Far from the Madding Crowd Read Online Free Page B

thoughts were now busier than ever, for he had never before seen a young woman ride boldly astride a horse on a saddle of hard leather most properly used by men; for convention demanded and, Oak had always assumed, biology dictated, that the fairer sex was quite unable to ride a horse unless correctly seated, on a decorous ladies’ side-saddle. It was abundantly clear that this young lady had no care for conventions, and certainly, the long skirts of her dress, hitched up to her lissom thighs as she had swung herself athwart the horse, had in no way impeded her from the performances of acrobatics he had recently observed, but as to the arousing effect upon her of the rhythmic squeezing sensations between her legs, and the suggestive pressure on her inner groin caused by vigorous trotting, Oak could only imagine the bodily perturbation thus caused to her, reflected in the disturbance in his own equanimity, an aching disturbance that he resolved to relieve by his customary immersion in the river; yet even in his mind its solace failed him now, for his yearnings, previously formless, had begun to take on a clearer shape.
    An hour passed, the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off. The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman.
    Soon soft spurts alternating with loud spurts came in regular succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person milking a cow. Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill.
    She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole would have been revealed. To see only her arm! The poor man quickly reined in his thoughts of seeing more, abashed by the living physical presence of the object of his fantasies appearing here in the vibrant, vigorous form of this young girl, who at each minute seemed to him more alluring. There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to recognised power. It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel’s face rising like the moon behind the hedge.
    The adjustment of the farmer’s hazy conceptions of her charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution than a difference. The starting-point selected by the judgment was her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by women as best. All features of consequence were severe and regular. It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure usually goes off into random facial curves.
    Without throwing a tissue of divinity over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and Oak looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her figure in its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. Yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her