Far from the Madding Crowd Page 5

  CHAPTER IV

  GABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE 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 whichrecognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilitiesof capture to the subordinated man.

  This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads uponthe emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.

  Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitantprofit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom ofpure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially,is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak'sfeelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations uponhis chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that inwhich Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quitestruck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look atthe dog. However, he continued to watch through the hedge for herregular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepenedwithout any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oakhad nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able toframe 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 girl's name was BathshebaEverdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. Hedreaded the eighth day.

  At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give milk forthat year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more. Gabrielhad reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipateda short time before. He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a privateenjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair,though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolatedhimself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptiblysmall. Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriagetransforms a distraction into a support, the power of which shouldbe, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree ofimbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in thisdirection, and said to himself, "I'll make her my wife, or upon mysoul I shall be good for nothing!"

  All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which hemight consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt.

  He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a livinglamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution--afine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visibleto make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasionalgleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sundaybasket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, theaunt--George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of greatconcern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking.

  Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney withstrange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down thechimney to the spot of its origin--seen the hearth and Bathshebabeside it--beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she hadworn on the hill were by association equally with her person includedin the compass of his affection they seemed at this early time ofhis love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called BathshebaEverdene.

  He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind--of a nature betweenthe carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of a degree betweenfine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection. He thoroughly cleaned hissilver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots,looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of theplantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on hisway back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box,put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of anelegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without thedefects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon hisusually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepenedit to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Romancement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wetseaweed round a boulder after the ebb.

  Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of aknot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour tobe no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than ofthose under them. It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one,for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, justas he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going intovarious arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of hisdog George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age atwhich all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste ofbreath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order,when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort ofCommination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone throughonce now and then to frighten the flock for their own good.

  A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat hadrun:

  "Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it;--did he,poor dear!"

  "I beg your pardon," said Oak to the voice, "but George was walkingon behind me with a temper as mild as milk."

  Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgivingas to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, andhe heard the person retreat among the bushes.

  Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows intohis forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of aninterview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as forthe better, any initial difference from expectation causes nippingsensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed:his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds ofopening.

  Bathsheba's aunt was indoors. "Will you tell Miss Everdene thatsomebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak. (Callingone's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be takenas an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springsfrom a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards andannouncements, have no notion whatever.)

  Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers.

  "Will you come in, Mr. Oak?"

  "Oh, thank 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. "I'vebrought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I thought she might like one torear; girls do."

  "She might," said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; "though she's only a visitorhere. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in."

  "Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down. "The lamb isn'treally the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In short, I was goingto ask her if she'd like to be married."

  "And were you indeed?"

  "Yes. Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her.D'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?"

  "Let me think," said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously...."Yes--bless you, ever so many young men. You see, Farmer Oak, she'sso good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going tobe a governess once, you know, only she was too wild. Not that heryoung men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she musthave a dozen!"

  "That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in thestone floor with sorrow. "I'm only an every-day sort of man, and myonly chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use inmy waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll take myself offhome-along, Mrs. Hurst."

  When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, heheard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of moretreble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodiesitself when shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girlracing after him, waving a white handkerchief.

  Oak stood still--and the runner drew nearer. It was BathshebaEverdene. Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, asit appeared, from emotion, but from running.

  "Farmer Oak--I--" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up infront of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her
side.

  "I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her furtherspeech.

  "Yes--I know that," she said panting like a robin, her face red andmoist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries offthe dew. "I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I shouldhave come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say--thatmy aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--"

  Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear,"he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "Wait a bit tillyou've found your breath."

  "--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young manalready," Bathsheba went on. "I haven't a sweetheart at all--and Inever had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it wasSUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several."

  "Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smilingone of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He heldout his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side bypressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still herloud-beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, sothat it slipped through his fingers like an eel.

  "I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degreeless assurance than when he had seized her hand.

  "Yes; you have."

  "A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soonbe paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I havegot on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel uttered "a little" in atone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal."He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twiceas hard as I do now."

  He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba hadovertaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush,now laden with red berries. Seeing his advance take the form of anattitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of herperson, she edged off round the bush.

  "Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him withrounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you."

  "Well--that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay. "To run after anybodylike this, and then say you don't want him!"

  "What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly, and yethalf conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made forherself--"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of myhaving a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's propertyin that way, though possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if I'dwanted you I shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould havebeen the FORWARDEST thing! But there was no harm in hurrying tocorrect a piece of false news that had been told you."

  "Oh, no--no harm at all." But there is such a thing as being toogenerous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with amore appreciative sense of all the circumstances--"Well, I am notquite certain it was no harm."

  "Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted tomarry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill."

  "Come," said Gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or two. I'llwait a while, Miss Everdene. Will you marry me? Do, Bathsheba. Ilove you far more than common!"

  "I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously; "if I canthink out of doors; my mind spreads away so."

  "But you can give a guess."

  "Then give me time." Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into thedistance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.

  "I can make you happy," said he to the back of her head, across thebush. "You shall have a piano in a year or two--farmers' wives aregetting to have pianos now--and I'll practise up the flute right wellto play with you in the evenings."

  "Yes; I should like that."

  "And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market--and niceflowers, and birds--cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful,"continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality.

  "I should like it very much."

  "And a frame for cucumbers--like a gentleman and lady."

  "Yes."

  "And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaperlist of marriages."

  "Dearly I should like that!"

  "And the babies in the births--every man jack of 'em! And at home bythe fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I lookup there will be you."

  "Wait, wait, and don't be improper!"

  Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He regarded the redberries between them over and over again, to such an extent, thatholly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposalof marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him.

  "No; 'tis no use," she said. "I don't want to marry you."

  "Try."

  "I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriagewould be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me, andthink I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and allthat, But a husband--"

  "Well!"

  "Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, therehe'd be."

  "Of course he would--I, that is."

  "Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at awedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since awoman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry--at leastyet."

  "That's a terrible wooden story!"

  At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to herdignity by a slight sweep away from him.

  "Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupiderthan that," said Oak. "But dearest," he continued in a palliativevoice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none theless so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it wasrather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. "Why won't youhave me?" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side.

  "I cannot," she said, retreating.

  "But why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of everreaching her, and facing over the bush.

  "Because I don't love you."

  "Yes, but--"

  She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it washardly ill-mannered at all. "I don't love you," she said.

  "But I love you--and, as for myself, I am content to be liked."

  "Oh Mr. Oak--that's very fine! You'd get to despise me."

  "Never," said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, bythe force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms."I shall do one thing in this life--one thing certain--that is, loveyou, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die." His voicehad a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptiblytrembled.

  "It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!"she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly aroundfor some means of escape from her moral dilemma. "How I wish Ihadn't run after you!" However she seemed to have a short cut forgetting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness."It wouldn't do, Mr Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am tooindependent; and you would never be able to, I know."

  Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it wasuseless 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 world--I amstaying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educatedthan you--and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case.Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in commonprudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not thinkof doing at present), to marry a woman with money, who would stock alarger farm for you than you have now."

  Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration.

  "That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he naively said.

  Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many tosucceed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety ofhonesty. Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted.

  "Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?"
she said, almostangrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek.

  "I can't do what I think would be--would be--"

  "Right?"

  "No: wise."

  "You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak," she exclaimed, with evenmore hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully. "After that, do youthink I could marry you? Not if I know it."

  He broke in passionately. "But don't mistake me like that! BecauseI am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thoughtof, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me.That about your not being good enough for me is nonsense. You speaklike a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherburyis, I have heerd, a large farmer--much larger than ever I shall be.May I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' Sundays?I don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not."

  "No--no--I cannot. Don't press me any more--don't. I don't loveyou--so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh.

  No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round ofskittishness. "Very well," said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of onewho was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever."Then I'll ask you no more."