CHAPTER VI

THE FAIR—THE JOURNEY—THE FIRE

Two months passed away. We are brought on to a day in February, on

which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town of

Casterbridge.

At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and

hearty labourers waiting upon Chance—all men of the stamp to whom

labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and

pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these,

carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord

twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw;

shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and thus the

situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.

In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior

appearance to the rest—in fact, his superiority was marked enough to

lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as

to a farmer, and to use “Sir” as a finishing word. His answer always

was,—

“I am looking for a place myself—a bailiff’s. Do ye know of anybody who

wants one?”

Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative, and his

expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of

wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had

sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very

slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had

never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it

often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it

does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss

gain.

In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a sergeant

and his party had been beating up for recruits through the four

streets. As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself not hired,

Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone off to serve

his country. Weary of standing in the market-place, and not much

minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided to offer

himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff.

All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds. Sheep-tending was

Gabriel’s speciality. Turning down an obscure street and entering an

obscurer lane, he went up to a smith’s shop.

“How long would it take you to make a shepherd’s crook?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“How much?”

“Two shillings.”

He sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into

the bargain.

He then went to a ready-made clothes’ shop, the owner of which had a

large rural connection. As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel’s

money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for a

shepherd’s regulation smock-frock.

This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the

centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a

shepherd, crook in hand.

Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that

bailiffs were most in demand. However, two or three farmers noticed him

and drew near. Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined form:—

“Where do you come from?”

“Norcombe.”

“That’s a long way.

“Fifteen miles.”

“Who’s farm were you upon last?”

“My own.”

This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The inquiring

farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously. Gabriel, like his

dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never made advance beyond

this point.

It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a

procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a

chance of using it. Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his colours as

a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the whole cycle of

labour that was required in the fair. It grew dusk. Some merry men were

whistling and singing by the corn-exchange. Gabriel’s hand, which had

lain for some time idle in his smock-frock pocket, touched his flute

which he carried there. Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly

bought wisdom into practice.

He drew out his flute and began to play “Jockey to the Fair” in the

style of a man who had never known a moment’s sorrow. Oak could pipe

with Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes cheered

his own heart as well as those of the loungers. He played on with

spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small

fortune to a destitute man.

By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at Shottsford

the next day.

“How far is Shottsford?”

“Ten miles t’other side of Weatherbury.”

Weatherbury! It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before. This

information was like coming from night into noon.

“How far is it to Weatherbury?”

“Five or six miles.”

Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but the

place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose

Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the

Weatherbury quarter. Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means

uninteresting intrinsically. If report spoke truly they were as hardy,

merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county. Oak resolved

to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford, and struck

out at once into the high road which had been recommended as the direct

route to the village in question.

The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks,

whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and folded

into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more rapid, the

stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode on in undisturbed

serenity. On the higher levels the dead and dry carcasses of leaves

tapped the ground as they bowled along helter-skelter upon the

shoulders of the wind, and little birds in the hedges were rustling

their feathers and tucking themselves in comfortably for the night,

retaining their places if Oak kept moving, but flying away if he

stopped to look at them. He passed by Yalbury Wood where the game-birds

were rising to their roosts, and heard the crack-voiced cock-pheasants

“cu-uck, cuck,” and the wheezy whistle of the hens.

By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the

landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. He descended Yalbury

Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up under a

great over-hanging tree by the roadside.

On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the spot

being apparently quite deserted. The waggon, from its position, seemed

to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half a truss of

hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty. Gabriel sat

down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his position. He

calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of the journey;

and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted to lie down

upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the village of

Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging.

Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle

of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into the

lonely waggon. Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and, as well as

he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over him by way of

bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling, physically, as

comfortable as ever he had been in his life. Inward melancholy it was

impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours,

to banish quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his

history. So, thinking of his misfortunes, amorous and pastoral, he fell

asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common with sailors, the privilege of

being able to summon the god instead of having to wait for him.

On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no

idea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion. He was being carried

along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without

springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being

dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a kettledrum-stick.

He then distinguished voices in conversation, coming from the forpart

of the waggon. His concern at this dilemma (which would have been

alarm, had he been a thriving man; but misfortune is a fine opiate to

personal terror) led him to peer cautiously from the hay, and the first

sight he beheld was the stars above him. Charles’s Wain was getting

towards a right angle with the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it

must be about nine o’clock—in other words, that he had slept two hours.

