hue, radiating from the hearth.
The maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a few hours,
was now sitting beside a three-legged table, breakfasting off bread and
bacon. This was eaten on the plateless system, which is performed by
placing a slice of bread upon the table, the meat flat upon the bread,
a mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt upon the whole,
then cutting them vertically downwards with a large pocket-knife till
wood is reached, when the severed lump is impaled on the knife,
elevated, and sent the proper way of food. The maltsters lack of teeth
appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill. He had been
without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a
defect than hard gums an acquisition. Indeed, he seemed to approach the
grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a linesheering off as he got
nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.
In the ashpit was a heap of potatoes roasting, and a boiling pipkin of
charred bread, called coffee, for the benefit of whomsoever should
call, for Warrens was a sort of village clubhouse, there being no inn
in the place.
I say, says I, we get a fine day, and then down comes a snapper at
night, was a remark now suddenly heard spreading into the malthouse
from the door, which had been opened the previous moment, and the form
of Henery Fray advanced to the fire, stamping the snow from his boots
when about half-way there. The speech and entry had not seemed to be at
all an abrupt beginning to the maltster, introductory matter being
often omitted in this neighbourhood, both from word and deed, and the
maltster having the same latitude allowed him, did not hurry to reply.
He picked up a fragment of cheese, by pecking upon it with his knife,
as a butcher picks up skewers.
Henery appeared in a drab kerseymere great-coat, buttoned over his
smock-frock, the white skirts of the latter being visible to the
distance of about a foot below the coat-tails, which, when you got used
to the style of dress, looked natural enough, and even ornamentalit
certainly was comfortable.
Matthew Moon, Joseph Poorgrass, and other carters and waggoners
followed at his heels, with great lanterns dangling from their hands,
which showed that they had just come from the cart-horse stables, where
they had been busily engaged since four oclock that morning.
And how is she getting on without a baily? the maltster inquired.
Henery shook his head, and smiled one of the bitter smiles, dragging
all the flesh of his forehead into a corrugated heap in the centre.
Shell rue itsurely, surely! he said Benjy Pennyways were not a
true man or an honest bailyas big a betrayer as Judas Iscariot
himself. But to think she can manage alone! He allowed his head to
swing laterally three or four times in silence. Never in all my
creeping upnever!
This was recognized by all as the conclusion of some gloomy speech
which had been expressed in thought alone during the shake of the head;
Henery meanwhile retained several marks of despair upon his face, to
imply that they would be required for use again directly he should go
on speaking.
All will be ruined, and ourselves too, or theres no meat in
gentlemens houses! said Mark Clark in the manner of a man ready to
burst all links of habit.
A headstrong maid, thats what she isand wont listen to no advice at
all. Pride and vanity have ruined many a cobblers dog. Dear, dear,
when I think of it, I sorrows like a man in travel!
True, Henery, you do, Ive heard ye, said Joseph Poorgrass, in a
voice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn smile of misery.
Twould do a martel man no harm to have whats under her bonnet, said
Billy Smallbury, who had just entered, bearing his one tooth before
him. She can spaik real language, and must have some sense somewhere.
Do ye conceive me?
I do, I do; but no bailyI deserved that place, wailed Henery,
signifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at visions of a high destiny
apparently visible to him on Billy Smallburys smock-frock. There,
twas to be, I suppose. Your lot is your lot, and Scripture is nothing;
for if you do good you dont get rewarded according to your works, but
are cheated in some mean way out of your recompense. | 1,078 |
PG27 | 52 | No, no; I dont agree withee there, said Mark Clark, decisively.
Gods a perfect gentleman in that respect.
Good works good pay, so to speak it, attested Joseph Poorgrass.
A short pause ensued, and as a sort of _entracte_ Henery turned and
blew out the lanterns, which the increase of daylight rendered no
longer necessary even in the malthouse, with its one pane of glass.
I wonder what a farmer-woman can want with a harpsichord, dulcimer,
pianner, or whatever tis they dcall it, said the maltster. Liddy
saith sheve a new one.
Got a pianner?
Ay. Seems her old uncles things were not good enough for her. Sheve
bought all but everything new. Theres heavy chairs for the stout, weak
and wiry ones for the slender; great watches, getting on to the size of
clocks, to stand upon the chimbley-piece.
Pictures, for the most part wonderful frames.
Long horse-hair settles for the drunk, with horse-hair pillows at each
end.
Looking-glasses for the pretty.
Lying books for the wicked.
A firm loud tread was now heard stamping outside; the door was opened
about six inches, and somebody on the other side exclaimed,
Neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?
Ay, sure, shepherd, said the conclave.
The door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled from top
to bottom with the blow. Mr. Oak appeared in the entry with a steaming
face, hay-bands wound about his ankles to keep out the snow, a leather
strap round his waist outside the smock-frock, and looking altogether
an epitome of the worlds health and vigour. Four lambs hung in various
embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the dog George, whom
Gabriel had contrived to fetch from Norcombe, stalked solemnly behind.
Well, Shepherd Oak, and hows lambing this year, if I may say it?
inquired Joseph Poorgrass.
Terrible trying, said Oak. Ive been wet through twice a-day, either
in snow or rain, this last fortnight. Cainy and I havent tined our
eyes to-night.
A good few twins, too, I hear, so to speak it?
Too many by half. Yes; tis a very queer lambing this year. We shant
have done by Lady Day.
And last year twer all over by Sexagessamine Sunday, Joseph
remarked.
Bring on the rest, Cain, said Gabriel, and then run back to the
ewes. Ill follow you soon.
Cainy Balla cheery-faced young lad, with a small circular orifice by
way of mouth, advanced and deposited two others, and retired as he was
bidden. Oak lowered the lambs from their unnatural elevation, wrapped
them in hay, and placed them round the fire.
Weve no lambing-hut here, as I used to have at Norcombe, said
Gabriel, and tis such a plague to bring the weakly ones to a house.
If twasnt for your place here, malster, I dont know what I should
do! this keen weather. And how is it with you to-day, malster?
Oh, neither sick nor sorry, shepherd, but no younger.
AyI understand.
Sit down, Shepherd Oak, continued the ancient man of malt. And how
was the old place at Norcombe, when ye went for your dog? I should like
to see the old familiar spot; but faith, I shouldnt know a soul there
now.
I suppose you wouldnt. Tis altered very much.
Is it true that Dicky Hills wooden cider-house is pulled down?
O yesyears ago, and Dickys cottage just above it.
Well, to be sure!,
Yes; and Tompkinss old apple-tree is rooted that used to bear two
hogsheads of cider with its own apples, and no help from other trees.
Rooted?you dont say it! Ah! stirring times we live instirring
times.
And you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle of the
place? Thats turned into a solid iron pump with a large stone trough,
and all complete.
Dear, dearhow the face of nations alter, and what great revolutions
we live to see now-a-days! Yesand tis the same here. Theyve been
talking but now of the misesss strange doings.
What have you been saying about her? inquired Oak, sharply turning to
the rest, and getting very warm.
These middle-aged men have been pulling her over the coals for pride
and vanity, said Mark Clark; but I say, let her have rope enough.
Bless her pretty faceshouldnt I like to do soupon her cherry lips!
The gallant Mark Clark here made a peculiar and well-known sound with
his own.
Mark, said Gabriel, sternly, now you mind this: none of that
dalliance-talkthat philandering waythat dandle-smack-and-coddle style
of yoursabout Miss Everdene. I dont allow it. Do you hear? | 1,118 |
PG27 | 53 | With all my heart, as the old woman said, replied Mr. Clark,
heartily.
I suppose youve been speaking against her? said Oak, turning to
Joseph Poorgrass with a very grim look.
No, nonot a word Itis a real joyful thing that shes no worse,
thats what I say, said Joseph, trembling and blushing with terror.
Matthew just said
Matthew Moon, what have you been saying? asked Oak.
I? Why ye know I wouldnt harm a wormno, not one underground worm?
said Matthew Moon, looking very uneasy.
Well, somebody hasand look here, neighbours. Gabriel, though one of
the quietest and most gentle men on earth, rose to the occasion, with
martial promptness and vigour. Thats my fist. Here he placed his
fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the mathematical
centre of the maltsters little table, and with it gave a bump or two
thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly took in the
idea of fistiness before he went further. Nowthe first man in the
parish that I hear prophesying bad of our mistress, why(here the fist
was raised and let fall, as Thor might have done with his hammer in
assaying it)hell smell and taste thator Im a Dutchman.
All earnestly expressed by their features that their minds did not
wander to Holland for a moment on account of this statement, well
knowing it was but a powerful form of speech; but were deploring the
difference which gave rise to the figure; and Mark Clark cried Hear,
hear; as the undertaker said. The dog George looked up at the same
time after the shepherds menace, and though he understood English but
imperfectly, began to growl.
Now, dont ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down! said Henery, with a
deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of the kind in Christianity.
We hear that ye be a extraordinary good and clever man, shepherd,
said Joseph Poorgrass with considerable anxiety from behind the
maltsters bedstead whither he had retired for safety. Tis a great
thing to be clever, Im sure, he added, making small movements
associated with states of mind rather than body; we wish we were,
dont we, neighbours?
Ay, that we do, sure, said Matthew Moon, with a small anxious laugh
towards Oak, to show how very friendly disposed he was likewise.
Whos been telling you Im clever? said Oak.
Tis blowed about from pillar to post quite common, said Matthew. We
hear that ye can tell the time as well by the stars as we can by the
sun and moon, shepherd.
Yes, I can do a little that way, said Gabriel, as a man of medium
sentiments on the subject.
And that ye can make sun-dials, and prent folks names upon their
waggons almost like copper-plate, with beautiful flourishes, and great
long tails. A excellent fine thing for ye to be such a clever man,
shepherd. Joseph Poorgrass used to prent to Farmer James Everdenes
waggons before you came, and a could never mind which way to turn the
Js and Escould ye, Joseph? Joseph shook his head to express how
absolute was the fact that he couldnt. And so you used to do em the
wrong way, like this, didnt ye, Joseph? Matthew marked on the dusty
floor with his whip-handle
[Illustration: J A M E S]
And how Farmer James would cuss, and call thee a fool, wouldnt he,
Joseph, when a seed his name looking so inside-out-like? continued
Matthew Moon, with feeling.
Aya would, said Joseph, meekly. But, you see, I wasnt so much to
blame, for them Js and Es be such trying sons o dogs for the memory
to mind whether they face backward or forward; and I always had such a
forgetful memory, too.
Tis a bad afiction for ye, Jospeh Poorgrassbeing such a man of
calamity in other ways.
Well, tis; but a happy Providence ordered that it should be no worse,
and I feel my thanks. As to shepherd, there, Im sure misess ought to
have made ye her bailysuch a fitting man fort as you be.
