Far from the Madding Crowd
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