A GIRL ON HORSEBACK--CONVERSATION

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 peeped through the
loophole in the direction of the rider's approach.

She came up and looked around--then 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-path--merely a pedestrian's 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 pony's back, her
head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to
the sky.  The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of
a kingfisher--its noiselessness that of a hawk.  Gabriel's eyes had
scarcely been able to follow her.  The tall lank pony seemed used to
such doings, and ambled along unconcerned.  Thus she passed under the
level boughs.

The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's 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 soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in regular
succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person
milking a cow.  Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited
beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill.

She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left
arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make
Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole
would have been revealed.  There was a bright air and manner about
her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her
existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption
failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the
whole, true.  Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius,
that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to
recognised power.  It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's
face rising like the moon behind the hedge.

The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the
portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution
than a difference.  The starting-point selected by the judgment was
her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the
hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison
with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by
women as best.  All features of consequence were severe and regular.
It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with
eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is
seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the
highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder
of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure 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 as out of place, 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
since her infancy nobody had ever seen them.  Had she been put into
a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush.  Yet
she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to
draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do
it in towns.

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

"I found a hat," said Oak.

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

"One o'clock this morning?"

"Well--it was."  She was surprised.  "How did you know?" she said.

"I was here."

"You are Farmer Oak, are you not?"

"That or thereabouts.  I'm lately come to this place."

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

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

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

"Yes you had."

"How do you know?"

"I saw you."

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

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

A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as
suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft.  Recollection of the
strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was
succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot
face.  It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to
reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the
deepest rose-colour.  From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties
of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's
acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness,
turned away his head.

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

With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to
his work.

Five mornings and evenings passed.  The young woman came regularly to
milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed
her vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person.  His want of
tact had deeply offended her--not by seeing what he could not help,
but by letting her know that he had seen it.  For, as without law
there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared
to feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman
without her own connivance.  It was food for great regret with him;
it was also a _contretemps_ which touched into life a latent heat he
had experienced in that direction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Whatever is the matter?" said Oak, vacantly.

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

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

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

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

"Yes I suppose I should," said Oak, absently.  He was endeavouring to
catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head
upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone
things.  He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon
have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey
the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language.
So he remained silent.

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

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

"How did you find me?"

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

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

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

"I believe you saved my life, Miss--I don't know your name.  I know
your aunt's, but not yours."

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

"Still, I should like to know."

"You can inquire at my aunt's--she will tell you."

"My name is Gabriel Oak."

"And mine isn't.  You seem fond of yours in speaking it so
decisively, Gabriel Oak."

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

"I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable."

"I should think you might soon get a new one."

"Mercy!--how many opinions you keep about you concerning other
people, Gabriel Oak."

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

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

"I am sorry," he said the instant after.

"What for?"

"Letting your hand go so quick."

"You may have it again if you like; there it is."  She gave him her
hand again.

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

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

"I wasn't thinking of any such thing," said Gabriel, simply; "but I
will--"

"That you won't!" She snatched back her hand.

Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact.

"Now find out my name," she said, teasingly; and withdrew.

Next morning, Gabriel heard the girl's pony coming up the hill. Guessing that she had come to look for her hat, he hurriedly searched for it and found it in a ditch. Returning to his hut, he watched the girl approach. To avoid low branches, she lay flat on the pony, her face to the sky. No proper Victorian lady would ride thus, but "the tall lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs." On the girl's return to the cattle shed, a farm boy exchanged a milking pail for the bags of cereal she brought. When she emerged from the hut with the pail full of milk, Gabriel approached to return the hat. They exchanged a few civilities, which ceased when the girl realized from Gabriel's clumsy speech that he had witnessed her unconventional riding performance. This blunder "was succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face." Considerately, Gabriel turned away from her blushes. When a slight sound made him turn back, she had gone. Crestfallen, he returned to his work. Five days later, on a freezing day, the fatigued Gabriel came from his rounds into the hut. Putting extra fuel in his stove, he promised himself that he would adjust the ventilator, but he fell asleep before he did so. When he came to, his wet head was lying in the girl's lap. She explained that his dog, barking frantically, had fetched her from the milking shed and brought her to the hut. Finding no water, she had revived him with the milk. She reprimanded him for his carelessness but smiled when Gabriel tried to express his thanks and told her his name. The girl became a bit coquettish as he tried to shake her hand, but his ineptness and lack of sophistication in not trying to kiss it irked her once again. She left, her name still unknown to him.

By having Oak continue to observe from a distance the object of his infatuation, Hardy is able to elaborate upon his description of the girl and her character. Her riding antics furnish a bit of comedy and also warn us that she is not a conventional young Victorian lady. There is a matter-of-factness in the girl's rescue of Oak and in her tart ridicule of his lack of judgment. Her coquettish behavior in the latter part of the chapter contrasts with her earlier hoydenism.


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 which
recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities
of capture 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 Oak's
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 girl's 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 girl's name was Bathsheba
Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days.  He
dreaded the eighth 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, "I'll 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 Bathsheba's 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 constitution--a
fine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible
to make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional
gleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday
basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the
aunt--George, 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 origin--seen the hearth and Bathsheba
beside it--beside 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 kind--of a nature between
the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of 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.

Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a
knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to
be no less the staple topic 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 Oak's 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
breath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order,
when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of
Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through
once now and then 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 your 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.

Bathsheba's aunt was indoors.  "Will you tell Miss Everdene that
somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak.  (Calling
one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken
as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs
from a refined 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 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace.  "I've
brought a lamb for Miss Everdene.  I thought she might like one to
rear; girls do."

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

"Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down.  "The lamb isn't
really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst.  In short, I was going
to 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's
so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going to
be a governess once, you know, only she was too wild.  Not that her
young men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she must
have a dozen!"

"That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the
stone floor with sorrow.  "I'm only an every-day sort of man, and my
only chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use in
my waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll 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 still--and the runner drew nearer.  It was Bathsheba
Everdene.  Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as
it appeared, from emotion, but from running.

"Farmer Oak--I--" 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.

"Yes--I 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 didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should
have come in from the garden instantly.  I ran after you to say--that
my 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 till
you've found your breath."

"--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man
already," Bathsheba went on.  "I haven't a sweetheart at all--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 truly 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 be 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."

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

"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 men's property
in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day.  Why, if I'd
wanted you I shouldn't 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, no--no 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 circumstances--"Well, I am not
quite certain it was no harm."

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

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

"I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously; "if I can
think out of doors; 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 two--farmers' wives are
getting to have pianos now--and I'll 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 market--and nice
flowers, 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 newspaper
list of marriages."

"Dearly I should like that!"

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

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

Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile.  He regarded 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 don't want to marry you."

"Try."

"I have tried hard all the time I've 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, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there
he'd be."

"Of course he would--I, that is."

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

"That's a terrible wooden story!"

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

"Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider
than that," said Oak.  "But dearest," he continued in a palliative
voice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none the
less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was
rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere.  "Why won't you
have 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 ever
reaching 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 was
hardly 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, by
the 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, 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
hadn't run after you!"  However she seemed to have a short cut for
getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness.
"It wouldn't 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 world--I am
staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance.  I am better educated
than 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 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.

"That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he naively 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 can't do what I think would be--would be--"

"Right?"

"No: wise."

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

He broke in passionately.  "But don't mistake me like that!  Because
I am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought
of, 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 speak
like a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury
is, 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 love
you--so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh.

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

Gabriel ascertained in town that the young woman was Bathsheba Everdene. "This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak." He waited to watch her each day at the milking and dreaded the time when the cow should go dry and Bathsheba would no longer come to the shed. He constantly repeated her name. "I'll make her my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!" Seeking an excuse to visit her, Gabriel decided to take as a gift a tiny lamb whose mother had died. He groomed himself with care and set forth, accompanied by his faithful dog, George. From behind a hedge near her house he heard a feminine voice calming a frightened cat. He called out that his dog was "as mild as milk," but nobody answered. Once inside the house, Gabriel told the girl's aunt, Mrs. Hurst, of his desire to marry and inquired whether Bathsheba had suitors. Hoping to make a match, the aunt assured him that Bathsheba had many. Abashed, her would-be wooer replied, "That's unfortunate. . . . I'm only an everyday sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer." Forlorn, he walked away but was pursued by the tomboy calls of Bathsheba, who regretted having been away when he visited. Naively, she assured him that there were no other suitors. "'Really and truly I am glad to hear that!' said Farmer Oak, smiling . . . and blushing with gladness." Earnestly, Gabriel promised her all manner of things, including a piano. Hesitating over some of the items, Bathsheba said at last, "I've tried hard all the time I've 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 -- ." Finally Bathsheba admitted that she did not love Gabriel, and although the farmer said he would be happy if she just liked him, Bathsheba replied, "You'd get to despise me." Gabriel vehemently asserted, "Never. . . . I shall . . . keep wanting you till I die." He asked if he could come calling. She laughingly replied that that would be ridiculous, considering his feelings. "'Very well,' said Oak firmly. . . . 'Then I'll ask you no more.'"

With pronounced humor, Hardy gives the details of Gabriel's courtship of Bathsheba. He spruces up for his visit, polishing the silver chain of his watch and cutting himself a new walking stick. Auntie's boasts of numerous suitors for Bathsheba; Gabriel's offers of a piano, newspaper notices, and cucumber frames; Bathsheba's eagerness to be a bride unencumbered by a husband these are all amusing and convincing bits of life. The scene also gives us a chance to see more of Bathsheba's vanity and an aspect of Gabriel we had not yet observed -- pride.


DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA--A 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
Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain
humours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others--notably
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 gone--that was all.

His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the
failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's
movements was done indirectly.  It appeared that she had gone to
a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in
what capacity--whether 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 Turner's 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 hair's 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, George's 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 yet--still 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 responded--old 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
twinkle 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 ways--by
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.

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 Gabriel's 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 shepherd's call:

"Ovey, ovey, ovey!"

Not a single bleat.  He went to the hedge; a 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 farthest 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 sky--dark 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 foot--a 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 which bordered on strategy, and
carried him on as by gravitation.  A shadow in his life had always
been that his flock ended in mutton--that 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 low--possibly for ever.  Gabriel's 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 last--the morning star dogging her on
the left hand.  The pool glittered like a dead man's 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.

George's 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 o'clock that same day--another 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.

Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer--on the strength of Oak's
promising look and character--who was receiving a percentage from the
farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found
that the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his
own would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a
free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more.

"The more emphatic the renunciation, the less absolute its character." This Gabriel learned when he heard that Bathsheba had gone to Weatherbury. Why or for how long she had gone, he did not know. His affection mounted, but he maintained his even temper. The lambing phase of the sheepfarming over, he returned home for the luxury of sleeping in a real bed. He called the dogs, but only George responded. The younger dog, George's son, completely unlike his sire, was probably still eating a lamb carcass, a rare treat. George was competent and imbued with a sense of his responsibilities. The younger dog still lacked comprehension of what was expected of him. Gabriel was roused from a sound sleep by the violent ringing of sheep bells. He rushed out, following the sound until he came to a broken rail at the edge of a chalk pit. Young George, evidently inspired by his meal, had zealously chased the sheep, driving them over the brink. Gabriel looked into the deep chasm. There, dead and dying, lay two hundred ewes, all heavy with an equal number of prospective young. There also lay all his hopes for a farm of his own. Gabriel's "first feeling . . . was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs." Later, without rancor, he did his duty: He destroyed the dog. Gabriel calculated that selling all his belongings and utensils would just cover the claims of the dealer who had staked him to his first independent venture. The debt was paid, "leaving himself a free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more."

Similar to Hardy's use of color to portray external appearance is his philosophy as to the sensitivity of men and animals. Each creature has a sense of its purpose in life, to a greater or lesser degree. Thus, George's son must be destroyed to prevent further destruction, since he lacks all instinct for his trusted, position.


THE FAIR--THE JOURNEY--THE 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 county-town
of Casterbridge.

At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and
hearty labourers waiting upon Chance--all 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 rest--in 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 finishing word.  His answer
always was,--

"I am looking for a place myself--a bailiff's.  Do ye 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
Gabriel's speciality.  Turning down an obscure street and entering
an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.

"How long would it take you to make a shepherd's 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 Gabriel's
money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for
a shepherd's 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."

"That's a long way.

"Fifteen miles."

"Who's 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 safer 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 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.
Gabriel's 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 moment's 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.

By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at
Shottsford the next day.

"How far is Shottsford?"

"Ten miles t'other 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 the high road which had been recommended
as the direct route to the village in question.

The road stretched 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 higher levels 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 by Yalbury
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 in the
landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness.  He descended
Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up
under a great over-hanging 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 forpart 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.  Charles's Wain was getting towards a right angle with
the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine
o'clock--in 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.

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, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be
concerned.  But that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy
cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides."

"Ay--so 'a do seem, Billy Smallbury--so 'a do 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 speaker's larynx.
It came from the man who held the reins.

"She's a very vain feymell--so 'tis said here and there."

