Far from the Madding Crowd
out of him quite. He turned the horse’s head to the green bank, and
entered the hostel for a mug of ale.
Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step
below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside,
what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-coloured
discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark
Clark. These owners of the two most appreciative throats in the
neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were now sitting face
to face over a three-legged circular table, having an iron rim to keep
cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been
said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining _vis-à-vis_
across the globe.
“Why, ’tis neighbour Poorgrass!” said Mark Clark. “I’m sure your face
don’t praise your mistress’s table, Joseph.”
“I’ve had a very pale companion for the last four miles,” said Joseph,
indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation. “And to speak the
truth, ’twas beginning to tell upon me. I assure ye, I ha’n’t seed the
colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that
was no more than a dew-bit afield.”
“Then drink, Joseph, and don’t restrain yourself!” said Coggan, handing
him a hooped mug three-quarters full.
Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time,
saying, as he lowered the jug, “’Tis pretty drinking—very pretty
drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to
speak it.”
“True, drink is a pleasant delight,” said Jan, as one who repeated a
truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over
his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually
backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be
diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings.
“Well, I must be on again,” said Poorgrass. “Not but that I should like
another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me if I
was seed here.”
“Where be ye trading o’t to to-day, then, Joseph?”
“Back to Weatherbury. I’ve got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon
outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five
with her.”
“Ay—I’ve heard of it. And so she’s nailed up in parish boards after
all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown.”
“The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling,
because the bell’s a luxery: but ’a can hardly do without the grave,
poor body. However, I expect our mistress will pay all.”
“A pretty maid as ever I see! But what’s yer hurry, Joseph? The pore
woman’s dead, and you can’t bring her to life, and you may as well sit
down comfortable, and finish another with us.”
“I don’t mind taking just the least thimbleful ye can dream of more
with ye, sonnies. But only a few minutes, because ’tis as ’tis.”
“Of course, you’ll have another drop. A man’s twice the man afterwards.
You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work
without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking. Too
much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house;
but after all, many people haven’t the gift of enjoying a wet, and
since we be highly favoured with a power that way, we should make the
most o’t.”
“True,” said Mark Clark. “’Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully
bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the
parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the merry
old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my carcase, they
have!”
“Well, really, I must be onward again now,” said Joseph.
“Now, now, Joseph; nonsense! The poor woman is dead, isn’t she, and
what’s your hurry?”
“Well, I hope Providence won’t be in a way with me for my doings,” said
Joseph, again sitting down. “I’ve been troubled with weak moments
lately, ’tis true. I’ve been drinky once this month already, and I did
not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two yesterday; so I
don’t want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next
world, and not to be squandered offhand.”
“I believe ye to be a chapelmember, Joseph. That I do.”
“Oh, no, no! I don’t go so far as that.”
“For my part,” said Coggan, “I’m staunch Church of England.”
“Ay, and faith, so be I,” said Mark Clark.
“I won’t say much for myself; I don’t wish to,” Coggan continued, with
that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the
barley-corn. “But I’ve never changed a single doctrine: I’ve stuck like
a plaster to the old faith I was born in. Yes; there’s this to be said
for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful
old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all.
But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers,
and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapel members be
clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers
out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwrecks in the
newspaper.”
“They can—they can,” said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; “but
we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it
all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer like the Lord
than babes unborn.”
“Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we,” said
Joseph, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Coggan. “We know very well that if anybody do go to heaven,
they will. They’ve worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it,
such as ’tis. I bain’t such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to
the Church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not.
But I hate a feller who’ll change his old ancient doctrines for the
sake of getting to heaven. I’d as soon turn king’s-evidence for the few
pounds you get. Why, neighbours, when every one of my taties were
frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man who gave me a sack for seed,
though he hardly had one for his own use, and no money to buy ’em. If
it hadn’t been for him, I shouldn’t hae had a tatie to put in my
garden. D’ye think I’d turn after that? No, I’ll stick to my side; and
if we be in the wrong, so be it: I’ll fall with the fallen!”
“Well said—very well said,” observed Joseph.—“However, folks, I must be
moving now: upon my life I must. Pa’son Thirdly will be waiting at the
church gates, and there’s the woman a-biding outside in the waggon.”
“Joseph Poorgrass, don’t be so miserable! Pa’son Thirdly won’t mind.
He’s a generous man; he’s found me in tracts for years, and I’ve
consumed a good many in the course of a long and shady life; but he’s
never been the man to cry out at the expense. Sit down.”
The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was troubled
by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes
glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to
deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the
surface of darkness. Coggan’s repeater struck six from his pocket in
the usual still small tones.
At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened
to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn
bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round
faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a
fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and
shrank several inches into the background.
“Upon my soul, I’m ashamed of you; ’tis disgraceful, Joseph,
disgraceful!” said Gabriel, indignantly. “Coggan, you call yourself a
man, and don’t know better than this.”
Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes
occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not a
member, but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.
“Don’t take on so, shepherd!” said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully at
the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for
his eyes.
“Nobody can hurt a dead woman,” at length said Coggan, with the
precision of a machine. “All that could be done for her is done—she’s
beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for
lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don’t know what you do
with her at all? If she’d been alive, I would have been the first to
help her. If she now wanted victuals and drink, I’d pay for it, money
down. But she’s dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. The
woman’s past us—time spent upon her is throwed away: why should we
hurry to do what’s not required? Drink, shepherd, and be friends, for
to-morrow we may be like her.”
“We may,” added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself, to
run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to, Jan
meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a song:—
To-mor-row, to-mor-row!
And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board,
With a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row,
With my friends will I share what to-day may af-ford,
And let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row.
To-mor-row, to-mor——
“Do hold thy horning, Jan!” said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, “as
for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy
ways, you are as drunk as you can stand.”
“No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that’s the
matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that’s
how it is I look double to you—I mean, you look double to me.”
“A multiplying eye is a very bad thing,” said Mark Clark.
“It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little time,”
said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly. “Yes; I see two of every sort, as if I
were some holy man living in the times of King Noah and entering into
the ark.... Y-y-y-yes,” he added, becoming much affected by the picture
of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears; “I feel too
good for England: I ought to have lived in Genesis by rights, like the
other men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn’t have b-b-been called a
d-d-drunkard in such a way!”
“I wish you’d show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining
there!”
“Show myself a man of spirit?... Ah, well! let me take the name of
drunkard humbly—let me be a man of contrite knees—let it be! I know
that I always do say ‘Please God’ afore I do anything, from my getting
up to my going down of the same, and I be willing to take as much
disgrace as there is in that holy act. Hah, yes!... But not a man of
spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my
hinder parts without groaning manfully that I question the right to do
so? I inquire that query boldly?”
“We can’t say that you have, Hero Poorgrass,” admitted Jan.
“Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned! Yet the
shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I be not a man of
spirit! Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!”
Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take
charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply,
but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle
stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy
time. He pulled the horse’s head from the large patch of turf it had
eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along
through the unwholesome night.
It had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be
brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate
Fanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge through
Melchester and onwards. But, thanks to Boldwood’s reticence and Oak’s
generosity, the lover she had followed had never been individualized as
Troy. Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be