“Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning.” “And so you see ’twas…

“Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning.”

“And so you see ’twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his kindness as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man’s generosity——”

“True, Master Coggan, ’twould so.” corroborated Mark Clark.

“——And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket—so thorough dry that that ale would slip down—ah, ’twould slip down sweet! Happy times! heavenly times! Ay, ’twere like drinking blessedness itself. Pints and pints! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house. You can mind, Jacob? You used to go wi’ me sometimes.”

“I can—I can,” said Jacob. “That one, too, that we had at Buck’s Head on a White Monday was a pretty tipple, indeed.”

“’Twas. But for a drunk of really a noble class and on the highest princliples, that brought you no nearer to the dark man than you were afore you begun, there was none like those in Farmer Everdene’s kitchen. Not a single damn allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment when all were blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in here and there would have been a great relief to a merry soul.”

“True,” said the maltster. “Nature requires her swearing at the regular times, or she’s not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of life.”

“But Charlotte,” continued Coggan—“not a word of the sort would Charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain…. Ay, poor Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into Heaven when ’a died! But ’a was never much in luck’s way, and perhaps ’a went downwards after all, poor soul.”

“And did any of you know Miss Everdene’s father and mother?” inquired the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation in the desired channel.

“I knew them a little,” said Jacob Smallbury; “but they were townsfolk, and didn’t live here. They’ve been dead for years. Father, what sort of people were mis’ess’ father and mother?”

“Well,” said the maltster, “he wasn’t much to look at; but she was a lovely woman. He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart.”

“Used to kiss her in scores and long-hundreds, so ’twas said here and there,” observed Coggan.

“He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I’ve been told,” said the maltster.

“Ay,” said Coggan. “He admired his wife so much, that he used to light the candle three time every night to look at her.”

“Boundless love; I shouldn’t have supposed it in the world’s universe!” murmered Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in his moral reflections.

“Well, to be sure,” said Gabriel.

“Oh, ’tis true enough. I knowed the man and woman both well. Levi Everdene—that was the man’s name, sure enough. ‘Man,’ saith I in my hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that—’a was a gentleman-tailor really, worth scores of pounds. And he became a very celebrated bankrupt two or three times.”

“Oh, I thought he was quite a common man!” said Joseph.

“O no, no! That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and silver.”

The maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently scrutinizing a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the narrative, with a private twirl of his eye:—

“Well, now, you’d hardly believe it, but that man—our Miss Everdene’s father—was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a while. Understand, ’a didn’t want to be fickle, but he couldn’t help it. The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would. Ay, ’a spoke to me in real tribulation about it once. ‘Coggan,’ he said, ‘I could never wish for a handsomer woman than I’ve got, but feeling she’s ticketed as my lawful wife, I can’t help my wicked heart wandering, do what I will.’ But at last I believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together after the shop was shut, and so ’a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not married to him at all. And so as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh, ’a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love.”

“Well, ’twas a most ungodly remedy,” murmured Joseph Poorgrass; “but we ought to feel deep cheerfulness, as I may say, that a happy Providence kept it from being any worse. You see, he might have gone the bad road and given his eyes to unlawfulness entirely—yes, gross unlawfulness, so to say it.”

“You see,” said Billy Smallbury, with testimonial emphasis, “the man’s will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didn’t chime in.”

“He got so much better, that he was quite religious in his later years, wasn’t he, Jan?” said Joseph Poorgrass. “He got himself confirmed over again in a more serious way, and took to saying ‘Amen’ almost as loud as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the tombstones. He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light so Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children that had no father at all in the eye of matrimony, and he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares when they called; yes, and he would box the charity-boys’ ears, if they laughed in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do other deeds of piety common to the saintly inclined.”

“Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but righteousness,” added Billy Smallbury. “One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, ‘Good-morning, Mister Everdene; ’tis a fine day!’ ‘Amen’ said Everdene, quite absent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson. Yes, he was a very Christian man.”

“His second-cousin, John, was the most religious of the family, however,” said the old malster. “None of the others were so pious as he, for they never went past us Church people in their Christianity, but John’s feelings growed as strong as a chapel member’s. ’A was a watch and clock maker by trade, and thought of nothing but godliness, poor man. ‘I judge every clock according to his works,’ he used to say when he were in his holy frame of mind. Ay, he likewise was a very Christian man.

“Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time,” said Henery Fray. “Never should have thought she’d have growed up such a handsome body as she is.”

“’Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face.”

“Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and ourselves. Ah!” Henery shook his head, gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of ironical knowledge.

“A queer Christian, as the D—— said of the owl,” volunteered Mark Clark,

“He is,” said Henery, with a manner implying that irony must necessarily cease at a certain point. “Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as soon tell a lie Sundays as working-days—that I do so.”

“Good faith, you do talk!” said Gabriel, with apprehension.

“True enough,” said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon the company, with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener appreciation of the untold miseries of life than ordinary men are capable of. “Ah, there’s people of one sort, and people of another, but that man—bless your souls!”

The company suspended consideration of whether they wanted their souls blessed that moment, as the shortest way to the end of the story.

“I believe that if so be that Baily Pennyways’ heart were put inside a nutshell, he’d rattle,” continued Henery. “He’ll strain for money as a salmon will strain for the river’s head. ’Tis a thief and a robber, that’s what ’tis.”

Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. “You must be a very aged man, malster, to have sons growed mild and ancient,” he remarked.

“Father’s so old that ’a can’t mind his age, can ye, father?” interposed Jacob. “And he’s growled terrible crooked, too, lately,” Jacob continued, surveying his father’s figure, which was rather more bowed than his own. “Really one may say that father there is three-double.”

“Crooked folk will last a long while,” said the maltster, grimly, and not in the best humour.

“Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father—wouldn’t ye, shepherd?”

“Ay that I should,” said Gabriel, with the heartiness of a man who had longed to hear it for several months. “What may your age be, malster?”

The maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis, and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it, “Well, I don’t mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon up the places I’ve lived at, and so get it that way. I bode at Juddle Farm across there” (nodding to the north) “till I were eleven. I bode seven at Lower Twifford” (nodding to the east), “where I took to malting. I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted there two-and-twenty years, and two-and-twenty years I was there turnip-hoeing and harvesting. Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe, years afore you were thought of, Master Oak” (Oak smiled a corroboration of the fact). “Then I malted at Snoodly-under-Drool four year, and four year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at Moreford St. Jude’s” (nodding north-west-by-north). “Old Twills wouldn’t hire me for more than eleven months at a time, to keep me from being chargeable to the parish if so be I was disabled. Then I was three year at Mellstock, and I’ve been here one-and-thirty year come Candlemas. How much is that?”

“Hundred and seventeen,” chuckled another old gentleman, given to mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat unobserved in a corner.

“Well, then, that’s my age,” said the maltster, emphatically.

“Oh, no, father!” Jacob remonstrated. “Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don’t ought to count both halves father.”

“Chok’ it all! I lived through the summers, didn’t I? That’s my question. I suppose ye’ll say next I be no age at all to speak of?”

“Sure we sha’n’t,” said Gabriel, soothingly.

“Ye be a very old-aged person, malster,” attested Jan Coggan, also soothingly, “We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn’t he, neighbours?”

“True, true; ye must, malster, a wonderful talented constitution,” said the meeting unanimously.

The maltster, being know pacified, was even generous enough to voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of was three years older than he.

While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak’s flute became visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray exclaimed, “Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a grate flute by-now at Casterbridge?”

“You did,” said Gabriel, blushing faintly. “I’ve been in great trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it. I used not to be so poor as I be now.”

“Never mind, heart!” said Mark Clark. “You should take it careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come. But we could thank ye for a tune, if ye bain’t too tired?”

“Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard this Christmas,” said Jan Coggan. “Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!”

“Ay, that I will,” said Gabriel readily, pulling out his flute and putting it together. “A poor tool, neighbours; an everyday chap; but such as I can do ye shall have and welcome.”

Oak then struck up “Jockey to the Fair,” and played that sparkling melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot to beat time.

“He can blow the flute very well—that ’a can,” said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as “Susan Tall’s husband.” He continued admiringly, “I’d as lief as not be able to blow into a flute as well as that.”

“He’s a clever man, and ’tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd,” murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft and complacent cadence. “We ought to feel real thanksgiving that he’s not a player of loose songs instead of these merry tunes; for ’twould have been just as easy for God to have made the shepherd a lewd low man—a man of iniquity, so to speak it—as what he is. Yes, for our wives’ and daughters’ sakes we should feel real thanksgiving.”

“True, true, as the old woman said,” dashed in Mark Clark conclusively, not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had only heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.

“Yes,” added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; “for evil does thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in the clanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp upon the turnpike, if I may term it so.”

“Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd,” said Henery Fray, criticising Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second tune. “Yes—now I see ye blowing into the flute I know ye to be the same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped up and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man’s—just as they be now.”

“’Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a scarecrow,” observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of Gabriel’s countenance, the latter person jerking out unconcernedly, with the ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of “Dame Durden:”—

’Twas Moll′ and Bet′, and Doll′ and Kate′ And Dor′-othy Drag′-gle Tail′.

“I hope you don’t mind that young man Mark Clark’s bad manners in naming your features?” whispered Joseph to Gabriel privately.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Oak.

“For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd,” continued Joseph Poorgrass, with winning sauvity.

“Ay, that ye be, sheperd,” said the company.

“Thank you very much,” said Oak, in the modest tone good manners demanded, privately thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to that related to its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself.