‘Oh – he will. Who can he have?’
‘Young Cain Ball is a very good lad,’ Henery said, ‘and Shepherd Oak don’t mind his youth?’ he added, turning with an apologetic smile to the shepherd, who had just appeared on the scene, and was now leaning against the doorpost with his arms folded.
‘No, I don’t mind that,’ said Gabriel.
‘How did Cain come by such a name?’ asked Bathsheba.
‘Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-read woman, made a mistake at his christening, thinking ’twas Abel killed Cain, and called en Cain, meaning Abel all the time. The parson put it right, but ’twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in the parish. ’Tis very unfortunate for the boy.’
‘It is rather unfortunate.’
‘Yes. However, we soften it down as much as we can, and call him Cainy. Ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart out about it almost. She was brought up by a very heathen father and mother, who never sent her to church or school, and it shows how the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, mem.’
Mr Fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of melancholy required when the persons involved in the given misfortune do not belong to your own family.
‘Very well then, Cainy Ball to be under-shepherd. And you quite understand your duties? – you I mean, Gabriel Oak?’
‘Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene,’ said Shepherd Oak from the doorpost. ‘If I don’t, I’ll inquire.’ Gabriel was rather staggered by the remarkable coolness of her manner. Certainly nobody without previous information would have dreamt that Oak and the handsome woman before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers. But perhaps her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which had advanced her from a cottage to a large house and fields. The case is not unexampled in high places. When, in the writings of the later poets, Jove and his family are found to have moved from their cramped quarters on the peak of Olympus into the wide sky above it, their words show a proportionate increase of arrogance and reserve.
Footsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their character the qualities both of weight and measure, rather at the expense of velocity.
(All.) ‘Here’s Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge.’
‘And what’s the news?’ said Bathsheba, as William, after marching to the middle of the hall, took a handkerchief from his hat and wiped his forehead from its centre to its remoter boundaries.
‘I should have been sooner, miss,’ he said, ‘if it hadn’t been for the weather.’ He then stamped with each foot severely, and on looking down his boots were perceived to be clogged with snow.
‘Come at last, is it?’ said Henery.
‘Well, what about Fanny?’ said Bathsheba.
‘Well, ma’am, in round numbers, she’s run away with the soldiers,’ said William.
‘No; not a steady girl like Fanny!’
‘I’ll tell ye all particulars. When I got to Casterbridge Barracks, they said, “The Eleventh Dragoon Guards be gone away, and new troops have come.” The Eleventh left last week for Melchester and onwards. The Route came from Government like a thief in the night, as is his nature to, and afore the Eleventh knew it almost, they were on the march. They passed near here.’
Gabriel had listened with interest. ‘I saw them go,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ continued William, ‘they pranced down the street playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me”, so ’tis said, in glorious notes of triumph. Every looker-on’s inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the public-house people and the nameless women!’
‘But they’re not gone to any war?’
‘No, ma’am; but they be gone to take the places of them who may, which is very close connected. And so I said to myself, Fanny’s young man was one of the regiment, and she’s gone after him. There, ma’am, that’s it in black and white.’
‘Did you find out his name?’
‘No; nobody knew it. I believe he was higher in rank than a private.’
Gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt.
‘Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate,’ said Bathsheba. ‘But one of you had better run across to Farmer Boldwood’s and tell him that much.’
She then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them with a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness that was hardly to be found in the words themselves:
‘Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don’t yet know my powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if you serve me well, so shall I serve you. Don’t any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I’m a woman I don’t understand the difference between bad goings-on and good.’
(All.) ‘No’m!’
(Liddy.) ‘Excellent well said.’
‘I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.’
(All.) ‘Yes’m!’
‘And so good-night.’
(All.) ‘Good-night, ma’am.’
Then this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of the hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging them along with a scratching noise upon the floor. Liddy, elevating her feelings to the occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated off behind Bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from travesty, and the door was closed.
Chapter 11
Outside the barracks – Snow – A meeting
For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a certain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury, at a later hour on this same snowy evening – if that may be called a prospect of which the chief constituent was darkness.
It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise.
The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river, behind which rose a high wall. On the right was a tract of land, partly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a wide undulating upland.
The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a moor or waste. Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an obliteration by snow.
This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and without more character than that of being the limit of something else – the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all.
We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass. If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if anything could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The indistinct summit of the facade was notched and prolonged by chimneys here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the water’s edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection.
An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy atmosphere. It was a neighbouring clock striking ten. The bell was in the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling snow, had lost its voice for the time.
About this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had fallen, then one had the room of ten. Not long after a form moved by the brink of the river.
By its outline upon the colourless background a close observer might have seen that it was small. This was all that was positively discoverable, though it seemed human.
The shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow, though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep. At this time some words were spoken aloud: –
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five.’
Between each utterance the little shape advanced about half-a-dozen yards. It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were being counted. The word ‘Five’ represented the fifth window from the end of the wall.
