NIGHT—THE FLOCK—AN INTERIOR—ANOTHER INTERIOR
It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas’s, the shortest day in
the year. A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill
whereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the
sunshine of a few days earlier.
Norcombe Hill—forming part of Norcombe Ewelease—was one of the spots
which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape
approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth.
It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil—an ordinary specimen
of those smoothly outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain
undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights
and dizzy granite precipices topple down.
The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying
plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest,
fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. To-night these
trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote
the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or
gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in
the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air
occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the
grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst this dead multitude
had remained on the twigs which bore them till this very mid-winter
time, and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps.
Between this half-wooded, half-naked hill, and the vague, still horizon
its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of fathomless
shade—the sounds only from which suggested that what it concealed bore
some humble resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or
less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing
powers and almost differing natures—one rubbing the blades heavily,
another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft
broom. The instinctive act of human-kind was to stand and listen, and
learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or
chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir;
how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering
it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into
the south, to be heard no more.
The sky was clear—remarkably clear—and the twinkling of all the stars
seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. The North
star was directly in the wind’s eye, and since evening the Bear had
swung round it outwardly to the east, till it was now at a right angle
with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars—oftener read of
than seen in England—was really perceptible here. The kingly brilliancy
of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called
Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as
this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The
sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past
earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or
by a fancy that the better outlook upon space afforded by a hill
emphasizes terrestrial revolution, or by the wind, or by the solitude;
but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and
abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the
epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a
small hour of the night, and, first enlarging the consciousness with a
sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are
horizontal and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long
and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a
nocturnal reconnoitre among these astral clusters, aloft from the
customary haunts of thought and vision, some men may feel raised to a
capability for eternity at once.
Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place
up against the sky. They had a clearness which was to be found nowhere
in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature.
They were the notes of Farmer Oak’s flute.
The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air, but it seemed
muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to
spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small dark object
under the plantation hedge—a shepherd’s hut—now presenting an outline
to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either
meaning or use.
The image as a whole was that of a small Noah’s Ark on a small Ararat,
allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark which
are followed by toymakers—and by these means are established in men’s
imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressions—to pass
as an approximate pattern. The hut stood on small wheels, which raised
its floor about a foot from the ground. Such shepherds’ huts are
dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on, to shelter
the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance.
It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel “Farmer”
Oak. During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled by
sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the
small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock it
with two hundred sheep. Previously he had been a bailiff for a short
time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his childhood
assisted his father in tending the flocks of large proprietors, till
old Gabriel sank to rest.
This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master
and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a
critical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognized his position
clearly. The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of his
ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he wisely
refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this season to a
hireling or a novice.
The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the
flute-playing ceased. A rectangular space of light appeared in the side
of the hut, and in the opening the outline of Farmer Oak’s figure. He
carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door behind him, came
forward and busied himself about this nook of the field for nearly
twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and disappearing here and
there, and brightening him or darkening him as he stood before or
behind it.
Oak’s motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their
deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the
basis of all beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings
and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. Yet, although
if occasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a
dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his
special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing
little or nothing to momentum, as a rule.
A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight
only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a
wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose
this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the
ground at various scattered points, amid and under which the whitish
forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled. The ring of the sheep-bell,
which had been silent during his absence, recommenced, in tones that
had more mellowness than clearness, owing to an increasing growth of
surrounding wool, and continued till Oak withdrew again from the flock.
He returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a new-born lamb,
consisting of four legs large enough for a full-grown sheep, united by
an unimportant membrane about half the substance of the legs
collectively, which constituted the animal’s entire body just at
present.
The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small
stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern
by blowing into it and then pinching out the snuff, the cot being
lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard couch,
formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered half the
floor of this little habitation, and here the young man stretched
himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his eyes. In
about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would have
decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.
The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and
alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle,
reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung
associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools. In the corner
stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were ranged
bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to ovine
surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger,
and castor-oil being the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner
stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was
supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute,
whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to
beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes,
like the lights of a cabin, with wood slides.
The lamb, revived by the warmth, began to bleat, and the sound entered
Gabriel’s ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected sounds
will. Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness
with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse operation, he
looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had shifted again, put on
his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried it into the darkness.
After placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and
carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the
altitudes of the stars.
The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were
half way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which
gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it swung
itself forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with
their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy
Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away
through the plantation, Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the
leafless trees, and Cassiopeia’s chair stood daintily poised on the
uppermost boughs.
“One o’clock,” said Gabriel.
Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some
beauty in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as
a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a
work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed
with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete
abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human
shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not,
and there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no
sentient being save himself; he could fancy them all gone round to the
sunny side.
Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived that
what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the outskirts
of the plantation was in reality no such thing. It was an artificial
light, almost close at hand.
To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable
and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far
to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when
intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability,
induction—every kind of evidence in the logician’s list—have united to
persuade consciousness that it is quite alone.
Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower
boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under the slope reminded him that
a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the slope
of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level with
the ground. In front it was formed of boards nailed to posts and
covered with tar as a preservative. Through crevices in the roof and
side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made up
the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind, where,
leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he
could see into the interior clearly.
The place contained two women and two cows. By the side of the latter a
steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket. One of the women was past middle
age. Her companion was apparently young and graceful; he could form no
decided opinion upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his
eye, so that he saw her in a bird’s-eye aërial view, as Milton’s Satan
first saw Paradise. She wore no bonnet or hat, but had enveloped
herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung over her head as a
covering.
“There, now we’ll go home,” said the elder of the two, resting her
knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole. “I
do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I have never been more
frightened in my life, but I don’t mind breaking my rest if she
recovers.”
The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall
together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without parting
her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught the
infection and slightly yawned in sympathy. “I wish we were rich enough
to pay a man to do these things,” she said.
“As we are not, we must do them ourselves,” said the other; “for you
must help me if you stay.”
“Well, my hat is gone, however,” continued the younger. “It went over
the hedge, I think. The idea of such a slight wind catching it.”
The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a
tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to
tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long
back being mathematically level. The other was spotted, grey and white.
Beside her, Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old, looking
idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been
accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning to the
lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited instinct
having as yet had little time for correction by experience. Between the
sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill lately.
“I think we had better send for some oatmeal,” said the elder woman;
“there’s no more bran.”
“Yes, aunt; and I’ll ride over for it as soon as it is light.”
“But there’s no side-saddle.”
“I can ride on the other: trust me.”
Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her
features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of
the cloak, and by her forehead coming in the way of what the cloak did
not cover, he felt himself drawing upon his fancy for their details. In
making even horizontal and clear inspections, we colour and mould
according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. Had
Gabriel been able from the first to get a distinct view of her
countenance, his estimate of it as very handsome or slightly so would
have been as his soul required a divinity at the moment or was ready
supplied with one. Having for some time known the want of a
satisfactory form to fill an increasing void within him, his position
moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he painted her a
beauty.
By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy
mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn
and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and forth
tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. Oak knew her instantly
as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and looking-glass:
prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.
They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern, and
went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more than a
nebula. Gabriel Oak returned to his flock.