I dont mind owning that I expected it, said Oak, frankly. Indeed, I
hoped for the place. At the same time, Miss Everdene has a right to be
her own baily if she choosesand to keep me down to be a common
shepherd only. Oak drew a slow breath, looked sadly into the bright
ashpit, and seemed lost in thoughts not of the most hopeful hue.
The genial warmth of the fire now began to stimulate the nearly
lifeless lambs to bleat and move their limbs briskly upon the hay, and
to recognize for the first time the fact that they were born. Their
noise increased to a chorus of baas, upon which Oak pulled the milk-can
from before the fire, and taking a small teapot from the pocket of his
smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of the helpless
creatures which were not to be restored to their dams how to drink from
the spouta trick they acquired with astonishing aptitude. | 1,154 |
PG27 | 54 | And she dont even let ye have the skins of the dead lambs, I hear?
resumed Joseph Poorgrass, his eyes lingering on the operations of Oak
with the necessary melancholy.
I dont have them, said Gabriel.
Ye be very badly used, shepherd, hazarded Joseph again, in the hope
of getting Oak as an ally in lamentation after all. I think shes took
against yethat I do.
Oh nonot at all, replied Gabriel, hastily, and a sigh escaped him,
which the deprivation of lamb skins could hardly have caused.
Before any further remark had been added a shade darkened the door, and
Boldwood entered the malthouse, bestowing upon each a nod, of a quality
between friendliness and condescension.
Ah! Oak, I thought you were here, he said. I met the mail-cart ten
minutes ago, and a letter was put into my hand, which I opened without
reading the address. I believe it is yours. You must excuse the
accident please.
O yesnot a bit of difference, Mr. Boldwoodnot a bit, said Gabriel,
readily. He had not a correspondent on earth, nor was there a possible
letter coming to him whose contents the whole parish would not have
been welcome to peruse.
Oak stepped aside, and read the following in an unknown hand:
DEAR FRIEND,I do not know your name, but I think these few lines will
reach you, which I write to thank you for your kindness to me the night
I left Weatherbury in a reckless way. I also return the money I owe
you, which you will excuse my not keeping as a gift. All has ended
well, and I am happy to say I am going to be married to the young man
who has courted me for some timeSergeant Troy, of the 11th Dragoon
Guards, now quartered in Melchester. He would, I know, object to my
having received anything except as a loan, being a man of great
respectability and high honourindeed, a nobleman by blood.
I should be much obliged to you if you would keep the contents of this
letter a secret for the present, dear friend. We mean to surprise
Weatherbury by coming there soon as husband and wife, though I blush to
state it to one nearly a stranger. The sergeant grew up in Weatherbury.
Thanking you again for your kindness,
I am, your sincere well-wisher,
FANNY ROBIN.
Have you read it, Mr. Boldwood? said Gabriel; if not, you had better
do so. I know you are interested in Fanny Robin.
Boldwood read the letter and looked grieved.
Fannypoor Fanny! the end she is so confident of has not yet come, she
should rememberand may never come.
What sort of a man is this Sergeant Troy? said Gabriel.
HmIm afraid not one to build much hope upon in such a case as
this, the farmer murmured, though hes a clever fellow, and up to
everything. A slight romance attaches to him, too. His mother was a
French governess, and it seems that a secret attachment existed between
her and the late Lord Severn. Soon after she was married to a poor
medical man, and while money was forthcoming all went on well.
Unfortunately for her boy, his best friends died; and he got then a
situation as second clerk at a lawyers in Casterbridge. He stayed
there for some time, and might have worked himself into a dignified
position of some sort had he not indulged in the wild freak of
enlisting. I have much doubt if ever little Fanny will surprise us in
the way she mentionsvery much doubt A silly girl!silly girl!
The door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running Cainy Ball
out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny
trumpet, and coughing with noisy vigour and great distension of face.
Now, Cain Ball, said Oak, sternly, why will you run so fast and lose
your breath so? Im always telling you of it.
OhIA puff of mee breathwentthe wrong way, please, Mister Oak, and
made me coughhokhok!
Wellwhat have you come for?
Ive run to tell ye, said the junior-shepherd, supporting his
exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost, that you must come
directly. Two more ewes have twinnedthats whats the matter, Shepherd
Oak.
Oh, thats it, said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present
his thoughts on poor Fanny. You are a good boy to run and tell me,
Cain, and you shall smell a large plum-pudding some day as a treat.
But, before we go, Cainy, bring the tarpot, and well mark this lot and
have done with em. | 1,049 |
PG27 | 55 | Oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it into
the pot, and imprinted on the buttocks of the infant sheep the initials
of her he delighted to muse onB. E., which signified to all the
region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to farmer Bathsheba
Everdene, and to no one else.
Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off. Good morning, Mr. Boldwood.
The shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he had
himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the lambing
field hard bytheir frames being now in a sleek and hopeful state,
pleasantly contrasting with their deaths-door plight of half-an-hour
before.
Boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and turned
back. He followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating return.
On approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed, the farmer
drew out his pocket-book, unfastened it, and allowed it to lie open on
his hand. A letter was revealedBathshebas.
I was going to ask you, Oak, he said, with unreal carelessness, if
you know whose writing this is?
Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed face,
Miss Everdenes.
Oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name. He
now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought. The letter
could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry would not
have been necessary.
Boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready with
their Is it I? in preference to objective reasoning.
The question was perfectly fair, he returnedand there was something
incongruous in the serious earnestness with which he applied himself to
an argument on a valentine. You know it is always expected that privy
inquiries will be made: thats where thefun lies. If the word fun
had been torture, it could not have been uttered with a more
constrained and restless countenance than was Boldwoods then.
Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to his
house to breakfastfeeling twinges of shame and regret at having so far
exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger. He again
placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of the
circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriels information. | 520 |
PG27 | 56 | CHAPTER XVI.
ALL SAINTS AND ALL SOULS
On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of women
and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of All Saints
church, Melchester, at the end of a service without a sermon. They were
about to disperse, when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming
up the central passage, arrested their attention. The step echoed with
a ring unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs. Everybody
looked. A young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three
chevrons of a sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an
embarrassment which was only the more accented by the intense vigour of
his step, and by the determination upon his face to show none. A slight
flush had mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between
these females; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never
paused till he came close to the altar railing. Here for a moment he
stood alone.
The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice, perceived
the new-comer and followed him to the communion-space. He whispered to
the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his turn whispered
to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they also went up the
chancel steps.
Tis a wedding! murmured some of the women, brightening. Lets
wait!
The majority again sat down.
There was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones
turned their heads. From the interior face of the west wall of the
tower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell
beneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery that
struck the large bell in the tower. Between the tower and the church
was a close screen, the door of which was kept shut during services,
hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight. At present, however, the
door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on the bell, and
the mannikins retreat into the nook again, were visible to many, and
audible throughout the church.
The jack had struck half-past eleven.
Wheres the woman? whispered some of the spectators.
The young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of the old
pillars around. He faced the south-east, and was as silent as he was
still.
The silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on, and
nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved. The rattle of the
quarter-jack again from its niche, its blow for three-quarters, its
fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the
congregation to start palpably.
I wonder where the woman is! a voice whispered again.
There began now that slight shifting of feet, that artificial coughing
among several, which betrays a nervous suspense. At length there was a
titter. But the soldier never moved. There he stood, his face to the
south-east, upright as a column, his cap in his hand.
The clock ticked on. The women threw off their nervousness, and titters
and giggling became more frequent. Then came a dead silence. Every one
was waiting for the end. Some persons may have noticed how
extraordinarily the striking of quarters seems to quicken the flight of
time. It was hardly credible that the jack had not got wrong with the
minutes when the rattle began again, the puppet emerged, and the four
quarters were struck fitfully as before. One could almost be positive
that there was a malicious leer upon the hideous creatures face, and a
mischievous delight in its twitchings. Then followed the dull and
remote resonance of the twelve heavy strokes in the tower above. The
women were impressed, and there was no giggle this time.
The clergyman glided into the vestry, and the clerk vanished. The
sergeant had not yet turned; every woman in the church was waiting to
see his face, and he appeared to know it. At last he did turn, and
stalked resolutely down the nave, braving them all, with a compressed
lip. Two bowed and toothless old almsmen then looked at each other and
chuckled, innocently enough; but the sound had a strange weird effect
in that place.
Opposite to the church was a paved square, around which several
overhanging wood buildings of old time cast a picturesque shade. The
young man on leaving the door went to cross the square, when, in the
middle, he met a little woman. The expression of her face, which had
been one of intense anxiety, sank at the sight of his nearly to terror. | 1,036 |
PG27 | 58 | CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE MARKET-PLACE
On Saturday Boldwood was in the market-house as usual, when the
disturber of his dreams entered, and became visible to him. Adam had
awakened from his deep sleep, and behold! there was Eve. The farmer
took courage, and for the first time really looked at her.
Emotional causes and effects are not to be arranged in regular
equation. The result from capital employed in the production of any
movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the cause
itself is absurdly minute. When women are in a freakish mood, their
usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect, seemingly
fails to teach them this, and hence it was that Bathsheba was fated to
be astonished to-day.
Boldwood looked at hernot slily, critically, or understandingly, but
blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing trainas
something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood. To Boldwood
women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary
complementscomets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and permanence,
that whether their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable, and as
subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic as they
superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty to consider.
He saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and profile, and the
roundness of her chin and throat. He saw then the side of her eyelids,
eyes, and lashes, and the shape of her ear. Next he noticed her figure,
her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes.
Boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was right in
his thought, for it seemed impossible that this romance in the flesh,
if so sweet as he imagined, could have been going on long without
creating a commotion of delight among men, and provoking more inquiry
than Bathsheba had done, even though that was not a little. To the best
of his judgment neither nature nor art could improve this perfect one
of an imperfect many. His heart began to move within him. Boldwood, it
must be remembered, though forty years of age, had never before
inspected a woman with the very centre and force of his glance; they
had struck upon all his senses at wide angles.
Was she really beautiful? He could not assure himself that his opinion
was true even now. He furtively said to a neighbour, Is Miss Everdene
considered handsome?
Oh, yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you
remember. A very handsome girl indeed.
A man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions on
the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere
childs word on the point has the weight of an R.A.s. Boldwood was
satisfied now.
And this charming woman had in effect said to him, Marry me. Why
should she have done that strange thing? Boldwoods blindness to the
difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and
originating what they do not suggest, was well matched by Bathshebas
insensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings.
She was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young farmer,
adding up accounts with him as indifferently as if his face had been
the pages of a ledger. It was evident that such a nature as his had no
attraction for a woman of Bathshebas taste. But Boldwood grew hot down
to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the first time the
threshold of the injured lovers hell. His first impulse was to go
and thrust himself between them. This could be done, but only in one
wayby asking to see a sample of her corn. Boldwood renounced the idea.
He could not make the request; it was debasing loveliness to ask it to
buy and sell, and jarred with his conceptions of her.
All this time Bathsheba was conscious of having broken into that
dignified stronghold at last. His eyes, she knew, were following her
everywhere. This was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a
triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay. But
it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she valued it
only as she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.
Being a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects wherein her
heart was not involved, Bathsheba genuinely repented that a freak which
had owed its existence as much to Liddy as to herself, should ever have
been undertaken, to disturb the placidity of a man she respected too
highly to deliberately tease. | 1,023 |
PG27 | 60 | CHAPTER XVIII.
BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATIONA VISIT
Boldwood was tenant of what was called the Lower Farm, and his person
was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter quarter of
Weatherbury could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose god was their
town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this nook for a
day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good society,
to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very least, but it
was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day. They heard the sound of
wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to expectancy: it was only
Mr. Boldwood coming home again.
His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are to a
farm what a fireplace is to a house, were behind, their lower portions
being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door, open half-way
down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails of half-a-dozen
warm and contented horses standing in their stalls; and as thus viewed,
presenting alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a Moorish arch,
the tail being a streak down the midst of each. Over these, and lost to
the eye gazing in from the outer light, the mouths of the same animals
could be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness
by quantities of oats and hay. The restless and shadowy figure of a
colt wandered up and down a loose-box at the end, whilst the steady
grind of all the eaters was occasionally diversified by the rattle of a
rope or the stamp of a foot.
Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwood
himself. This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after
looking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate
would walk and meditate of an evening till the moons rays streamed in
through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the scene.
His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the
crowd and bustle of the market-house. In this meditative walk his foot
met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine,
reddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure
the still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and broad
chin. A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the only
interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large forehead.
The phases of Boldwoods life were ordinary enough, but his was not an
ordinary nature. Spiritually and mentally, no less than socially, a
commonplace general condition is no conclusive proof that a man has not
potentialities above that level.
In all cases this state may be either the mediocrity of inadequacy, as
was Oaks, or what we will venture to call the mediocrity of
counterpoise, as was Boldwoods. The quiet mean to which we originally
found him adhering, and in which, with few exceptions, he had
continually moved, was that of neutralization: it was not structural at
all. That stillness, which struck casual observers more than anything
else in his character and habit, and seemed so precisely like the rest
of inanition, may have been the perfect balance of enormous
antagonistic forcespositives and negatives in fine adjustment. His
equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once.
Boldwood was thus either hot or cold. If an emotion possessed him at
all, it ruled him; a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent.
Stagnant or rapid, it was never slow. He was always hit mortally, or ho
was missed. The shallows in the characters of ordinary men were sterile
strands in his, but his depths were so profound as to be practically
bottomless.
He had no light and careless touches in his constitution, either for
good or for evil. Stern in the outlines of action, mild in the details,
he was serious throughout all. He saw no absurd sides to the follies of
life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the eyes of merry men
and scoffers, and those to whom all things show life as a jest, he was
not intolerable to the earnest and those acquainted with grief. Being a
man who read all the dramas of life seriously, if he failed to please
when they were comedies, there was no frivolous treatment to reproach
him for when they chanced to end tragically.
Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon
which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic
intensity. Had she known Boldwoods moods, her blame would have been
fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover, had she
known her present power for good or evil over this man, she would have
trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present, unluckily for
her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet told her what
Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it was possible to form
guesses concerning his spirited capabilities from old floodmarks
faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused
them. | 1,151 |
PG27 | 61 | Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door, and looked forth across the
level fields. Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the other
side of this a meadow, belonging to Bathshebas farm.
It was now early springthe time of going to grass with the sheep, when
they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid up for
mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks, had
veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come
abruptlyalmost without a beginning. It was that period in the vernal
quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The
vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in
the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where
everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of
frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and
pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of
cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.
Boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures.
They were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak, and Cainy Ball.
When Bathshebas figure shone upon the farmers eyes, it lighted him up
as the moon lights up a great tower. A mans body is as the shell, or
the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous, overflowing or
self-contained. There was a change in Boldwoods exterior from its
former impassibleness; and his face showed that he was now living
outside his defences for the first time, and with a fearful sense of
exposure. It is the usual experience of strong natures when they love.
At last he arrived at a conclusion. It was to go across and inquire
boldly of her.
The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years, without
a duct of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its effect. It
has been observed more than once that the causes of love are chiefly
subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to the truth of the
proposition. No mother existed to absorb his devotion, no sister for
his tenderness, no idle ties for sense. He became surcharged with the
compound, which was genuine lovers love.
He approached the gate of the meadow. Beyond it the ground was
melodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating of the
flock mingling with both. Mistress and man were engaged in the
operation of making a lamb take, which is performed whenever an ewe
has lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe being given
her as a substitute. Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and was tying
the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customary manner,
whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four hurdles, into
which the mother and foisted lamb were driven, where they would remain
till the old sheep conceived an affection for the young one.
Bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manuvre, and saw the
farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full
bloom. Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an April
day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly
discerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the form
of a keenly self-conscious reddening. He also turned and beheld
Boldwood.
At once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had shown him,
Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by that means,
and carried on since he knew not how.
Farmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were
conscious of his presence, and the perception was as too much light
turned upon his new sensibility. He was still in the road, and by
moving on he hoped that neither would recognize that he had originally
intended to enter the field. He passed by with an utter and
overwhelming sensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt. Perhaps in her
manner there were signs that she wished to see himperhaps nothe could
not read a woman. The cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to
consist of the subtlest meanings expressed in misleading ways. Every
turn, look, word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct from
its obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him until
now.
