Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

  “’Tis a curious nature for a man,” said Jan Coggan.

  “Yes,” continued Joseph Poorgrass — his shyness, which was so painful as a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was regarded as 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 a’ awkward gift for a man, poor soul,” said the maltster. “And how long have ye have suffered from it, Joseph?”

  “Oh, ever since I was a boy. Yes — mother was concerned to her heart about it — yes. But ‘twas all nought.”

  “Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?”

  “Oh ay, tried all sorts o’ company. They took me to Greenhill Fair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were women-folk riding round — standing upon horses, with hardly anything on but their smocks; they called out wild hulloos to me, and lifted up their shifts, showing their boobies — and would have showed me more, but I kept my eyes tight shut, and it didn’t cure me a morsel. And then I was put errand-man at the Women’s Skittle Alley at the back of the Tailor’s Arms in Casterbridge. ‘Twas a horrible sinful situation, and a very curious place for a good man. There was no skittles, only the dark alley with the harlots leaning, spread out like gamekeeper’s weasels against the wall, they laid their dresses open to the waist, and any man that had the lust for a woman’s parts could go along there and call for a quean by name, or, if you hadn’t her name, by the thing you wanted from her. They would set-to in a trice, rocking together, crying out as they spilled their seed, with no more niceness than sows and boars, some stretched out on the filthy ground, some up agin the wall. The men who used ‘em — some was respectable business gentlemen of Casterbridge, you’d be surprised if I was to tell their names — did their business in full sight of the others, and the grunting and groaning I heerd there was worse than a herd of Gloucester pigs at the slaughter. I had to stand and look bawdy people in the face from morning till night, knowing where they had lately been and what their peculiar pleasure was — o, there were some men liked giving it from behind, some liked to feel the seed sucked out of them, some only wanted to watch the sport and handle themselves till they slung their jelly, others lusted for viler usages — and I saw all, and could have had a part in all; but ‘twas no use — I 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.”

  “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 ‘ee, Joseph. For ye see, shepherd, though ‘tis very well for a woman, dang it all, ‘tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?”

  “’Tis — ‘tis,” said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation he would never share before this company, be they never so frank and intimate, where in the Women’s Skittle Alley was to be found, not a nameless drab, but his very own love, Bathsheba, her skirts lifted, her juices primed and ready; and all he had to do was command her to do his bidding, to name whatever thing he wanted, his flesh to be lost in her flesh, crying out with ecstasy, sensually satiated, all lust gratified. Horrible though it was to picture, it gave him the strongest sensations he had felt for some time, and for that aching pleasure, Joseph’s story had its use. “Yes, very awkward for the man.”

  “Ay, and he’s very timid, too,” observed Jan Coggan. “Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn’t ye, Master Poorgrass?”

  “No, no, no; not that story!” expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern.

  “ — 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 respect 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, now — that’s too much!” said the timid man, becoming a man of brazen courage all of a sudden. “I didn’t say sir. I’ll take my oath I didn’t say ‘Joseph Poorgrass o’ Weatherbury, sir.’ No, no; what’s right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman’s rank would be hollering there at that time o’ night. ‘Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,’ — that’s every word I said, and I shouldn’t ha’ said that if it hadn’t been for Keeper Day’s metheglin, the drink that makes a sober man into a drunken sailor … There, ‘twas a merciful thing it ended where it did.”

  The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company, Jan went on meditatively.

  “And he’s the fearfullest man, bain’t ye, Joseph? Ay, another time ye were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren’t ye, Joseph?”

  “I was,” replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions 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 Devil’s hand in it, he kneeled down.”

  “Ay,” said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire, the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the experience alluded to. “My heart died within me, that time; but I kneeled down and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then the Belief right through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer. But no, the gate wouldn’t 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 don’t do it nothing will, and I’m a lost man. Well, when I got to Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found the gate would open — yes, 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 discussed.

  Gabriel broke the silence. “What sort of a place is this to live at, and what sort of a mis’ess is Miss Everdene to work under?” Gabriel’s bosom thrilled gently and his manhood stirred as if called to action, as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly the innermost subject of his heart.

  “We d’ know little of her — nothing. 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 couldn’t save the man. As I take it, she’s going to keep on the farm.

  “That’s about the shape o’t, ‘a b’lieve,” said Jan Coggan. “Ay, ‘tis a very good family. I’d as soon be under ‘em as under one here and there. Her uncle was a very fair sort of man. Did ye know en, shepherd — a bachelor-man?”

  “Not at all.”

  “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 any — outside 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 man’s 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-basket — so thorough dry that th
at ale would slip down — ah, ‘twould slip down sweet! Happy times! Heavenly times! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house! You can mind, Jacob? You used to go wi’ me sometimes.”

  “I can — I can,” said Jacob. “That one, too, that we had at Buck’s Head on a White Monday was a pretty tipple.”

  “’Twas. But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no nearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was none like those in Farmer Everdene’s 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 at such times is a great relief to a merry soul.”

  “True,” said the maltster. “Nater requires her swearing at the regular times, or she’s not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of life.”

  “But Charlotte,” continued Coggan — “not 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 luck’s way, and perhaps ‘a went downwards after all, poor soul.”

  “And did any of you know Miss Everdene’s 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 didn’t live here. They’ve been dead for years. Father, what sort of people were mis’ess’ father and mother?”

  “Well,” said the maltster, “he wasn’t much to look at; but she was a lovely woman. He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart. Oh, he couldn’t sit still for wanting to have her, was near to bursting his breeches to get into her, I’ll warrant, only for her being a modest and decent woman that made him wait for the marriage banns to be called.”

  “Used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o’ times, so ‘twas said,” observed Coggan. “She had a fancy to be courted in the churchyard, thinking it more respectable, but anyone could hide behind an old yew tree and watch ‘em that had a mind to, every night for a six-month they’d be kissing and fondling, and he fumbling just a little at her skirts, hoping to get her over her scruples.”

  “He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I’ve been told,” said the maltster.

  “Ay,” said Coggan. “He admired her so much that he used to light the candle three times a night to look at her. To please him, she would leave off her nightgown. She had the most elegant boobies of any woman in Casterbridge, he would say, and the fairest quim — I only use his words, mark ‘ee.”

  “Boundless love; I shouldn’t have supposed it in the universe!” murmured 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 Everdene — that was the man’s name, sure. ‘Man,’ saith I in my hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that — ‘a 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.

  “Oh 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 scrutinising a coal, which had fallen among the ashes, took up the narrative, with a private twirl of his eye. “Well, now, you’d hardly believe it, but that man — our Miss Everdene’s father — was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a while. Understand? he didn’t want to be fickle, but he couldn’t help it. His peculiar fancy was for young wives, newly-wed — pretty, open-hearted jades whose husbands had proved disappointing; these he could never resist. Mr. Everdene had a ready tongue, and a’ knew well how to use it on the quivering sensibilities of those young women —

  “For shame!” cried the maltster, “’I’ll wager he did no such tricks with his tongue!”

  “I mean by that, only that he could sweet-talk them into getting into beds and bushes and haystacks, and even once, ‘tis said, in the schoolhouse, when the children were gone home; his tackle was always at the ready, his hand was a roving kind of a hand that could tease a young woman into frenzies, and he positively required the satisfaction of having his organ buried to the hilt in a woman’s part, ‘tis said, four or five times a day. The pore feller were faithful and true enough to his wife in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would. He spoke to me in real tribulation about it once. ‘Coggan,’ he said, ‘I could never wish for a handsomer woman than I’ve got, but feeling she’s ticketed as my lawful wife, I can’t 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. He had the pleasant notion of asking her to play the part of a hesitating virgin, resisting him at first, then gradually succumbing to his seduction. Sometimes he begged her to chastise his bulge with her hand, a little parasol, or a wooden spoon; after a few occasions of such diversions she readily learned the trick of a blow that stimulates as well as smarts; she could excite him more, make him cry out with exquisite delight, and to her own gratification she found herself more aroused by this than by any regular sport between the sheets. To do the act of darkness secretly in the shop, as if her parents were asleep upstairs, to stifle their moans of pleasure, to reach the heights of joy while dissembling that this act of union was her first, and that she was a virgin being willingly deflowered, transported both of them into a heaven of shared passion and connubial bliss. And 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 mutual love.”

  Well, ‘twas a most ungodly remedy,” murmured Joseph Poorgrass; “but we ought to feel deep cheerfulness 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 entirely — yes, gross unlawfulness, so to say it.”

  “You see,” said Billy Smallbury, “The man’s will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didn’t chime in.”

  “He got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years, wasn’t 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; 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 natural to the saintly inclined.”

  “Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things,” 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.”

  “Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time,” said Henery Fray. “Never should have thought she’d 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 gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of ironical knowledge.

  “A queer Christian he do be, like the Devil’s head in a cowl, as the saying is,” volunteered Mark Clark.

  “He is,” said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain point. “Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as soon tell a lie Sundays as working-days — that I do so.”

  “Good faith, you do talk!” said G
abriel.

  “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 miseries of life than ordinary men are capable of. “Ah, there’s people of one sort, and people of another, but that man — bless your souls!”

  Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. “You must be a very aged man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient,” he remarked.

  “Father’s so old that ‘a can’t mind his age, can ye, father?” interposed Jacob. “And he’s growed terrible crooked too, lately,” Jacob continued, surveying his father’s 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, father — wouldn’t 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, malter?”

  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 don’t mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon up the places I’ve lived at, and so get it that way. I bode at Upper Longpuddle across there” (nodding to the north) “till I were eleven. I bode seven at Kingsbere” (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 sincere belief in the fact). “Then I malted at Durnover four year, and four year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at Millpond St. Jude’s” (nodding north-west-by-north). “Old Twills wouldn’t 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 I’ve been here one-and-thirty year come Candlemas. How much is that?”