Far from the Madding Crowd

OSEPH AND HIS BURDEN—BUCK’S HEAD

A wall bounded the site of Casterbridge Union-house, except along a
portion of the end. Here a high gable stood prominent, and it was
covered like the front with a mat of ivy. In this gable was no window,
chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind. The single feature
appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves, was a
small door.

The situation of the door was peculiar. The sill was three or four feet
above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an explanation
of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately beneath suggested
that the door was used solely for the passage of articles and persons
to and from the level of a vehicle standing on the outside. Upon the
whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as a species of Traitor’s
Gate translated to another sphere. That entry and exit hereby was only
at rare intervals became apparent on noting that tufts of grass were
allowed to flourish undisturbed in the chinks of the sill.

As the clock over the South-street Alms-house pointed to five minutes
to three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with red, and containing
boughs and flowers, passed the end of the street, and up towards this
side of the building. Whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a
shattered form of “Malbrook,” Joseph Poorgrass rang the bell, and
received directions to back his waggon against the high door under the
gable. The door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly thrust
forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the vehicle.

One of the men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump
of chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in a
large scrawling hand. (We believe that they do these things more
tenderly now, and provide a plate.) He covered the whole with a black
cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tail-board of the waggon was
returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of registry
to Poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind them. Their
connection with her, short as it had been, was over for ever.

Joseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens around
the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the waggon contained;
he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car crept down the
hill, and along the road to Weatherbury.

The afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the right towards the sea
as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw strange clouds and scrolls
of mist rolling over the long ridges which girt the landscape in that
quarter. They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently crept across
the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery flags of the
moor and river brinks. Then their dank spongy forms closed in upon the
sky. It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their
roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man, and
corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an
invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped,
this being the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the first fog of
the series.

The air was as an eye suddenly struck blind. The waggon and its load
rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and
opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor
throughout. There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible
drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs
composing the wood on either side. The trees stood in an attitude of
intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock
them. A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things—so completely,
that the crunching of the waggon-wheels was as a great noise, and small
rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were
distinctly individualized.

Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly
through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid
the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like
in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished
he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he
listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the
dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree
through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin
of poor Fanny. The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this
was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The
hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim
Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three.
Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the
dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were
beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red
leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on
auburn hair.

At the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond this wood, was the
old inn Buck’s Head. It was about a mile and a half from Weatherbury,
and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling had been the place
where many coaches changed and kept their relays of horses. All the old
stabling was now pulled down, and little remained besides the habitable
inn itself, which, standing a little way back from the road, signified
its existence to people far up and down the highway by a sign hanging
from the horizontal bough of an elm on the opposite side of the way.

Travellers—for the variety tourist had hardly developed into a
distinct species at this date—sometimes said in passing, when they cast
their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond of
representing the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves had
never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working order. It
was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which Gabriel Oak
crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness,
the sign and the inn had been unobserved.

The manners of the inn were of the old-established type. Indeed, in the
minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulæ: e.g.—

Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor.
For tobacco, shout.
In calling for the girl in waiting, say, “Maid!”
Ditto for the landlady, “Old Soul!” etc., etc.

It was a relief to Joseph’s heart when the friendly signboard came in
view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to
fulfil an intention made a long time before. His spirits were oozing
out of him quite. He turned the horse’s head to the green bank, and
entered the hostel for a mug of ale.

Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step
below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside,
what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-coloured
discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark
Clark. These owners of the two most appreciative throats in the
neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were now sitting face
to face over a three-legged circular table, having an iron rim to keep
cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been
said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining vis-à-vis
across the globe.

“Why, ’tis neighbour Poorgrass!” said Mark Clark. “I’m sure your face
don’t praise your mistress’s table, Joseph.”

“I’ve had a very pale companion for the last four miles,” said Joseph,
indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation. “And to speak the
truth, ’twas beginning to tell upon me. I assure ye, I ha’n’t seed the
colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that
was no more than a dew-bit afield.”

“Then drink, Joseph, and don’t restrain yourself!” said Coggan, handing
him a hooped mug three-quarters full.

Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time,
saying, as he lowered the jug, “’Tis pretty drinking—very pretty
drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to
speak it.”

“True, drink is a pleasant delight,” said Jan, as one who repeated a
truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over
his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually
backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be
diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings.

“Well, I must be on again,” said Poorgrass. “Not but that I should like
another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me if I
was seed here.”

“Where be ye trading o’t to to-day, then, Joseph?”

“Back to Weatherbury. I’ve got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon
outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five
with her.”

“Ay—I’ve heard of it. And so she’s nailed up in parish boards after
all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown.”

“The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling,
because the bell’s a luxery: but ’a can hardly do without the grave,
poor body. However, I expect our mistress will pay all.”

“A pretty maid as ever I see! But what’s yer hurry, Joseph? The pore
woman’s dead, and you can’t bring her to life, and you may as well sit
down comfortable, and finish another with us.”

“I don’t mind taking just the least thimbleful ye can dream of more
with ye, sonnies. But only a few minutes, because ’tis as ’tis.”

“Of course, you’ll have another drop. A man’s twice the man afterwards.
You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work
without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking. Too
much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house;
but after all, many people haven’t the gift of enjoying a wet, and
since we be highly favoured with a power that way, we should make the
most o’t.”

“True,” said Mark Clark. “’Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully
bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the
parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the merry
old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my carcase, they
have!”

“Well, really, I must be onward again now,” said Joseph.

“Now, now, Joseph; nonsense! The poor woman is dead, isn’t she, and
what’s your hurry?”

“Well, I hope Providence won’t be in a way with me for my doings,” said
Joseph, again sitting down. “I’ve been troubled with weak moments
lately, ’tis true. I’ve been drinky once this month already, and I did
not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two yesterday; so I
don’t want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next
world, and not to be squandered offhand.”

“I believe ye to be a chapelmember, Joseph. That I do.”

“Oh, no, no! I don’t go so far as that.”

“For my part,” said Coggan, “I’m staunch Church of England.”

“Ay, and faith, so be I,” said Mark Clark.

“I won’t say much for myself; I don’t wish to,” Coggan continued, with
that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the
barley-corn. “But I’ve never changed a single doctrine: I’ve stuck like
a plaster to the old faith I was born in. Yes; there’s this to be said
for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful
old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all.
But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers,
and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapel members be
clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers
out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwrecks in the
newspaper.”

“They can—they can,” said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; “but
we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it
all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer like the Lord
than babes unborn.”

“Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we,” said
Joseph, thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said Coggan. “We know very well that if anybody do go to heaven,
they will. They’ve worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it,
such as ’tis. I bain’t such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to
the Church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not.
But I hate a feller who’ll change his old ancient doctrines for the
sake of getting to heaven. I’d as soon turn king’s-evidence for the few
pounds you get. Why, neighbours, when every one of my taties were
frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man who gave me a sack for seed,
though he hardly had one for his own use, and no money to buy ’em. If
it hadn’t been for him, I shouldn’t hae had a tatie to put in my
garden. D’ye think I’d turn after that? No, I’ll stick to my side; and
if we be in the wrong, so be it: I’ll fall with the fallen!”

“Well said—very well said,” observed Joseph.—“However, folks, I must be
moving now: upon my life I must. Pa’son Thirdly will be waiting at the
church gates, and there’s the woman a-biding outside in the waggon.”

“Joseph Poorgrass, don’t be so miserable! Pa’son Thirdly won’t mind.
He’s a generous man; he’s found me in tracts for years, and I’ve
consumed a good many in the course of a long and shady life; but he’s
never been the man to cry out at the expense. Sit down.”

The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was troubled
by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes
glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to
deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the
surface of darkness. Coggan’s repeater struck six from his pocket in
the usual still small tones.

At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened
to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn
bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round
faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a
fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and
shrank several inches into the background.

“Upon my soul, I’m ashamed of you; ’tis disgraceful, Joseph,
disgraceful!” said Gabriel, indignantly. “Coggan, you call yourself a
man, and don’t know better than this.”

Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes
occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not a
member, but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.

“Don’t take on so, shepherd!” said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully at
the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for
his eyes.

“Nobody can hurt a dead woman,” at length said Coggan, with the
precision of a machine. “All that could be done for her is done—she’s
beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for
lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don’t know what you do
with her at all? If she’d been alive, I would have been the first to
help her. If she now wanted victuals and drink, I’d pay for it, money
down. But she’s dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. The
woman’s past us—time spent upon her is throwed away: why should we
hurry to do what’s not required? Drink, shepherd, and be friends, for
to-morrow we may be like her.”

“We may,” added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself, to
run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to, Jan
meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a song:—

To-mor-row, to-mor-row!
And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board,
With a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row,
With my friends will I share what to-day may af-ford,
And let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row.
To-mor-row, to-mor——

“Do hold thy horning, Jan!” said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, “as
for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy
ways, you are as drunk as you can stand.”

“No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that’s the
matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that’s
how it is I look double to you—I mean, you look double to me.”

“A multiplying eye is a very bad thing,” said Mark Clark.

“It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little time,”
said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly. “Yes; I see two of every sort, as if I
were some holy man living in the times of King Noah and entering into
the ark.... Y-y-y-yes,” he added, becoming much affected by the picture
of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears; “I feel too
good for England: I ought to have lived in Genesis by rights, like the
other men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn’t have b-b-been called a
d-d-drunkard in such a way!”

“I wish you’d show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining
there!”

“Show myself a man of spirit?... Ah, well! let me take the name of
drunkard humbly—let me be a man of contrite knees—let it be! I know
that I always do say ‘Please God’ afore I do anything, from my getting
up to my going down of the same, and I be willing to take as much
disgrace as there is in that holy act. Hah, yes!... But not a man of
spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my
hinder parts without groaning manfully that I question the right to do
so? I inquire that query boldly?”

“We can’t say that you have, Hero Poorgrass,” admitted Jan.

“Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned! Yet the
shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I be not a man of
spirit! Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!”

Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take
charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply,
but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle
stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy
time. He pulled the horse’s head from the large patch of turf it had
eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along
through the unwholesome night.

It had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be
brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate
Fanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge through
Melchester and onwards. But, thanks to Boldwood’s reticence and Oak’s
generosity, the lover she had followed had never been individualized as
Troy. Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be
published till at any rate the girl had been in her grave for a few
days, when the interposing barriers of earth and time, and a sense that
the events had been somewhat shut into oblivion, would deaden the sting
that revelation and invidious remark would have for Bathsheba just now.

By the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence,
which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark. A man came from
the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown
flour—

“Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?”

Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson.

“The corpse is here, sir,” said Gabriel.

“I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the
reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to
be performed with proper decency. Have you the registrar’s
certificate?”

“No,” said Gabriel. “I expect Poorgrass has that; and he’s at the
Buck’s Head. I forgot to ask him for it.”

“Then that settles the matter. We’ll put off the funeral till to-morrow
morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left
here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited
more than an hour, and have now gone home.”

Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable
plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house
for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba’s uncle. Visions of
several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay flitted
before him. But his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of
his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. He found her in an
unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were suspicious and
perplexed as with some antecedent thought. Troy had not yet returned.
At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of indifference to his
proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their
burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she
swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny’s account, and
desired that the girl might be brought into the house. Oak argued upon
the convenience of leaving her in the waggon, just as she lay now, with
her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle
into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose. “It is unkind
and unchristian,” she said, “to leave the poor thing in a coach-house
all night.”

“Very well, then,” said the parson. “And I will arrange that the
funeral shall take place early to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Troy is right in
feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully.
We must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving
her home, she is still our sister: and it is to be believed that God’s
uncovenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member
of the flock of Christ.”

The parson’s words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed
cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr.
Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three
other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors,
placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little
sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.

Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively
lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly
ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to
Troy’s wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite
of his careful manœuvering all this day, the very worst event that
could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had
happened now. Oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this
afternoon’s work that might cast over Bathsheba’s life a shade which
the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently
lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove.

Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate,
immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the
chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one,
“Fanny Robin and child.” Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully
rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription
“Fanny Robin” only. He then left the room, and went out quietly by
the front door.