Far from the Madding Crowd
try how he would, and knowing there was the Devil’s hand in it, he
kneeled down.”
“Ay,” said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire,
the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the
experience alluded to. “My heart died within me, that time; but I
kneeled down and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then the Belief right
through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer. But no, the
gate wouldn’t open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved Brethren,
and, thinks I, this makes four, and ’tis all I know out of book, and if
this don’t do it nothing will, and I’m a lost man. Well, when I got to
Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found the gate would
open—yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as ever.”
A meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and
during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit, which
glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun, shaping their
eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly from the depth
of the subject discussed.
Gabriel broke the silence. “What sort of a place is this to live at,
and what sort of a mis’ess is she to work under?” Gabriel’s bosom
thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly the
inner-most subject of his heart.
“We d’ know little of her—nothing. She only showed herself a few days
ago. Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his
world-wide skill; but he couldn’t save the man. As I take it, she’s
going to keep on the farm.
“That’s about the shape o’t, ’a b’lieve,” said Jan Coggan. “Ay, ’tis a
very good family. I’d as soon be under ’em as under one here and there.
Her uncle was a very fair sort of man. Did ye know en, shepherd—a
bachelor-man?”
“Not at all.”
“I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte, who was
his dairymaid. Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer Everdene, and
I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call and see her and
drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away any—outside my skin
I mane of course.”
“Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning.”
“And so you see ’twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his kindness
as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a
thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man’s generosity—”
“True, Master Coggan, ’twould so,” corroborated Mark Clark.
“—And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the
time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket—so thorough dry that
that ale would slip down—ah, ’twould slip down sweet! Happy times!
Heavenly times! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house! You
can mind, Jacob? You used to go wi’ me sometimes.”
“I can—I can,” said Jacob. “That one, too, that we had at Buck’s Head
on a White Monday was a pretty tipple.”
“’Twas. But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no nearer
to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was none like
those in Farmer Everdene’s kitchen. Not a single damn allowed; no, not
a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment when all were
blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in here and there at
such times is a great relief to a merry soul.”
“True,” said the maltster. “Nater requires her swearing at the regular
times, or she’s not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of
life.”
“But Charlotte,” continued Coggan—“not a word of the sort would
Charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain.... Ay, poor
Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into Heaven when
’a died! But ’a was never much in luck’s way, and perhaps ’a went
downwards after all, poor soul.”
“And did any of you know Miss Everdene’s father and mother?” inquired
the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation in
the desired channel.
“I knew them a little,” said Jacob Smallbury; “but they were townsfolk,
and didn’t live here. They’ve been dead for years. Father, what sort of
people were mis’ess’ father and mother?”
“Well,” said the maltster, “he wasn’t much to look at; but she was a
lovely woman. He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart.”
“Used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o’ times, so ’twas said,”
observed Coggan.
“He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I’ve been
told,” said the maltster.
“Ay,” said Coggan. “He admired her so much that he used to light the
candle three times a night to look at her.”
“Boundless love; I shouldn’t have supposed it in the universe!”
murmured Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in his
moral reflections.
“Well, to be sure,” said Gabriel.
“Oh, ’tis true enough. I knowed the man and woman both well. Levi
Everdene—that was the man’s name, sure. ‘Man,’ saith I in my hurry, but
he were of a higher circle of life than that—’a was a gentleman-tailor
really, worth scores of pounds. And he became a very celebrated
bankrupt two or three times.”
“Oh, I thought he was quite a common man!” said Joseph.
“Oh no, no! That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and
silver.”
The maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently
scrutinising a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the
narrative, with a private twirl of his eye:—
“Well, now, you’d hardly believe it, but that man—our Miss Everdene’s
father—was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a while.
Understand? ’a didn’t want to be fickle, but he couldn’t help it. The
pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his
heart would rove, do what he would. He spoke to me in real tribulation
about it once. ‘Coggan,’ he said, ‘I could never wish for a handsomer
woman than I’ve got, but feeling she’s ticketed as my lawful wife, I
can’t help my wicked heart wandering, do what I will.’ But at last I
believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and calling
her by her maiden name as they sat together after the shop was shut,
and so ’a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not
married to him at all. And as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was
doing wrong and committing the seventh, ’a got to like her as well as
ever, and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love.”
“Well, ’twas a most ungodly remedy,” murmured Joseph Poorgrass; “but we
ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it from
being any worse. You see, he might have gone the bad road and given his
eyes to unlawfulness entirely—yes, gross unlawfulness, so to say it.”
“You see,” said Billy Smallbury, “The man’s will was to do right, sure
enough, but his heart didn’t chime in.”
“He got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years,
wasn’t he, Jan?” said Joseph Poorgrass. “He got himself confirmed over
again in a more serious way, and took to saying ‘Amen’ almost as loud
as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the
tombstones. He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light so
Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children; and
he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares when they
called; yes, and he would box the charity-boys’ ears, if they laughed
in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do other deeds of
piety natural to the saintly inclined.”
“Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things,” added Billy
Smallbury. “One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, ‘Good-Morning,
Mister Everdene; ’tis a fine day!’ ‘Amen’ said Everdene, quite
absent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson. Yes, he
was a very Christian man.”
“Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time,” said
Henery Fray. “Never should have thought she’d have growed up such a
handsome body as she is.”
“’Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face.”
“Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and
ourselves. Ah!” Henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of
ironical knowledge.
“A queer Christian, like the Devil’s head in a cowl,[1] as the saying
is,” volunteered Mark Clark.
“He is,” said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain
point. “Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as soon
tell a lie Sundays as working-days—that I do so.”
“Good faith, you do talk!” said Gabriel.
“True enough,” said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon the
company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener
appreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable of.
“Ah, there’s people of one sort, and people of another, but that
man—bless your souls!”
Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. “You must be a very aged
man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient,” he remarked.
“Father’s so old that ’a can’t mind his age, can ye, father?”
interposed Jacob. “And he’s growed terrible crooked too, lately,” Jacob
continued, surveying his father’s figure, which was rather more bowed
than his own. “Really one may say that father there is three-double.”
“Crooked folk will last a long while,” said the maltster, grimly, and
not in the best humour.
“Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father—wouldn’t
ye, shepherd?”
“Ay, that I should,” said Gabriel with the heartiness of a man who had
longed to hear it for several months. “What may your age be, malter?”
The maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis,
and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in
the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so
generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it,
“Well, I don’t mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon
up the places I’ve lived at, and so get it that way. I bode at Upper
Longpuddle across there” (nodding to the north) “till I were eleven. I
bode seven at Kingsbere” (nodding to the east) “where I took to
malting. I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted there two-and-twenty
years, and-two-and-twenty years I was there turnip-hoeing and
harvesting. Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe, years afore you were
thought of, Master Oak” (Oak smiled sincere belief in the fact). “Then
I malted at Durnover four year, and four year turnip-hoeing; and I was
fourteen times eleven months at Millpond St. Jude’s” (nodding
north-west-by-north). “Old Twills wouldn’t hire me for more than eleven
months at a time, to keep me from being chargeable to the parish if so
be I was disabled. Then I was three year at Mellstock, and I’ve been
here one-and-thirty year come Candlemas. How much is that?”
“Hundred and seventeen,” chuckled another old gentleman, given to
mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat
unobserved in a corner.
“Well, then, that’s my age,” said the maltster, emphatically.
“O no, father!” said Jacob. “Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and
your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don’t ought to
count-both halves, father.”
“Chok’ it all! I lived through the summers, didn’t I? That’s my
question. I suppose ye’ll say next I be no age at all to speak of?”
“Sure we shan’t,” said Gabriel, soothingly.
“Ye be a very old aged person, malter,” attested Jan Coggan, also
soothingly. “We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented
constitution to be able to live so long, mustn’t he, neighbours?”
“True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful,” said the meeting unanimously.
The maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough to
voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a
great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of
was three years older than he.
While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak’s flute became