CHAPTER I
DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK--AN INCIDENT
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till theywere within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes werereduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them,extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketchof the rising sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a youngman of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general goodcharacter. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given topostponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon thewhole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle spaceof Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people ofthe parish and the drunken section,--that is, he went to church, butyawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicenecreed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant tobe listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stoodin the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were intantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased,he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whosemoral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak'sappearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own--the mentalpicture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being alwaysdressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out atthe base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds,and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encasedin ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affordingto each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer mightstand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp--their makerbeing a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for anyweakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called asmall silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape andintention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument beingseveral years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity ofgoing either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too,occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minuteswere told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hourthey belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remediedby thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from theother two defects by constant comparisons with and observations ofthe sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of hisneighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by thegreen-faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fobbeing difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situationin the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote heightunder his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out bythrowing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to amere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, anddrawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.
But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across oneof his fields on a certain December morning--sunny and exceedinglymild--might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these.In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves ofyouth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remotercrannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth wouldhave been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they beenexhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have,rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible thanflesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by theirmanner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would havebecome a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that hehad no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly andwith a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of theshoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if hedepends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon hiscapacity to wear well, which Oak did not.
He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing tobe the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightestperiod of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions wereclearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influenceof youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse,and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become unitedagain, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife andfamily. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.
The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called NorcombeHill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminsterand Chalk-Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw comingdown the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, paintedyellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walkingalongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden withhousehold goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sata woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight formore than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstilljust beneath his eyes.
"The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss," said the waggoner.
"Then I heard it fall," said the girl, in a soft, though notparticularly low voice. "I heard a noise I could not account forwhen we were coming up the hill."
"I'll run back."
"Do," she answered.
The sensible horses stood--perfectly still, and the waggoner's stepssank fainter and fainter in the distance.
The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded bytables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle,and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses,together with a caged canary--all probably from the windows of thehouse just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, fromthe partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, andaffectionately surveyed the small birds around.
The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and theonly sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary upand down the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentivelydownwards. It was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at anoblong package tied in paper, and lying between them. She turned herhead to learn if the waggoner were coming. He was not yet in sight;and her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to runupon what was inside it. At length she drew the article into herlap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass wasdisclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively. Sheparted her lips and smiled.
It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow thecrimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her brightface and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packedaround her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season theyinvested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girlwith a peculiar vernal charm. What possessed her to indulge insuch a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, andunperceived farmer who were alone its spectators,--whether the smilebegan as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art,--nobodyknows; it ended certainly in a real smile. She blushed at herself,and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more.
The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such anact--from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling outof doors--lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsicallypossess. The picture was a delicate one. Woman's prescriptiveinfirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in thefreshness of an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible byGabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain wouldhave been. There was no necessity whatever for her looking in theglass. She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press adimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intentionhad been her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observedherself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind, herthoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in whichmen would play a part--vistas of probable triumphs--the smiles beingof a phase suggesting that hearts were imagin
ed as lost and won.Still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions wasso idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had anypart in them at all.
The waggoner's steps were heard returning. She put the glass in thepaper, and the whole again into its place.
When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point ofespial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to theturnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where theobject of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll.About twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when heheard a dispute. It was a difference concerning twopence between thepersons with the waggon and the man at the toll-bar.
"Mis'ess's niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that'senough that I've offered ye, you great miser, and she won't pay anymore." These were the waggoner's words.
"Very well; then mis'ess's niece can't pass," said the turnpike-keeper,closing the gate.
Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell intoa reverie. There was something in the tone of twopence remarkablyinsignificant. Threepence had a definite value as money--it was anappreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higglingmatter; but twopence--"Here," he said, stepping forward and handingtwopence to the gatekeeper; "let the young woman pass." He looked upat her then; she heard his words, and looked down.
Gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to themiddle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of JudasIscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, thatnot a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either ofdistinction or notoriety. The red-jacketed and dark-haired maidenseemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and toldher man to drive on. She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel ona minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she feltnone, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and weknow how women take a favour of that kind.
The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle. "That's ahandsome maid," he said to Oak.
"But she has her faults," said Gabriel.
"True, farmer."
"And the greatest of them is--well, what it is always."
"Beating people down? ay, 'tis so."
"O no."
"What, then?"
Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller'sindifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performanceover the hedge, and said, "Vanity."