Coggan?’ said the second woman, passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.
‘Safe now – leastwise I think so. If this rick had gone the barn would have followed. ’Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done the most good – he sitting on the top o’ rick, whizzing his great long arms about like a windmill.’
‘He does work hard,’ said the young woman on horseback, looking up at Gabriel through her thick woollen veil. ‘I wish he was shepherd here. Don’t any of you know his name?’
‘Never heard the man’s name in my life, or seed his form afore.’
The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel’s elevated position being no longer required of him, he made as if to descend.
‘Maryann,’ said the girl on horseback, ‘go to him as he comes down, and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he has done.’
Maryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the ladder. She delivered her message.
‘Where is your master the farmer?’ asked Gabriel, kindling with the idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.
‘’Tisn’t a master; ’tis a mistress, shepherd.’
‘A woman farmer?’
‘Ay, ’a b’lieve, and a rich one too!’ said a bystander. ‘Lately ’a came here from a distance. Took on her uncle’s farm, who died suddenly. Used to measure his money in half-pint cups. They say now that she’ve business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I do pitch-halfpenny – not a bit in the world, shepherd.’
‘That’s she, back there upon the pony,’ said Maryann; ‘wi’ her face a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it.’
Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water, the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, advanced with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the slight female form in the saddle. He lifted his hat with respect, and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said in a hesitating voice, –
‘Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma’am?’
She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all astonishment. Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba Everdene, were face to face.
Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice, –
‘Do you want a shepherd, ma’am?’
Chapter 7
Recognition – A timid girl
Bathsheba withdrew into the shade. She scarcely knew whether most to be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at its awkwardness. There was room for a little pity, also for a very little exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own. Embarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel’s declaration of love to her at Norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it.
‘Yes,’ she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again to him with a little warmth of cheek; ‘I do want a shepherd. But –’
‘He’s the very man, ma’am,’ said one of the villagers, quietly. Conviction breeds conviction. ‘Ay, that ’a is,’ said a second, decisively.
‘The man, truly!’ said a third, with heartiness.
‘He’s all there!’ said number four, fervidly.
‘Then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff?’ said Bathsheba.
All was practical again now. A summer eve and loneliness would have been necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance.
The bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation within his breast at discovering that this Ashtoreth of strange report was only a modification of Venus the well-known and admired, retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring.
The fire before them wasted away. ‘Men,’ said Bathsheba, ‘you shall take a little refreshment after this extra work. Will you come to the house?’
‘We could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, Miss, if so be ye’d send it to Warren’s Malthouse,’ replied the spokesman.
Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on to the village in twos and threes – Oak and the bailiff being left by the rick alone.
‘And now,’ said the bailiff, finally, ‘all is settled, I think, about your coming, and I am going home-along. Good-night to ye, shepherd.’
‘Can you get me a lodging?’ inquired Gabriel.
‘That I can’t, indeed,’ he said, moving past Oak as a Christian edges past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute. ‘If you follow on the road till you come to Warren’s Malthouse, where they are all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of ’em will tell you of a place. Good-night to ye, shepherd.’
The bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neigh-bour as himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still astonished at the encounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.
Obliged to some extent to forgo dreaming in order to find the way, he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where several ancient trees grew. There was a wide margin of grass along here, and Gabriel’s footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at this indurating period of the year. When abreast of a trunk which appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure was standing behind it. Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed a careless position.
It was a slim girl, rather thinly clad.
‘Good-night to you,’ said Gabriel heartily.
‘Good-night,’ said the girl to Gabriel.
The voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was the low and dulcet note suggestive of romance; common in descriptions, rare in experience.
‘I’ll thank you to tell me if I’m in the way for Warren’s Malthouse?’ Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get more of the music.
‘Quite right. It’s at the bottom of the hill. And do you know –’ The girl hesitated and then went on again. ‘Do you know how late they keep open the Buck’s Head Inn?’ She seemed to be won by Gabriel’s heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.
‘I don’t know where the Buck’s Head is, or anything about it. Do you think of going there to-night?’
‘Yes –’ The woman again paused. There was no necessity for any continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add