This small astronomical calculation was made without any positive

effort, and whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible,

into whose hands he had fallen.

Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs

outside the waggon, one of whom was driving. Gabriel soon found that

this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from Casterbridge

fair, like himself.

A conversation was in progress, which continued thus:—

“Be as ’twill, she’s a fine handsome body as far’s looks be concerned.

But that’s only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as

proud as a lucifer in their insides.”

“Ay—so ’a do seem, Billy Smallbury—so ’a do seem.” This utterance was

very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of the

waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker’s larynx. It came

from the man who held the reins.

“She’s a very vain feymell—so ’tis said here and there.”

“Ah, now. If so be ’tis like that, I can’t look her in the face. Lord,

no: not I—heh-heh-heh! Such a shy man as I be!”

“Yes—she’s very vain. ’Tis said that every night at going to bed she

looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly.”

“And not a married woman. Oh, the world!”

“And ’a can play the peanner, so ’tis said. Can play so clever that ’a

can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man

can wish for.”

“D’ye tell o’t! A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man! And

how do she pay?”

“That I don’t know, Master Poorgrass.”

On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed into

Gabriel’s mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba. There were,

however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the waggon,

though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going beyond it,

and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some estate. They

were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to alarm the

speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon unseen.

He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate, and

mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap lodging in

the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under some hay or

corn-stack. The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon his ear. He

was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand an unusual

light—appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow

increased. Something was on fire.

Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side

upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the

exact direction of the fire. The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by

his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer the

outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. A

rick-yard was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to be

painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his

smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of

thorn-twigs—the light reaching him through a leafless intervening

hedge—and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright in

the same abounding rays. He came up to the boundary fence, and stood to

regain breath. It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living

soul.

The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone as

to preclude a possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently from a

house. As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames

completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to

the eye. However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together, will resist

combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the outside.

This before Gabriel’s eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together,

and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on

the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of a

cigar. Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking noise;

flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no

crackle. Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing

clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the

semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow uniformity.

Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping

movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above

shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes,

and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters

like birds from a nest.

Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case

to be more serious than he had at first imagined. A scroll of smoke

blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition

with the decaying one, and behind this a series of others, composing

the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead of the straw-stack

standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a

regular connection between it and the remaining stacks of the group.

Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. The first

man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts

were several yards in advance of his body, which they could never drag

on fast enough.

“O, man—fire, fire! A good master and a bad servant is fire, fire!—I

mane a bad servant and a good master. Oh, Mark Clark—come! And you,

Billy Smallbury—and you, Maryann Money—and you, Jan Coggan, and Matthew

there!” Other figures now appeared behind this shouting man and among

the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from being alone he was in a

great company—whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the

jigging of the flames, and not at all by their owners’ movements. The

assemblage—belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts

into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of

commotion—set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose.

“Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!” cried Gabriel to those nearest

to him. The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these, tongues of

yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the

fire once got _under_ this stack, all would be lost.

“Get a tarpaulin—quick!” said Gabriel.

A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the

channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the

corn-stack, and stood up vertical.

“Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet.” said

Gabriel again.

The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge

roof covering the wheat-stack.

“A ladder,” cried Gabriel.

“The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,” said

a spectre-like form in the smoke.

Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage

in the operation of “reed-drawing,” and digging in his feet, and

occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up

the beetling face. He at once sat astride the very apex, and began with

his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon,

shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and some water.

Billy Smallbury—one of the men who had been on the waggon—by this time

had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak

upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a

nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak’s face

and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long

beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept

sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.

On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all

they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. They

were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern.

Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the

fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was

another woman, on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the

fire, that the horse might not become restive.

“He’s a shepherd,” said the woman on foot. “Yes—he is. See how his

crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock-frock is burnt

in two holes, I declare! A fine young shepherd he is too, ma’am.”

“Whose shepherd is he?” said the equestrian in a clear voice.

“Don’t know, ma’am.”

“Don’t any of the others know?”

“Nobody at all—I’ve asked ’em. Quite a stranger, they say.”

The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked

anxiously around.

“Do you think the barn is safe?” she said.

“D’ye think the barn is safe, Jan 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?”