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CHAPTER III - A GIRL ON HORSEBACK -- CONVERSATION
THE sluggish day began to break. Even its position
terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and
for no particular reason save that the incident of the night
had occurred there Oak went again into the plantation.
Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a horse at
the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an
auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path
leading past the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of
the night before. Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she
had mentioned as having lost in the wind; possibly she had
come to look for it. He hastily scanned the ditch and after
walking about ten yards along it found the hat among the
leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his
hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the
loophole in the direction of the rider's approach.
She came up and looked around -- then on the other side of
the hedge. Gabriel was about to advance and restore the
missing article when an unexpected performance induced him
to suspend the action for the present. The path, after
passing the cowshed, bisected the plantation. It was not a
bridle-path -- merely a pedestrian's track, and the boughs
spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet
above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect
beneath them. The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked
around for a moment, as if to assure herself that all
humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards
flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet
against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The
rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a
kingfisher -- its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel's
eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank
pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along
unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs.
The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a
horse's head and its tail, and the necessity for this
abnormal attitude having ceased with the passage of the
plantation, she began to adopt another, even more obviously
convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and it
was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather
beneath her was unattainable sideways. Springing to her
accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and
satisfying herself that nobody was in sight, she seated
herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly
expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of
Tewnell Mill.
Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up
the hat in his hut, went again among his ewes. An hour
passed, the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag
of bran in front of her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was
met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of
the pony whilst she slid off. The boy led away the horse,
leaving the pail with the young woman.
Soon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in
regular succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds
of a person milking a cow. Gabriel took the lost hat in his
hand, and waited beside the path she would follow in leaving
the hill.
She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee.
The left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being
shown bare to make Oak wish that the event had happened in
the summer, when the whole would have been revealed. There
was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she
seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could
not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed
in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon
the whole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a
genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was
an addition to recognised power. It was with some surprise
that she saw Gabriel's face rising like the moon behind the
hedge.
The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her
charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with
was less a diminution than a difference. The starting-point
selected by the judgment was her height. She seemed tall,
but the pail was a small one, and the hedge diminutive;
hence, making allowance for error by comparison with these,
she could have been not above the height to be chosen by
women as best. All features of consequence were severe and
regular. It may have been observed by persons who go about
the shires with eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a
classically-formed face is seldom found to be united with a
figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished features
being generally too large for the remainder of the frame;
that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads
usually goes off into random facial curves. Without
throwing a Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said
that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and
looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of
pleasure. From the contours of her figure in its upper
part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but
since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been
put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head
into a bush. Yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it
was merely her instinct to draw the line dividing the seen
from the unseen higher than they do it in towns.
That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as
soon as she caught Oak's eyes conning the same page was
natural, and almost certain. The self-consciousness shown
would have been vanity if a little more pronounced, dignity
if a little less. Rays of male vision seem to have a
tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; she
brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been
irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free
air of her previous movements was reduced at the same time
to a chastened phase of itself. Yet it was the man who
blushed, the maid not at all.
"I found a hat," said Oak.
"It is mine," said she, and, from a sense of proportion,
kept down to a small smile an inclination to laugh
distinctly: "it flew away last night."
"One o'clock this morning?"
"Well -- it was." She was surprised. "How did you know?"
she said.
"I was here."
"You are Farmer Oak, are you not?"
"That or thereabouts. I'm lately come to this place."
"A large farm?" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and
swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded
hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour past sunrise the
rays touched its prominent curves with a colour of their own.
"No; not large. About a hundred." (In speaking of farms
the word "acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to
such old expressions as "a stag of ten.")
"I wanted my hat this morning." she went on. "I had to ride
to Tewnell Mill."
"Yes you had."
"How do you know?"
"I saw you."
"Where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of
her lineaments and frame to a standstill.
"Here -- going through the plantation, and all down the
hill," said Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing
with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a
remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to
meet his colloquist's eyes.
A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers
as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft.
Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when
passing through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a
nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face. It was a time
to see a woman redden who was not given to reddening as a
rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest
rose-colour. From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties
of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance
of Oak's acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in
considerateness, turned away his head.
The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered
when she would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in
facing her again. He heard what seemed to be the flitting
of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked. She had gone
away.
With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel
returned to his work.
Five mornings and evenings passed. The young woman came
regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick
one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction
of Oak's person. His want of tact had deeply offended her --
not by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her
know that he had seen it. For, as without law there is no
sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to
feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman
without her own connivance. It was food for great regret
with him; it was also a CONTRETEMPS which touched into life
a latent heat he had experienced in that direction.
The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow
forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end of
the same week. One afternoon it began to freeze, and the
frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy
tightening of bonds. It was a time when in cottages the
breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets; when round the
drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the sitters'
backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. Many
a small bird went to bed supperless that night among the
bare boughs.
As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon
the cowshed. At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra
quantity of bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the
hut and heaped more fuel upon the stove. The wind came in
at the bottom of the door, and to prevent it Oak laid a sack
there and wheeled the cot round a little more to the south.
Then the wind spouted in at a ventilating hole -- of which
there was one on each side of the hut.
Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and
the door closed one of these must be kept open -- that
chosen being always on the side away from the wind. Closing
the slide to windward, he turned to open the other; on
second thoughts the farmer considered that he would first
sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two, till the
temperature of the hut was a little raised. He sat down.
His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying
himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding
nights, Oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then
allow himself to fall asleep. He fell asleep, however,
without having performed the necessary preliminary.
How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew. During
the first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds
seemed to be in course of enactment. His dog was howling,
his head was aching fearfully -- somebody was pulling him
about, hands were loosening his neckerchief.
On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk
in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with
the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him.
More than this -- astonishingly more -- his head was upon
her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her
fingers were unbuttoning his collar.
"Whatever is the matter?" said Oak, vacantly.
She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a
kind to start enjoyment.
"Nothing now,' she answered, "since you are not dead. It is
a wonder you were not suffocated in this hut of yours."
"Ah, the hut!" murmured Gabriel. "I gave ten pounds for
that hut. But I'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles
as they did in old times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of
straw! It played me nearly the same trick the other day!"
Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought down his fist upon the
floor.
"It was not exactly the fault of the hut," she observed in a
tone which showed her to be that novelty among women -- one
who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which
was to convey it. "You should, I think, have considered,
and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed."
"Yes I suppose I should," said Oak, absently. He was
endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being
thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event
passed on into the heap of bygone things. He wished she
knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of
carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the
intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of
language. So he remained silent.
She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and
shaking himself like a Samson. "How can I thank 'ee?" he
said at last, gratefully, some of the natural rusty red
having returned to his face.
"Oh, never mind that," said the girl, smiling, and allowing
her smile to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever
that might prove to be.
"How did you find me?"
"I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the
hut when I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy's
milking is almost over for the season, and I shall not come
here after this week or the next). The dog saw me, and
jumped over to me, and laid hold of my skirt. I came across
and looked round the hut the very first thing to see if the
slides were closed. My uncle has a hut like this one, and I
have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without
leaving a slide open. I opened the door, and there you were
like dead. I threw the milk over you, as there was no
water, forgetting it was warm, and no use."
"I wonder if I should have died?" Gabriel said, in a low
voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than
to her.
"Oh no!" the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less
tragic probability; to have saved a man from death involved
talk that should harmonise with the dignity of such a deed --
and she shunned it.
"I believe you saved my life, Miss ---- I don't know your
name. I know your aunt's, but not yours."
"I would just as soon not tell it -- rather not. There is
no reason either why I should, as you probably will never
have much to do with me."
"Still, I should like to know."
"You can inquire at my aunt's -- she will tell you."
"My name is Gabriel Oak."
"And mine isn't. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so
decisively, Gabriel Oak."
"You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must
make the most of it."
"I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable."
"I should think you might soon get a new one."
"Mercy! -- how many opinions you keep about you concerning
other people, Gabriel Oak."
"Well, Miss -- excuse the words -- I thought you would like
them. But I can't match you, I know, in napping out my mind
upon my tongue. I never was very clever in my inside. But
I thank you. Come, give me your hand."
She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old-fashioned
earnest conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on. "Very
well," she said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips
to a demure impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in
his fear of being too demonstrative, swerved to the opposite
extreme, touching her fingers with the lightness of a small-
hearted person.
"I am sorry," he said the instant after.
"What for?"
"Letting your hand go so quick."
"You may have it again if you like; there it is." She gave
him her hand again.
Oak held it longer this time -- indeed, curiously long.
"How soft it is -- being winter time, too -- not chapped or
rough or anything!" he said.
"There -- that's long enough," said she, though without
pulling it away. "But I suppose you are thinking you would
like to kiss it? You may if you want to."
"I wasn't thinking of any such thing," said Gabriel, simply;
"but I will ----"
"That you won't!" She snatched back her hand.
Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact.
"Now find out my name," she said, teasingly; and withdrew.
Content of CHAPTER III - A GIRL ON HORSEBACK -- CONVERSATION [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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Read next: CHAPTER IV - GABRIEL'S RESOLVE -- THE VISIT -- THE MISTAKE
Read previous: CHAPTER II - NIGHT -- THE FLOCK -- AN INTERIOR -- ANOTHER INTERIOR
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