________________________________________________
_
CHAPTER IV - GABRIEL'S RESOLVE -- THE VISIT -- THE MISTAKE
THE only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival
sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a
superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by
suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man.
This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable
inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.
Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of
exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts,
being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant
profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of
lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's feelings were as
sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his
chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that
in which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer
was quite struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and
would not look at the dog. However, he continued to watch
through the hedge for her regular coming, and thus his
sentiments towards her were deepened without any
corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oak had
nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able
to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate
tales --
-- Full of sound and fury
-- signifying nothing --
he said no word at all.
By making inquiries he found that the girl's name was
Bathsheba Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about
seven days. He dreaded the eighth day.
At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give
milk for that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill
no more. Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never
could have anticipated a short time before. He liked saying
"Bathsheba" as a private enjoyment instead of whistling;
turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by
brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the
space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small.
Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage
transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which
should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the
degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see
light in this direction, and said to himself, "I'll make her
my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!"
All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on
which he might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's
aunt.
He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a
living lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter
constitution -- a fine January morning, when there was just
enough blue sky visible to make cheerfully-disposed people
wish for more, and an occasional gleam of silvery sunshine,
Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday basket, and
stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the
aunt -- George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance
of great concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed
to be taking.
Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the
chimney with strange meditation. At evening he had
fancifully traced it down the chimney to the spot of its
origin -- seen the hearth and Bathsheba beside it -- beside
it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had worn on
the hill were by association equally with her person
included in the compass of his affection; they seemed at
this early time of his love a necessary ingredient of the
sweet mixture called Bathsheba Everdene.
He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind -- of a
nature between the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate
-- of a degree between fine-market-day and wet-Sunday
selection. He thoroughly cleaned his silver watch-chain
with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots, looked to
the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the
plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it
vigorously on his way back; took a new handkerchief from the
bottom of his clothes-box, put on the light waistcoat
patterned all over with sprigs of an elegant flower uniting
the beauties of both rose and lily without the defects of
either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his
usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had
deepened it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of
guano and Roman cement, making it stick to his head like
mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a boulder after
the ebb.
Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the
chatter of a knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy
scandal and rumour to be no less the staple topic of these
little coteries on roofs than of those under them. It
seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one, for, as the
rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just as he
arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into
various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight
of his dog George. The dog took no notice, for he had
arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was
cynically avoided as a waste of breath -- in fact, he never
barked even at the sheep except to order, when it was done
with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of
Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone
through once now and then to frighten the flock for their
own good.
A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the
cat had run:
"Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it; --
did he, poor dear!"
"I beg your pardon," said Oak to the voice, "but George was
walking on behind me with a temper as mild as milk."
Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a
misgiving as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer.
Nobody appeared, and he heard the person retreat among the
bushes.
Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small
furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where
the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change
for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from
expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went
up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and
the reality had had no common grounds of opening.
Bathsheba's aunt was indoors. "Will you tell Miss Everdene
that somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak.
(Calling one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name,
is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the
rural world: it springs from a refined modesty, of which
townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no
notion whatever.)
Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers.
"Will you come in, Mr. Oak?"
"Oh, thank 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the
fireplace. "I've brought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I
thought she might like one to rear; girls do."
"She might," said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; "though she's only a
visitor here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be
in."
"Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down. "The lamb
isn't really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In
short, I was going to ask her if she'd like to be married."
"And were you indeed?"
"Yes. Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry
her. D'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging
about her at all?"
"Let me think," said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire
superfluously.... "Yes -- bless you, ever so many young
men. You see, Farmer Oak, she's so good-looking, and an
excellent scholar besides -- she was going to be a governess
once, you know, only she was too wild. Not that her young
men ever come here -- but, Lord, in the nature of women, she
must have a dozen!"
"That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack
in the stone floor with sorrow. "I'm only an every-day sort
of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer...
Well, there's no use in my waiting, for that was all I came
about: so I'll take myself off home-along, Mrs. Hurst."
When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the
down, he heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping
note of more treble quality than that in which the
exclamation usually embodies itself when shouted across a
field. He looked round, and saw a girl racing after him,
waving a white handkerchief.
Oak stood still -- and the runner drew nearer. It was
Bathsheba Everdene. Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was
already deep, not, as it appeared, from emotion, but from
running.
"Farmer Oak -- I ----" she said, pausing for want of breath
pulling up in front of him with a slanted face and putting
her hand to her side.
"I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her
further speech.
"Yes -- I know that," she said panting like a robin, her
face red and moist from her exertions, like a peony petal
before the sun dries off the dew. "I didn't know you had
come to ask to have me, or I should have come in from the
garden instantly. I ran after you to say -- that my aunt
made a mistake in sending you away from courting me ----"
Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast,
my dear," he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come.
"Wait a bit till you've found your breath."
"-- It was quite a mistake-aunt's telling you I had a young
man already," Bathsheba went on. "I haven't a sweetheart at
all -- and I never had one, and I thought that, as times go
with women, it was SUCH a pity to send you away thinking
that I had several."
"Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak,
smiling one of his long special smiles, and blushing with
gladness. He held out his hand to take hers, which, when
she had eased her side by pressing it there, was prettily
extended upon her bosom to still her loud-beating heart.
Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so that it
slipped through his fingers like an eel."
"I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a
degree less assurance than when he had seized her hand.
"Yes; you have."
