Far From the Madding Crowd. Томас Харди
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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.
‘O no!’ the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should harmonize 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 mapping 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.
Chapter 4
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 im becility 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 outdoor 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