第21章

`I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and when I know what sort it is.' Taking the mug he drank an inch or more from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the next man. `I wouldn't think of giving such trouble to neighbours in washing up when there's so much work to be done in the world already,' continued Oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the stoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs.

`A right sensible man,' said Jacob.

`True, true; it can't be gainsaid!' observed a brisk young man - Mark Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for.

`And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent, shepherd.

The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. Don't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in the road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather gritty. There, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you say, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd.'

`True, true - not at all,' said the friendly Oak.

`Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all. Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!'

`My own mind exactly, neighbour.'

`Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson! - his grandfer were just such a nice unparticular man!' said the maltster.

`Drink, Henry Fray - drink,' magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a per son who held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor was concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its gradual revolution among them.

Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air, Henry did not refuse. He was a man of more than middle age, with eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination. He always signed his name `Henery' - strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the second `e' was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply that `H-e-n-e-r-y' was the name he was christened and the name he would stick to in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences were matters which had a great deal to do with personal character.

Mr Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose name had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and neighbouring parishes as best man and chief-witness in countless unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.

`Come, Mark Clark - come. Ther's plenty more in the barrel,' said Jan.

`Ay - that I will; 'tis my only doctor,' replied Mr Clark, who' twenty years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit. He secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular parties.

`Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han't had a drop!' said Mr Coggan to a self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.

`Such a modest man as he is!' said Jacob Smallbury. `Why, ye've hardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis'ess's face, so I hear, Joseph?'

All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.

`No - I've hardly looked at her at all,' simpered Joseph, reducing his body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue prominence.

`And when I seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with me!'

`Poor feller,' said Mr Clark.

`'Tis a curious nature for a man,' said Jan Coggan.

`Yes,' continued Joseph Poorgrass - his shyness, which was so painful as a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was regarded as an interesting study. `'Twere blush, blush, blush with me every minute of the time, when she was speaking to me.'

`I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very bashful man.'

`'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul,' said the maltster. `And ye have suffered from it a long time, we know.'

`Ay, ever since I was a boy. Yes mother was concerned to her heart about it - yes. But 'twas all nought.'

`Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?'

`Oh ay, tried all sorts o' company. They took me to Greenhill Fair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were women-folk riding round - standing upon horses, with hardly anything on but their smocks; but it didn't cure me a morsel. And then I was put errand-man at the Women's Skittle Alley at the back of the Tailor's Arms in Casterbridge.

'Twas a horrible sinal situation, and a very curious place for a good man.

I had to stand and look ba'dy people in the face from morning till night; but 'twas no use - I was just as bad as ever after all. Blushes hev been in the family for generations. There, 'tis a happy providence that I be no worse.

`True,' said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the subject. `'Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have been worse; but even as you be, 'tis a very bad affliction for 'ee, Joseph.

For ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman, dang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?'

`'Tis--'tis,' said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation. `Yes, very awkward for the man.'

`Ay, and he's very timid, too,' observed Jan Coggan. `Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn't ye, Master Poorgrass?'

`No, no, no; not that story!' expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern.