Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  “Yes’m. Here we be, ‘a b’lieve,” 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 Thompson’s Wonderfuls with a dibble.”

  “Yes — I see. Are they satisfactory women?” she inquired softly of Henery Fray.

  “Oh mem — don’t 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.

  “Now the next. Laban Tall, you’ll stay on working for me?”

  “For you or anybody that pays me well, ma’am,” replied the young married man.

  “True — the 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, he’ll stay, ma’am!” said again the shrill tongue of Laban’s lawful wife.

  “Well, he can speak for himself, I suppose.”

  “Oh Lord, not he, ma’am! 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, ma’am.”

  “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.

  “Oh — he will. Who can he have?”

  “Young Cain Ball is a very good lad,” Henery said, “and Shepherd Oak don’t 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.

  “No, I don’t 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, Cainey Ball to be under-shepherd. And you quite understand your duties? — you I mean, Gabriel Oak?”

  “Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene,” said Shepherd Oak from the doorpost. “If I don’t, I’ll 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.) “Here’s Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge.”

  “And what’s 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 hadn’t 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, ma’am, in round numbers, she’s run away with the soldiers,” said William.

  “No; not a steady girl like Fanny!”

  “I’ll tell ye all particulars. When I got to Casterbridge Barracks, they said, ‘The Eleventh Dragoon-Guards be gone away, and new troops have come.’ The Eleventh left last week for Melchester and onwards. 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. They passed near here.”

  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-on’s 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 they’re not gone to any war?”

  “No, ma’am; but they be gone to take the places of them who may, which is very close connected. And so I said to myself, Fanny’s young man was one of the regiment, and she’s gone after him. There, ma’am, that’s 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 Boldwood’s 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 don’t 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. Don’t any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I’m a woman I don’t understand the difference between bad goings-on and good.”

  (All.) “No’m!”

  (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.) “Yes’m!”

  “And so good-night.”

  (All.) “Good-night, ma’am.”

  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.

  CHAPTER XI

  OUTSI
DE THE BARRACKS — SNOW — A MEETING

  For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a certain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury, at a later hour on this same snowy evening — if 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 upland.

  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 waste. Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed 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, and an obliteration by snow.

  This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid 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 else — the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. The vast arch 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; which were flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass. If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The indistinct summit of the facade 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 water’s 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, though it seemed human.

  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 smaller. 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.

  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 wheels — together with a few small sounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man laughter — caused 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.

  “Who’s 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 to-night.

  “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, Frank — don’t 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 something in the woman’s tone which is not that of the wife, and there was a manner in the man which is rarely a husband’s. 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.”

  “Well — I said that you might.”

  “Yes, I mean that I might. You are glad to see me, Frank?”

  “Oh yes — of course.”

  “Can you — come 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 the county gaol till to-morrow morning.”

  “Then I shan’t see you till then!” The words were in a faltering tone of disappointment.

  “How did you get here from Weatherbury?”

  “I walked — some part of the way — the rest by the carriers.”

  “I am surprised.”

  “Yes — so am I. And Frank, when will it be?”

  “What?”

  “That you promised.”

  “I don’t quite recollect.”

  “O you do! Don’t speak like that. It weighs me to the earth. It makes me say what ought to be said first by you.”

  “Never mind — say it.”

  “O, must I? — it is, when shall we be married, Frank?”

  “Oh, I see. Well — you 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. Mary’s, and this is not. So they will have to be published in both.”

  “Is that the law?”

  “Yes. O Frank — you think me forward, I am afraid! Don’t, dear Frank — will you — for I love you so. And you said lots of times you would marry me, and — and — I — I — I — ” />
  “Don’t 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. We’ll settle in a few days.”

  “You have the permission of the officers?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “O — how 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.”

  “Yes — yes — it is. It was wrong of me to worry you. I’ll go away now. Will you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twills’s, in North Street? I don’t like to come to the Barracks. There are bad women about, and they think me one.”

  “Quite, so. I’ll come to you, my dear. Good-night.” “Good-night, Frank — good-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.

  “Ho — ho — Sergeant — ho — ho!” 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.

  CHAPTER XII

  FARMERS — A RULE — AN EXCEPTION

  The first public evidence of Bathsheba’s decision to be a farmer in her own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following market-day in the cornmarket at Casterbridge.

  The low though extensive hall, supported by beams and 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 auditor’s 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 usage — bending it round his back, forming an arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the ground till it reached nearly a semicircle; 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.