Far from the Madding Crowd
upon a leafless apple-tree. He wore breeches and the laced-up shoes
called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire.
Gabriel’s nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet smell
of new malt. The conversation (which seemed to have been concerning the
origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one ocularly
criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the flesh of
their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eyelids, as if he had
been a light too strong for their sight. Several exclaimed
meditatively, after this operation had been completed:—
“Oh, ’tis the new shepherd, ’a b’lieve.”
“We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but
weren’t sure ’twere not a dead leaf blowed across,” said another. “Come
in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don’t know yer name.”
“Gabriel Oak, that’s my name, neighbours.”
The ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this—his turning
being as the turning of a rusty crane.
“That’s never Gable Oak’s grandson over at Norcombe—never!” he said, as
a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a
moment to take literally.
“My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,”
said the shepherd, placidly.
“Thought I knowed the man’s face as I seed him on the rick!—thought I
did! And where be ye trading o’t to now, shepherd?”
“I’m thinking of biding here,” said Mr. Oak.
“Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!” continued the maltster,
the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum
previously imparted had been sufficient.
“Ah—and did you!”
“Knowed yer grandmother.”
“And her too!”
“Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child. Why, my boy Jacob
there and your father were sworn brothers—that they were sure—weren’t
ye, Jacob?”
“Ay, sure,” said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a
semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw, which
made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in a bank.
“But ’twas Joe had most to do with him. However, my son William must
have knowed the very man afore us—didn’t ye, Billy, afore ye left
Norcombe?”
“No, ’twas Andrew,” said Jacob’s son Billy, a child of forty, or
thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful
soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla
shade here and there.
“I can mind Andrew,” said Oak, “as being a man in the place when I was
quite a child.”
“Ay—the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at my
grandson’s christening,” continued Billy. “We were talking about this
very family, and ’twas only last Purification Day in this very world,
when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk, you know,
shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to traypse up to
the vestry—yes, this very man’s family.”
“Come, shepherd, and drink. ’Tis gape and swaller with us—a drap of
sommit, but not of much account,” said the maltster, removing from the
fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing into it
for so many years. “Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob. See if ’tis
warm, Jacob.”
Jacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug
standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather
furred with extraneous matter about the outside, especially in the
crevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have
seen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation
thereon—formed of ashes accidentally wetted with cider and baked hard;
but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no worse for that,
being incontestably clean on the inside and about the rim. It may be
observed that such a class of mug is called a God-forgive-me in
Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons; probably because
its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of himself when he sees its
bottom in drinking it empty.
Jacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough,
placidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and
having pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and
very civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with
the skirt of his smock-frock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger.
“A clane cup for the shepherd,” said the maltster commandingly.
“No—not at all,” said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of considerateness.
“I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and when I know what sort
it is.” Taking the mug he drank an inch or more from the depth of its
contents, and duly passed it to the next man. “I wouldn’t think of
giving such trouble to neighbours in washing up when there’s so much
work to be done in the world already,” continued Oak in a moister tone,
after recovering from the stoppage of breath which is occasioned by
pulls at large mugs.
“A right sensible man,” said Jacob.
“True, true; it can’t be gainsaid!” observed a brisk young man—Mark
Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere
in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink
with was, unfortunately, to pay for.
“And here’s a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis’ess have sent,
shepherd. The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. Don’t
ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in the road
outside as I was bringing it along, and may be ’tis rather gritty.
There, ’tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you say, and
you bain’t a particular man we see, shepherd.”
“True, true—not at all,” said the friendly Oak.
“Don’t let your teeth quite meet, and you won’t feel the sandiness at
all. Ah! ’tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!”
“My own mind exactly, neighbour.”
“Ah, he’s his grandfer’s own grandson!—his grandfer were just such a
nice unparticular man!” said the maltster.
“Drink, Henry Fray—drink,” magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person who
held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor was
concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its gradual
revolution among them.
Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air,
Henry did not refuse. He was a man of more than middle age, with
eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the
world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners at the
world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination. He always
signed his name “Henery”—strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and
if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the second “e” was
superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply that “H-e-n-e-r-y”
was the name he was christened and the name he would stick to—in the
tone of one to whom orthographical differences were matters which had a
great deal to do with personal character.
Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man
with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose name
had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and neighbouring
parishes as best man and chief witness in countless unions of the
previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled the post of head
godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.
“Come, Mark Clark—come. Ther’s plenty more in the barrel,” said Jan.
“Ay—that I will, ’tis my only doctor,” replied Mr. Clark, who, twenty
years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit. He secreted
mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular parties.
“Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han’t had a drop!” said Mr. Coggan to a
self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.
“Such a modest man as he is!” said Jacob Smallbury. “Why, ye’ve hardly
had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis’ess’s face, so I
hear, Joseph?”
All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.
“No—I’ve hardly looked at her at all,” simpered Joseph, reducing his
body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue
prominence. “And when I seed her, ’twas nothing but blushes with me!”
“Poor feller,” said Mr. Clark.
“’Tis a curious nature for a man,” said Jan Coggan.
“Yes,” continued Joseph Poorgrass—his shyness, which was so painful as
a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was regarded
as an interesting study. “’Twere blush, blush, blush with me every
minute of the time, when she was speaking to me.”
“I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very
bashful man.”
“’Tis a’ awkward gift for a man, poor soul,” said the maltster. “And
how long have ye have suffered from it, Joseph?”
“Oh, ever since I was a boy. Yes—mother was concerned to her heart
about it—yes. But ’twas all nought.”
“Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?”
“Oh ay, tried all sorts o’ company. They took me to Greenhill Fair, and
into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were women-folk
riding round—standing upon horses, with hardly anything on but their
smocks; but it didn’t cure me a morsel. And then I was put errand-man
at the Women’s Skittle Alley at the back of the Tailor’s Arms in
Casterbridge. ’Twas a horrible sinful situation, and a very curious
place for a good man. I had to stand and look ba’dy people in the face
from morning till night; but ’twas no use—I was just as bad as ever
after all. Blushes hev been in the family for generations. There, ’tis
a happy providence that I be no worse.”
“True,” said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder
view of the subject. “’Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have
been worse; but even as you be, ’tis a very bad affliction for ’ee,
Joseph. For ye see, shepherd, though ’tis very well for a woman, dang
it all, ’tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?”
“’Tis—’tis,” said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation. “Yes, very
awkward for the man.”
“Ay, and he’s very timid, too,” observed Jan Coggan. “Once he had been
working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost
his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn’t ye,
Master Poorgrass?”
“No, no, no; not that story!” expostulated the modest man, forcing a
laugh to bury his concern.
“—And so ’a lost himself quite,” continued Mr. Coggan, with an
impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide,
must run its course and would respect no man. “And as he was coming
along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find
his way out of the trees nohow, ’a cried out, ‘Man-a-lost! man-a-lost!’
A owl in a tree happened to be crying ‘Whoo-whoo-whoo!’ as owls do, you
know, shepherd” (Gabriel nodded), “and Joseph, all in a tremble, said,
‘Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!’”
“No, no, now—that’s too much!” said the timid man, becoming a man of
brazen courage all of a sudden. “I didn’t say _sir_. I’ll take my oath
I didn’t say ‘Joseph Poorgrass o’ Weatherbury, sir.’ No, no; what’s
right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well
that no man of a gentleman’s rank would be hollering there at that time
o’ night. ‘Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,’—that’s every word I said,
and I shouldn’t ha’ said that if ’t hadn’t been for Keeper Day’s
metheglin.... There, ’twas a merciful thing it ended where it did.”
The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company,
Jan went on meditatively:—
“And he’s the fearfullest man, bain’t ye, Joseph? Ay, another time ye
were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren’t ye, Joseph?”
“I was,” replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too
serious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one.
“Yes; that were the middle of the night, too. The gate would not open,