As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that Farmer
Boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness. She collected the
probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself
responsible for Boldwoods appearance there. It troubled her much to
see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle.
Bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a
trifler with the affections of men, and a censors experience on seeing
an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling of
surprise that Bathsheba could be so different from such a one, and yet
so like what a flirt is supposed to be. | 1,132 |
PG27 | 63 | CHAPTER XIX.
THE SHEEP-WASHINGTHE OFFER
Boldwood did eventually call upon her. She was not at home. Of course
not, he murmured. In contemplating Bathsheba as a woman, he had
forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturistthat being
as much of a farmer, and as extensive a farmer, as himself, her
probable whereabouts was out-of-doors at this time of the year. This,
and the other oversights Boldwood was guilty of, were natural to the
mood, and still more natural to the circumstances. The great aids to
idealization in love were present here: occasional observation of her
from a distance, and the absence of social intercourse with hervisual
familiarity, oral strangeness. The smaller human elements were kept out
of sight; the pettinesses that enter so largely into all earthly living
and doing were disguised by the accident of lover and loved-one not
being on visiting terms, and there was hardly awakened a thought in
Boldwood that sorry household realities appertained to her, or that
she, like all others, had moments of commonplace, when to be least
plainly seen was to be most prettily remembered. Thus a mild sort of
apotheosis took place in his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed
within his own horizon, a troubled creature like himself.
It was the end of May when the farmer determined to be no longer
repulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense. He had by this time
grown used to being in love; the passion now startled him less even
when it tortured him more, and he felt himself adequate to the
situation. On inquiring for her at her house they had told him she was
at the sheep-washing, and he went off to seek her there.
The sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of stonework in
the meadows, full of the clearest water. To birds on the wing its
glassy surface, reflecting the light sky, must have been visible for
miles round as a glistening Cyclops eye in a green face. The grass
about the margin at this season was a sight to remember longin a minor
sort of way. Its activity in sucking the moisture from the rich damp
sod was almost a process observable by the eye. The outskirts of this
level water-meadow were diversified by rounded and hollow pastures,
where just now everything that was not a buttercup was a daisy, losing
this character somewhat as they sank to the verge of the intervening
river. It slid along noiselessly as a shade, the swelling reeds and
sedge forming a flexible palisade along its moist brink. To the north
of the mead were trees, the leaves of which were new, soft, moist, and
flexible, not yet having stiffened and darkened under summer sun and
drought, their colour being yellow beside a green, green beside a
yellow. From the recesses of this knot of foliage the loud notes of
three cuckoos were resounding through the still air.
Boldwood went meditating down the slopes with his eyes on his boots,
which the yellow pollen from the buttercups had bronzed in artistic
gradations. A tributary of the main stream flowed through the basin of
the pool by means of an inlet and outlet at opposite points of its
diameter. Shepherd Oak, Jan Coggan, Moon, Poorgrass, Cain Ball, and
several others were assembled here, all dripping wet to the very roots
of their hair, and Bathsheba was standing by in a new riding-habitthe
most elegant she had ever wornthe reins of her horse being looped over
her arm. Flagons of cider were rolling about upon the green. The meek
sheep were pushed into the pool by Coggan and Matthew Moon, who stood
by the lower hatch, immersed to their waists; then Gabriel, who stood
on the brink, thrust them under as they swam along, with an instrument
like a crutch, formed for the purpose, and also for assisting the
exhausted animals when the wool became saturated and they began to
sink. They were let out against the stream, and through the upper
opening, all impurities thus flowing away belowCainy Ball and Joseph,
who performed this latter operation, being if possible wetter than the
rest; they resembled dolphins under a fountain, every protuberance and
angle of their clothes dribbling forth a small rill.
Boldwood came close and bid her good-morning, with such constraint that
she could not but think he had stepped across to the washing for its
own sake, hoping not to find her there; more, she fancied his brow
severe and his eye slighting. Bathsheba immediately contrived to
withdraw, and glided along by the river till she was a stones throw
off: she heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a consciousness
that love was encircling her like a perfume. Instead of turning or
waiting, Bathsheba went further among the high sedges, but Boldwood
seemed determined, and pressed on till they were completely past the
bend of the river. Here, without being seen, they could hear the
splashing and shouts of the washers above. | 1,135 |
PG27 | 64 | Miss Everdene! said the farmer.
She trembled, turned, and said Good morning. His tone was so utterly
removed from all she had expected as a beginning. It was lowness and
quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep meanings, their form, at the
same time, being scarcely expressed. Silence has sometimes a remarkable
power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering
without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the
same way, to say a little is often to tell more than to say a great
deal. Boldwood told everything in that word.
As the consciousness expands on learning that what was fancied to be
the rumble of wheels is the reverberation of thunder, so did
Bathshebas at her intuitive conviction.
I feelalmost too muchto think, he said, with a solemn simplicity.
I have come to speak to you without preface. My life is not my own
since I have beheld you clearly, Miss EverdeneI come to make you an
offer of marriage.
[Illustration: I FEELALMOST TOO MUCHTO THINK, HE SAID.]
Bathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral countenance, and all
the motion she made was that of closing lips which had previously been
a little parted.
I am now forty-one years old, he went on. I may have been called a
confirmed bachelor, and I was a confirmed bachelor. I had never any
views of myself as a husband in my earlier days, nor have I made any
calculation on the subject since I have been older. But we all change,
and my change, in this matter, came with seeing you. I have felt
lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every
respect. Beyond all things, I want you as my wife.