"Ah, now.  If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face.
Lord, no: not I--heh-heh-heh!  Such a shy man as I be!"

"Yes--she's very vain.  'Tis said that every night at going to bed
she looks in the glass to put on her night-cap 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."

"D'ye tell o't!  A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man!
And how do she pay?"

"That I don't know, Master Poorgrass."

On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed
into Gabriel's 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 gate,
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 light--appearing about half a mile distant.  Oak watched
it, and the glow increased.  Something was on fire.

Gabriel again mounted the gate, 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-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening
hedge--and 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 Gabriel's 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.

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, man--fire, fire!  A good master and a bad servant is fire,
fire!--I mane a bad servant and a good master.  Oh, Mark Clark--come!
And you, Billy Smallbury--and you, Maryann Money--and you, Jan
Coggan, and Matthew there!"  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 company--whose shadows danced merrily
up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by
their owners' movements.  The assemblage--belonging to that class of
society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its
feelings into the form of commotion--set 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 hue from the burning straw licked and darted
playfully.  If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost.

"Get a tarpaulin--quick!" 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 Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by 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
Oak's 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 of varying
pattern.  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 woman, on foot.  These two seemed to keep at
a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.

"He's a shepherd," said the woman on foot.  "Yes--he 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,
ma'am."

"Whose shepherd is he?" said the equestrian in a clear voice.

"Don't know, ma'am."

"Don't any of the others know?"

"Nobody at all--I've 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.

"D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?" said the second woman,
passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.

"Safe-now--leastwise I think so.  If this rick had gone the barn
would have followed.  'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done
the most good--he 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.  Don't any of you know his name."

"Never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore."

The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's 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.

"'Tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd."

"A woman farmer?"

"Ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!" said a bystander. "Lately
'a came here from a distance.  Took on her uncle's farm, who died
suddenly.  Used to measure his money in half-pint cups.  They say
now that she've business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks
no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I, do
pitch-halfpenny--not a bit in the world, shepherd."

"That's she, back there upon the pony," said Maryann; "wi' her face
a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it."

Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke
and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water,
the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, 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, ma'am?"

She lifted the wool 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, ma'am?"

Casterbridge was holding its February hiring fair. A few hundred hearty workers stood about, each showing the symbol of his trade: carters, a bit of whipcord on their hats; thatchers, straw; shepherds, their crooks. One young fellow's "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 finishing word. His answer always was, -- 'I am looking for a place myself -- a bailiff's.'" No one seemed to need bailiffs. Toward the end of the day, Gabriel went to have a shepherd's crook fashioned, and he also exchanged his overcoat for a regulation smock. Now, ironically, bailiffs were in demand; yet prospective employers seemed to edge away when Gabriel said he'd lost his farm. Watching the evening's merriment, Gabriel felt his flute in his pocket. "Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice." His tunes were so well received that soon he had earned enough pence to feel more secure. There was another fair in Shottsford the next day. Hearing that this town lay beyond Weatherbury, Gabriel thought of Bathsheba and resolved to go to the fair via Weatherbury. After going about four miles in that direction, he saw a haywagon without horses beside the road and lay down in it for a rest. After dark he wakened to find the wagon in motion. He eavesdropped on the conversation of the two men in front and conjectured that the vain woman whom they were discussing was Bathsheba. Dismissing the thought, since the woman under discussion seemed to be the owner of a large farm, he slipped out of the wagon unseen. Suddenly Gabriel saw a fire in the distance. As he ran toward it, he realized that the fire was in a rickyard. His familiarity with the nature of burning hay drove him to hurry to save it before it enveloped the piled-up corn. Others were converging on the fire, too. In the general confusion, Gabriel stood out as one who naturally takes command. To one side stood two veiled women. They identified Gabriel as a shepherd, for he was wielding a crook, but no one seemed to know him. Finally the fire was extinguished. One of the women sent the other, her maid, to thank Gabriel. The maid told Gabriel that the other woman owned the farm. Gabriel approached her, saying, "Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?" Silently, the astonished Bathsheba lifted her veil. Gabriel mechanically repeated his question.

This long chapter abounds with architectural terminology and with evidence of Hardy's skills as an artist and a writer. We view masses of people in motion, but from the immense canvas detailed individual figures emerge as well. Hardy portrays many facets of the fair -- speech, customs, costumes, indigenous trades, a sergeant, and a recruiter. Gabriel continues his service as an on-the-spot observer for Hardy. The farmer has been matured by the reverses he has experienced and is learning to compromise. Even as the workers are "waiting on Chance," so is Gabriel. In Hardy's works, many such evidences of belief in fate and fortune exist. Oak's effort to "help" the fates by changing his costume is unavailing. When he decides to continue to Shottsford in his search for employment, the motivation is not too farfetched, for there are not many roads to choose; he is poor and cannot afford an inn. His rest in the wagon and the overheard conversation give Hardy an opportunity to introduce more dialect and to further characterize the Wessex folk. The animation of the fire scene is a dramatization of country life and of some of the hazards encountered in the seemingly serene landscape.


RECOGNITION--A 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 Gabriel's 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--"

"He's the very man, ma'am," 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.

"He's 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
ye'd send it to Warren's Malthouse," replied the spokesman.

Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on
to the village in twos and threes--Oak and the bailiff being left by
the rick alone.

"And now," said the bailiff, finally, "all is settled, I think, about
your coming, and I am going home-along.  Good-night to ye, shepherd."

"Can you get me a lodging?" inquired Gabriel.

"That I can't, 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 Warren's Malthouse, where they
are all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of 'em
will tell you of a place.  Good-night to ye, shepherd."

The bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as
himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still
astonished at the reencounter 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 ancient trees grew.  There was a wide margin of grass along
here, and Gabriel's 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.  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.

"I'll thank you to tell me if I'm in the way for Warren's Malthouse?"
Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get
more of the music.

"Quite right.  It's 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 Buck's Head Inn?"  She seemed to be won by
Gabriel's heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.

"I don't know where the Buck's Head is, or anything about it.  Do you
think of going there to-night?"

"Yes--"  The woman 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.

"I am not.  I am the new shepherd--just arrived."

"Only a shepherd--and you seem almost a farmer by your ways."

"Only a shepherd," Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality.
His thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the
girl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some
sort.  She may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said
coaxingly,--

"You won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will
you--at least, not for a day or two?"

"I won't if you wish me not to," said Oak.

"Thank you, indeed," the other replied.  "I am rather poor, and I
don't want people to know anything about me."  Then she was silent
and shivered.

"You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night," Gabriel observed.
"I would advise 'ee to get indoors."

"O no!  Would you mind going on and leaving me?  I thank you much for
what you have told me."

"I will go on," he said; adding hesitatingly,--"Since you are not
very well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me.  It is
only a shilling, but it is all I have to spare."

"Yes, I will take it," said the stranger gratefully.

She extended her hand; Gabriel his.  In feeling for each other's palm
in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident
occurred which told much.  Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young
woman's wrist.  It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity.  He
had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery
of his lambs when overdriven.  It suggested a consumption too great
of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was
already too little.

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing."

"But there is?"

"No, no, no!  Let your having seen me be a secret!"

"Very well; I will.  Good-night, again."

"Good-night."

The young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended
into the village of Weatherbury, or Lower Longpuddle as it was
sometimes called.  He fancied that he had felt himself in the
penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile
creature.  But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and
Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this.

"Bathsheba. . . . scarcely knew whether most to be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at its awkwardness." The other firefighters enthusiastically endorsed Gabriel, and so she sent him to her bailiff. All the helpers were to be rewarded with refreshments at Warren's Malthouse. The bailiff, an unfriendly individual, hired Gabriel but could not, or would not, suggest lodgings. He referred Oak to the malthouse, where someone might know where he could stay. As Gabriel plodded along the road, he came upon a young woman standing by a tree. She furnished him with directions to Warren's. But when in turn she asked the way to Buck's Head, Gabriel could not tell her. She realized he was a stranger and said awkwardly, "Only a shepherd -- and you seem almost a farmer by your ways." She asked that he not tell of meeting her. Gabriel perceived her agitation, saw her shiver with the cold, and hesitatingly offered her a shilling, saying, "It is all I have to spare." She accepted it gratefully. He sensed that she was actually trembling. As he went on his way, "he fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness."

Hardy is fond of contrasts and antitheses in his phrases and uses these principles in presenting opposing situations and people. Gabriel's generosity and humility are repeatedly contrasted with Bathsheba's selfishness and vanity. Bathsheba's newly aggrandized position is contrasted with Gabriel's recent fall to poverty. The nasty bailiff, "moving past Oak as a Christian edges past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute," is the direct antithesis to the warm and generous Gabriel who gives his last coins to the trembling girl.