"A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it
will soon be paid off and though I am only an every-day sort
of man, I have got on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel
uttered "a little" in a tone to show her that it was the
complacent form of "a great deal." He continued: "When we
be married, I am quite sure I can work twice as hard as I do
now."
He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba
had overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low
stunted holly bush, now laden with red berries. Seeing his
advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible
enclosure, if not compression, of her person, she edged off
round the bush.
"Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him
with rounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you."
"Well -- that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay." To run
after anybody like this, and then say you don't want him!"
"What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly,
and yet half conscious of the absurdity of the position she
had made for herself -- "that nobody has got me yet as a
sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen, as my aunt said;
I HATE to be thought men's property in that way, though
possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if I'd wanted you I
shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have been
the FORWARDEST thing! But there was no harm in hurrying to
correct a piece of false news that had been told you."
"Oh, no -- no harm at all." But there is such a thing as
being too generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and
Oak added with a more appreciative sense of all the
circumstances -- "Well, I am not quite certain it was no
harm."
"Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I
wanted to marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the
hill."
"Come," said Gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or
two. I'll wait a while, Miss Everdene. Will you marry me?
Do, Bathsheba. I love you far more than common!"
"I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously;
"if I can think out of doors; my mind spreads away so."
"But you can give a guess."
"Then give me time." Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the
distance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.
"I can make you happy," said he to the back of her head,
across the bush. "You shall have a piano in a year or two --
farmers' wives are getting to have pianos now -- and I'll
practise up the flute right well to play with you in the
evenings."
"Yes; I should like that."
"And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market --
and nice flowers, and birds -- cocks and hens I mean,
because they be useful," continued Gabriel, feeling balanced
between poetry and practicality.
"I should like it very much."
"And a frame for cucumbers -- like a gentleman and lady."
"Yes."
"And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the
newspaper list of marriages."
"Dearly I should like that!"
"And the babies in the births -- every man jack of 'em! And
at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be
-- and whenever I look up there will be you."
"Wait, wait, and don't be improper!"
Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He
regarded the red berries between them over and over again,
to such an extent, that holly seemed in his after life to be
a cypher signifying a proposal of marriage. Bathsheba
decisively turned to him.
"No; 'tis no use," she said. "I don't want to marry you."
"Try."
"I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a
marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk
about me, and think I had won my battle, and I should feel
triumphant, and all that, But a husband ----"
"Well!"
"Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked
up, there he'd be."
"Of course he would -- I, that is."
"Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at
a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But
since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I
shan't marry -- at least yet."
"That's a terrible wooden story."
At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an
addition to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him.
"Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say
stupider than that," said Oak. "But dearest," he continued
in a palliative voice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep
honest sigh -- none the less so in that, being like the sigh
of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a
disturbance of the atmosphere. "Why won't you have me?" he
appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side.
"I cannot," she said, retreating.
"But why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair
of ever reaching her, and facing over the bush.
"Because I don't love you."
"Yes, but ----"
She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that
it was hardly ill-mannered at all. "I don't love you," she
said.
"But I love you -- and, as for myself, I am content to be
liked."
"Oh Mr. Oak -- that's very fine! You'd get to despise me."
"Never," said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be
coming, by the force of his words, straight through the bush
and into her arms. "I shall do one thing in this life --
one thing certain -- that is, love you, and long for you,
and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die." His voice had a genuine
pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled.
"It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so
much!" she said with a little distress, and looking
hopelessly around for some means of escape from her moral
dilemma. "How I wish I hadn't run after you!" However she
seemed to have a short cut for getting back to cheerfulness,
and set her face to signify archness. "It wouldn't do, Mr
Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and
you would never be able to, I know."
Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it
was useless to attempt argument.
"Mr. Oak," she said, with luminous distinctness and common
sense, "you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in
the world -- I am staying with my aunt for my bare
sustenance. I am better educated than you -- and I don't
love you a bit: that's my side of the case. Now yours: you
are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in common
prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly
not think of doing at present), to marry a woman with money,
who would stock a larger farm for you than you have now."
Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much
admiration.
"That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he
naively said.
Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too
many to succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a
superfluous moiety of honesty. Bathsheba was decidedly
disconcerted.
"Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said,
almost angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising
in each cheek.
"I can't do what I think would be -- would be ----"
"Right?"
"No: wise."
"You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak," she exclaimed,
with even more hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully.
"After that, do you think I could marry you? Not if I know
it."
He broke in passionately. "But don't mistake me like that!
Because I am open enough to own what every man in my shoes
would have thought of, you make your colours come up your
face, and get crabbed with me. That about your not being
good enough for me is nonsense. You speak like a lady --
all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury is,
I have heerd, a large farmer -- much larger than ever I
shall be. May I call in the evening, or will you walk along
with me o' Sundays? I don't want you to make-up your mind
at once, if you'd rather not."
"No -- no -- I cannot. Don't press me any more -- don't. I
don't love you -- so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with
a laugh.
No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-
round of skittishness. "Very well," said Oak, firmly, with
the bearing of one who was going to give his days and nights
to Ecclesiastes for ever. "Then I'll ask you no more."
Content of CHAPTER IV - GABRIEL'S RESOLVE -- THE VISIT -- THE MISTAKE [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
_
Read next: CHAPTER V - DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA -- A PASTORAL TRAGEDY
Read previous: CHAPTER III - A GIRL ON HORSEBACK -- CONVERSATION
Table of content of Far From The Madding Crowd
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