I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do not
feelwhat would justify me toin accepting your offer, she stammered.
This giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the sluices of
feeling that Boldwood had as yet kept closed.
My life is a burden without you, he exclaimed, in a low voice. I
want youI want you to let me say I love you again and again!
Bathsheba answered nothing, and the horse upon her arm seemed so
impressed, that instead of cropping the herbage she looked up.
I think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what I have to
tell!
Bathshebas momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why he thought
that, till she remembered that, far from being a conceited assumption
on Boldwoods part, it was but the natural conclusion of serious
reflection based on deceptive premises of her own offering.
I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you, the farmer continued
in an easier tone, and put my rugged feeling into a graceful shape:
but I have neither power nor patience to learn such things. I want you
for my wifeso wildly that no other feeling can abide in me; but I
should not have spoken out had I not been led to hope.
The valentine again! O that valentine! she said to herself, but not a
word to him.
If you can love me, say so, Miss Everdene. If notdont say no.
Mr. Boldwood, it is painful to have to say I am surprised, so that I
dont know how to answer you with propriety and respectbut am only
just able to speak out my feelingI mean my meaning; that I am afraid I
cant marry you, much as I respect you. You are too dignified for me to
suit you, sir.
But, Miss Everdene!
II didntI know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that
valentineforgive me, sirit was a wanton thing which no woman with any
self-respect should have done. If you will only pardon my
thoughtlessness, I promise never to
No, no, no. Dont say thoughtlessness! Make me think it was something
morethat it was a sort of prophetic instinctthe beginning of a
feeling that you would like me. You torture me to say it was done in
thoughtlessnessI never thought of it in that light, and I cant endure
it. Ah! I wish I knew how to win you! but that I cant doI can only
ask if I have already got you. If I have not, and it is not true that
you have come unwittingly to me as I have to you, I can say no more.
I have not fallen in love with you, Mr. Boldwoodcertainly I must say
that. She allowed a very small smile to creep for the first time over
her serious face in saying this, and the white row of upper teeth, and
keenly cut lips already noticed, suggested an idea of heartlessness,
which was immediately contradicted by the pleasant eyes. | 1,061 |
PG27 | 65 | But you will just thinkin kindness and condescension thinkif you
cannot bear with me as a husband! I fear I am too old for you, but
believe me I will take more care of you than would many a man of your
own age. I will protect and cherish you with all my strengthI will
indeed. You shall have no caresbe worried by no household affairs, and
live quite at ease, Miss Everdene. The dairy superintendence shall be
done by a manI can afford it wellyou shall never have so much as to
look out of doors at hay-making time, or to think of weather in the
harvest. I rather cling to the chaise, because it is he same my poor
father and mother drove, but if you dont like it I will sell it, and
you shall have a pony-carriage of your own. I cannot say how far above
every other idea and object on earth you seem to menobody knowsGod
only knowshow much you are to me!
Bathshebas heart was young, and it swelled with sympathy for the
deep-natured man who spoke so simply.
Dont say it: dont! I cannot bear you to feel so much, and me to feel
nothing. And I am afraid they will notice us, Mr. Boldwood. Will you
let the matter rest now? I cannot think collectedly. I did not know you
were going to say this to me. Oh, I am wicked to have made you suffer
so! She was frightened as well as agitated at his vehemence.
Say then, that you dont absolutely refuse. Do not quite refuse!
I can do nothing. I cannot answer.
I may speak to you again on the subject?
Yes.
I may think of you?
Yes, I suppose you may think of me.
And hope to obtain you?
Nodo not hope! Let us go on.
I will call upon you again to-morrow.
Noplease not. Give me time.
YesI will give you any time, he said earnestly and gratefully. I am
happier now.
NoI beg you! Dont be happier if happiness only comes from my
agreeing. Be neutral, Mr. Boldwood! I must think.
I will wait, he said.
And then she turned away. Boldwood dropped his eyes to the ground, and
stood long like a man who did not know where he was. Realities then
returned upon him like the pain of a wound received in an excitement
which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on. | 548 |
PG27 | 66 | CHAPTER XX.
PERPLEXITYGRINDING THE SHEARSA QUARREL
He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire,
Bathsheba said, musingly.
Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did
not exercise kindness here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves
are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.
Bathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was eventually able to
look calmly at his offer. It was one which many women of her own
station in the neighbourhood, and not a few of higher rank, would have
been wild to accept and proud to publish. In every point of view,
ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable that she, a lonely
girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well-to-do, and respected
man. He was close to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his
qualities were even supererogatory. Had she felt, which she did not,
any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not
reasonably have rejected him as a woman who frequently appealed to her
understanding for deliverance from her whims. Boldwood as a means to
marriage was unexceptionable: she esteemed and liked him: yet she did
not want him. It appears that men take wives because possession is not
possible without marriage, and that women accept husbands because
marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing
aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive
on the womans part was wanting here. Besides, Bathshebas position as
absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty
had not yet begun to wear off.
But a disquiet filled her which was somewhat to her credit, for it
would have affected few. Beyond the mentioned reasons with which she
combated her objections, she had a strong feeling that having been the
one who began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the
consequences. Still the reluctance remained. She said in the same
breath that it would be ungenerous not to marry Boldwood, and that she
couldnt do it to save her life.
Bathshebas was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. An
Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed
actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion.
Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always
remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but,
unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into
deeds.
The next day to that of the declaration, she found Gabriel Oak at the
bottom of her garden, grinding his shears for the sheep-shearing. All
the surrounding cottages were more or less scenes of the same
operation; the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts of
the village as from an armoury previous to a campaign. Peace and war
kiss each other at their hours of preparation, sickles, scythes,
shears, and pruning-hooks, mingling with swords, bayonets, and lances,
in their common necessity for point and edge.
Cainy Ball turned the handle of Gabriels grindstone, his head
performing a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the
wheel. Oak stood somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of
sharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his body
thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced sideways, with a
critical compression of the lips and contraction of the eyelids to
crown the attitude.
His mistress came up and looked upon them in silence for a minute or
two; then she said,
Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare. Ill turn the winch
of the grindstone. I want to speak to you, Gabriel.
Cain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle. Gabriel had glanced up in
intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again.
Bathsheba turned the winch, and Gabriel applied the shears.
The peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful
tendency to benumb the mind. It is a sort of attenuated variety of
Ixions punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of
gaols. The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the bodys
centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere
between the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt the unpleasant
symptoms after two or three dozen turns.
Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears? she said. My
head is in a whirl, and I cant talk. | 1,030 |
PG27 | 67 | Gabriel turned. Bathsheba then began, with some awkwardness, allowing
her thoughts to stray occasionally from her story to attend to the
shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening.
I wanted to ask you if the men made any observations on my going
behind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood yesterday?
Yes, they did, said Gabriel. You dont hold the shears right, missI
knew you wouldnt know the wayhold like this.
He relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two hands completely in
his own (taking each as we sometimes clasp a childs hand in teaching
him to write), grasped the shears with her. Incline the edge so, he
said.
Hands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a
peculiarly long time by the instructor as he spoke.
That will do, exclaimed Bathsheba. Loose my hands. I wont have them
held! Turn the winch.
Gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the
grinding went on.
Did the men think it odd? she said again.
Odd was not the idea, miss.
What did they say?
That Farmer Boldwoods name and your own were likely to be flung over
pulpit together before the year was out.
I thought so by the look of them! Why, theres nothing in it. A more
foolish remark was never made, and I want you to contradict it: thats
what I came for.
Gabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between his movements of
incredulity, relieved.
They must have heard our conversation, she continued.
Well, then, Bathsheba! said Oak, stopping the handle, and gazing into
her face with astonishment.
Miss Everdene, you mean, she said, with dignity.
I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of marriage, I am not
going to tell a story and say he didnt to please you. I have already
tried to please you too much for my own good.
Bathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity. She did not know
whether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with
him for having got over ithis tone being ambiguous.
I said I wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going
to be married to him, she murmured, with a slight decline in her
assurance.
I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene. And I could
likewise give an opinion to you on what you have done.
I daresay. But I dont want your opinion.
I suppose not, said Gabriel bitterly, and going on with his turning,
his words rising and falling in a regular swell and cadence as he
stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according to his
position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally along the
garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground.
With Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always
happen, time gained was prudence insured. It must be added, however,
that time was very seldom gained. At this period the single opinion in
the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder than
her own was Gabriel Oaks. And the outspoken honesty of his character
was such that on any subject, even that of her love for, or marriage
with, another man, the same disinterestedness of opinion might be
calculated on, and be had for the asking. Thoroughly convinced of the
impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to
injure that of another. This is a lovers most stoical virtue, as the
lack of it is a lovers most venial sin. Knowing he would reply truly,
she asked the question, painful as she must have known the subject
would be. Such is the selfishness of some charming women. Perhaps it
was some excuse for her thus torturing honesty to her own advantage,
that she had absolutely no other sound judgment within easy reach.
Well, what is your opinion of my conduct, she said, quietly.
That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman.
In an instant Bathshebas face coloured with the angry crimson of a
Danby sunset. But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the reticence
of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more noticeable.
The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake.
Perhaps you dont like the rudeness of my reprimanding you, for I know
it is rudeness; but I thought it would do good.
She instantly replied sarcastically,
On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that I see in your abuse
the praise of discerning people. | 1,037 |
PG27 | 68 | I am glad you dont mind it, for I said it honestly, and with every
serious meaning.
I see. But, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you are
amusingjust as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes say a
sensible word.
It was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper, and
on that account Gabriel had never in his life kept his own better. He
said nothing. She then broke out,
I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies? In my
not marrying you, perhaps!
Not by any means, said Gabriel quietly. I have long given up
thinking of that matter.
Or wishing it, I suppose, she said; and it was apparent that she
expected an unhesitating denial of this supposition.
Whatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words,
Or wishing it either.
A woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her, and
with a rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted
to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that
he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion
unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizesthere is a
triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. This was
what she had been expecting, and what she had not got. To be lectured
because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of
open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating. He had not finished,
either. He continued in a more agitated voice:
My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for
playing pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime.
Leading on a man you dont care for is not a praiseworthy action. And
even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you might
have let him discover it in some way of true loving-kindness, and not
by sending him a valentines letter.
Bathsheba laid down the shears.
I cannot allow any man toto criticise my private conduct! she
exclaimed. Nor will I for a minute. So youll please leave the farm at
the end of the week!
It may have been a peculiarityat any rate it was a factthat when
Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip
trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her
nether lip quivered now.
Very well, so I will, said Gabriel calmly. He had been held to her by
a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather
than by a chain he could not break. I should be even better pleased to
go at once, he added.
Go at once then, in Heavens name! said she, her eyes flashing at
his, though never meeting them. Dont let me see your face any more.
Very well, Miss Everdeneso it shall be.
And he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as
Moses left the presence of Pharaoh. | 689 |
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