CHAPTER VIII.
THE MALTHOUSE—THE CHAT—NEWS

Warren’s Malthouse was inclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy, and though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the character and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by its outline upon the sky. From the walls an overhanging thatched roof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small wooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides, and from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping into the night air. There was no window in front; but a square hole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red, comfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front. Voices were to be heard inside.

Oak’s hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to an Elymas-the-Sorcerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which he pulled. This lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open.

The room inside was lighted only by the ruddy glow from the kiln mouth, which shone over the floor with the streaming horizontality of the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial irregularities in those assembled around, with the effect of the footlights upon the features of her Majesty’s servants when they approach too near the front. The stone-flag floor was worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations everywhere. A curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one side, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner and frequent occupier of which was the maltster.

This aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white hair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and lichen 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 criticized 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 up 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 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 remember 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, 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: this idea is, however, a mere guess.

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 natural 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 ever occasioned by proper pulls at large mugs.

“A right sensible man,” said Jacob.

“True, true, as the old woman said,” 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 yer 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 god-father in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.

“Come, Mark Clark—come. Ther’s plenty more in the barrel,” said Jan.

“Ay—that I will, as the doctor said,” 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—his productions of this class being more noticeably advanced than Coggan’s, inflicting a faint sense of reduplication and similitude upon the elder members of such companies.

“Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye ha’n’t had a drop!” said Mr. Coggan to a very shrinking man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.

“Such a shy 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,” faltered 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, just beginning to fill him with a mild complacency now that it was regarded in the light of 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 terrible bad for a man, poor soul,” said the maltster. “And how long have ye 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 take anything to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?”

“Oh ay, tried all sorts. They took me to Greenhill Fair, and into a grate large 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 gross situation, and altogether a very curious place for a good man. I had to stand and look wicked 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, so to speak it—yes, a happy thing, and I feel my few poor gratitudes.”

“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 ye, Joseph. For ye see, shepherd, though ’tis very well for a woman, dang it all, ’tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller.” He appealed to the shepherd by a heart-feeling glance.

“’Tis—’tis,” said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation as to whether the saving to a man’s soul in the run of a twelvemonth by saying “dang” instead of what it stood for, made it worth while to use the word. “Yes, very awkward for the man.”

“Ay, and he’s very timid, too,” observed Jan Coggan. “Once he had been working late at Windleton, 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 forcing out too much for the purpose—laughing over the greater part of his skin, round to his ears, and up among his hair, insomuch that Shepherd Oak, who was rather sensitive himself, was surfeited, and felt that he would never adopt that plan for hiding trepidation any more.

“——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 wait for 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, as I may say,” continued Joseph, swallowing his breath in content.

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 matters 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, 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 growing 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—each man severally drawing upon the tablet of his imagination a clear and correct picture of Joseph Poorgrass under the remarkable conditions he had related, and surveying the position in all its bearings with critical exactness.

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 innermost 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, 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.”

The inquirer paused a moment, and then continued his relation, which, as did every remark he made, instead of being casual, seemed the result of a slow convergence of forces that had commenced their operation, in times far remote.

“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! Ay, ’twere like drinking blessedness itself. Pints and pints! 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, indeed.”

“’Twas. But for a drunk of really a noble class and on the highest princliples, that brought you no nearer to the dark 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 would have been a great relief to a merry soul.”

“True,” said the maltster. “Nature 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 in scores and long-hundreds, so ’twas said here and there,” 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 his wife so much, that he used to light the candle three time every night to look at her.”

“Boundless love; I shouldn’t have supposed it in the world’s universe!” murmered 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 enough. ‘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.

“O 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 scrutinizing 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. Ay, ’a 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 so 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, as I may say, 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, with testimonial emphasis, “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 religious 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 that had no father at all in the eye of matrimony, 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 common to the saintly inclined.”

“Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but righteousness,” 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.”

“His second-cousin, John, was the most religious of the family, however,” said the old malster. “None of the others were so pious as he, for they never went past us Church people in their Christianity, but John’s feelings growed as strong as a chapel member’s. ’A was a watch and clock maker by trade, and thought of nothing but godliness, poor man. ‘I judge every clock according to his works,’ he used to say when he were in his holy frame of mind. Ay, he likewise 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 shook his head, gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of ironical knowledge.

“A queer Christian, as the D—— said of the owl,” volunteered Mark Clark,

“He is,” said Henery, with a manner implying that irony must necessarily 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, with apprehension.

“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 untold 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!”

The company suspended consideration of whether they wanted their souls blessed that moment, as the shortest way to the end of the story.

“I believe that if so be that Baily Pennyways’ heart were put inside a nutshell, he’d rattle,” continued Henery. “He’ll strain for money as a salmon will strain for the river’s head. ’Tis a thief and a robber, that’s what ’tis.”

Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. “You must be a very aged man, malster, 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 growled 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, malster?”

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 Juddle Farm across there” (nodding to the north) “till I were eleven. I bode seven at Lower Twifford” (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 a corroboration of the fact). “Then I malted at Snoodly-under-Drool four year, and four year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at Moreford 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.

“Oh, no, father!” Jacob remonstrated. “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 sha’n’t,” said Gabriel, soothingly.

“Ye be a very old-aged person, malster,” 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, malster, a wonderful talented constitution,” said the meeting unanimously.

The maltster, being know 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 visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray exclaimed, “Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a grate flute by-now at Casterbridge?”

“You did,” said Gabriel, blushing faintly. “I’ve been in great trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it. I used not to be so poor as I be now.”

“Never mind, heart!” said Mark Clark. “You should take it careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come. But we could thank ye for a tune, if ye bain’t too tired?”

“Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard this Christmas,” said Jan Coggan. “Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!”

“Ay, that I will,” said Gabriel readily, pulling out his flute and putting it together. “A poor tool, neighbours; an everyday chap; but such as I can do ye shall have and welcome.”

Oak then struck up “Jockey to the Fair,” and played that sparkling melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot to beat time.

“He can blow the flute very well—that ’a can,” said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as “Susan Tall’s husband.” He continued admiringly, “I’d as lief as not be able to blow into a flute as well as that.”

“He’s a clever man, and ’tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd,” murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft and complacent cadence. “We ought to feel real thanksgiving that he’s not a player of loose songs instead of these merry tunes; for ’twould have been just as easy for God to have made the shepherd a lewd low man—a man of iniquity, so to speak it—as what he is. Yes, for our wives’ and daughters’ sakes we should feel real thanksgiving.”

“True, true, as the old woman said,” dashed in Mark Clark conclusively, not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had only heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.

“Yes,” added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; “for evil does thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in the clanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp upon the turnpike, if I may term it so.”

“Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd,” said Henery Fray, criticising Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second tune. “Yes—now I see ye blowing into the flute I know ye to be the same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped up and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man’s—just as they be now.”

“’Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a scarecrow,” observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of Gabriel’s countenance, the latter person jerking out unconcernedly, with the ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of “Dame Durden:”—

’Twas Moll′ and Bet′, and Doll′ and Kate′
And Dor′-othy Drag′-gle Tail′.

“I hope you don’t mind that young man Mark Clark’s bad manners in naming your features?” whispered Joseph to Gabriel privately.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Oak.

“For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd,” continued Joseph Poorgrass, with winning sauvity.

“Ay, that ye be, sheperd,” said the company.

“Thank you very much,” said Oak, in the modest tone good manners demanded, privately thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to that related to its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself.

“Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church,” said the old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject “we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood—everybody said so.”

“Danged if ye bain’t altered now, malster,” said a voice with the vigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkably evident truism. It came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he contributed to general laughs.

“O no, no,” said Gabriel.

“Don’t ye play no more shepherd,” said Susan Tall’s husband, the young married man who had spoken once before. “I must be moving, and when there’s tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires. If I thought after I’d left that music was still playing, and I not there, I should be quite melancholy-like.”

“What’s yer hurry then, Laban?” inquired Coggan. “You used to bide as late as the latest.”

“Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and she’s my vocation now, and so ye see. . . .” The young man halted lamely.

“New Lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose,” remarked Coggan, with a very compressed countenance; that the frigidity implied by this arrangement of facial muscles was not the true mood of his soul being only discernible from a private glimmer in the outer corner of one of his eyes—this eye being nearly closed, and the other only half open.

“Ay, ’a b’lieve—ha, ha!” said Susan Tall’s husband, in a tone intended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding them at all. The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew.

