Far From The Madding Crowd - Reading - Chapter 1 - Thomas Hardy - British English Pronunciation - FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD By
Thomas Hardy
CHAPTER I
Description of Farmer Oak—An Incident
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant
distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared
round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the
rising sun. His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working
days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good
character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered
by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally
that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of
the parish and the drunken section,—that is, he went to church, but yawned privately
by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be
for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as
it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums,
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 whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes
was most peculiarly his own—the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him
being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the
base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's;
his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large,
affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in
a river all day long and know nothing of damp—their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured
to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in
other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This
instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of
going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round
on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be
quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak
remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects
by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his
face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked
by the green-faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult
of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers
(which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled
out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy
flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like
a bucket from a well. But some thoughtful persons, who had seen
him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning—sunny and exceedingly
mild—might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one
might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there
even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth
would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due
consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the
mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions
by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal,
which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's
room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing
of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for
his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak
did not. He had just reached the time of life at which
"young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightest
period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he
had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in
the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united
again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short,
he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor. The field he was in this morning sloped to
a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster
and Chalk-Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before
him an ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner
walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden with household goods
and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat a woman, young and attractive. Gabriel
had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to
a standstill just 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 not particularly low voice. "I heard a noise I could not account for when
we were coming up the hill." "I'll run back."
"Do," she answered. The sensible horses stood—perfectly still,
and the waggoner's steps sank fainter and fainter in the distance.
The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables 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
the house just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, from the partly-opened
lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and affectionately surveyed the small birds
around. The handsome girl waited for some time idly
in her place, and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary
up and down the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentively downwards. It was not
at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an oblong package tied in paper, and lying between
them. She turned her head 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 run upon what was inside
it. At length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper covering; a small
swing looking-glass was disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively.
She parted her lips and smiled. It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted
up to a scarlet glow the crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright
face and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed around her were fresh
and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the whole concern of horses, waggon,
furniture, and girl with a peculiar vernal charm. What possessed her to indulge in such
a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were
alone its spectators,—whether the smile began as a factitious one, to test her capacity
in that art,—nobody knows; 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 an act—from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling
out of doors—lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess. The picture
was a delicate one. Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed
it in the freshness of an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak
as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been. There was no necessity
whatever for her looking in the glass. She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or
press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been
her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature
in the feminine kind, her thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas
in which men would play a part—vistas of probable triumphs—the smiles being of a
phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won. Still, this was but conjecture,
and the whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that
intention had any part in them at all. The waggoner's steps were heard returning.
She put the glass in the paper, and the whole again into its place.
When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of espial, and descending into
the road, followed the vehicle to the turnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where
the object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. About twenty steps
still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. It was a difference concerning
twopence between the persons 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's enough that I've offered
ye, you great miser, and she won't pay any more." 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 into a reverie. There was something
in the tone of twopence remarkably insignificant. Threepence had a definite value as money—it
was an appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling matter; but
twopence—"Here," he said, stepping forward and handing twopence to the gatekeeper; "let
the young woman pass." He looked up at her then; she heard his words, and looked down.
Gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the middle line between
the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas Iscariot, as represented in a window
of the church he attended, that not a single lineament could be selected and called worthy
either of distinction or notoriety. The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden seemed to think so
too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told her man to drive on. She might have
looked her thanks to Gabriel on a minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably
she felt none, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we know how
women take a favour of that kind. The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle.
"That's a handsome 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's indifference, glanced back to
where he had witnessed her performance over the hedge, and said, "Vanity."
Far From The Madding Crowd - Reading - Chapter 1 - Thomas Hardy - British English Pronunciation