Henery Fray was the first to follow. Then Gabriel arose and went off with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging. A few minutes later, when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray came back again in a hurry. Flourishing his finger ominously he threw a gaze teeming with tidings just where his glance alighted by accident, which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrass’s face.

“Oh—what’s the matter, what’s the matter, Henery?” said Joseph, starting back.

“What’s a-brewing, Henrey?” asked Jacob and Mark Clark.

“Baily Pennyways—Baily Pennyways—I said so; yes, I said so.”

“What, found out stealing anything?”

“Stealing it is. The news is, that after Miss Everdene got home she went out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in found Baily Pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a bushel of barley. She flewed at him like a cat—never such a tom-boy as she is—of course I speak with closed doors?”

“You do—you do, Henery.”

“She flewed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having carried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute him. Well, he’s turned out neck and crop, and my question is, who’s going to be baily now?”

The question was such a profound one that Henery was obliged to drink there and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly visible inside. Before he had replaced it on the table, in came the young man, Susan Tall’s husband, in a still greater hurry.

“Have ye heard the news that’s all over parish?”

“About Baily Pennyways?”

“Ah—but besides that?”

“No—not a morsel of it!” they all replied, looking into the very midst of Laban Tall, and, as at were, advancing their intelligence to meet his words half way down his throat.

“What a night of horrors!” murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his hands spasmodically. “I’ve had the news-bell ringing in my left ear quite bad enough for a murder, and I’ve seed a magpie all alone!”

“Fanny Robin—Miss everdene’s youngest servant—can’t be found. They’ve been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she isn’t come in. And they don’t know what to do about going to bed for fear of locking her out. They wouldn’t be so concerned if she hadn’t been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d’ think the beginning of a crowner’s inquest has happened to the poor girl.”

“Oh—’tis burned—’tis burned!” came from Joseph Poorgrass with dry lips.

“No—’tis drowned!” said Tall.

“Or ’tis her father’s razor!” suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid sense of detail.

“Well—Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go to bed. What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the girl, mis’ess is almost wild.”

They all hastened up the rise to the farm-house, excepting the old maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from his hole. There, as the others’ footsteps died away, he sat down again, and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red, bleared eyes.

From the bed-room window above their heads Bathsheba’s head and shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the air.

“Are any of my men among you?” she said anxiously.

“Yes, ma’am, several,” said Susan Tall’s husband.

“To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin. Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet. She must have left whilst we were all at the fire.”

“I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the parish, ma’am?” asked Jacob Smallbury.

“I don’t know,” said Bathsheba.

“I’ve never heard of any such thing, ma’am,” said two or three.

“It is hardly likely, either,” continued Bathsheba. “For any lover of hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable lad. The most mysterious matter connected with her absence—indeed, the only thing which gives me serious alarm—is that she was seen to go out of the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown on—not even a bonnet.”

“And you mean, ma’am, excusing my words, that a young woman would hardly go to see her young man without dressing up,” said Jacob, turning his mental vision upon past experiences. “That’s true—she would not, ma’am.”

“She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldn’t see very well,” said a female voice from another window, which seemed to belong to Maryann. “But she had no young man about here. Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I believe he’s a soldier.”

“Do you know his name?” Bathsheba said.

“No, mistress; she was very close about it.”

“Perhaps I might be able to find out if I went to Casterbridge barracks,” said William Smallbury.

“Very well; if she doesn’t return to-morrow, mind you go there and try to discover which man it is, and see him. I feel more responsible than I should if she had had any friends or relations alive. I do hope she has come to no harm through a man of that kind…. And then there’s this disgraceful affair of the bailiff—but I can’t speak of him now.”

Bathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did not think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one. “Do as I told you, then,” she said in conclusion, closing the casement.

“Ay, ay, mistress; we will,” they replied, and moved away.

That night at Coggan’s, Gabriel Oak, beneath the screen of closed eyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river flowing rapidly under its ice. Night had always been the time at which he saw Bathsheba most vividly, and through the slow hours of shadow he tenderly regarded her image now. It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness, but they possibly did with Oak to-night, for the delight of merely seeing her effaced for the time his perception of the great difference between seeing and possessing.

He also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from Norcombe. The Young Man’s Best Companion, The Farrier’s Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash’s Dictionary, and Walkingame’s Arithmetic, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves.