Far from the Madding Crowd (21 page)

“Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare. I'll turn the winch of the grindstone. I want to speak to you, Gabriel.”

Cain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle. Gabriel had glanced up in intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again. Bathsheba turned the winch, and Gabriel applied the shears.

The peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. It is a sort of attenuated variety of Ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of gaols. The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere between the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt the unpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen turns.

“Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears?” she said. “My head is in a whirl, and I can't talk.”

Gabriel turned. Bathsheba then began, with some awkwardness, allowing her thoughts to stray occasionally from her story to attend to the shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening.

“I wanted to ask you if the men made any observations on my going behind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood yesterday?”

“Yes, they did,” said Gabriel. “You don't hold the shears right, miss — I knew you wouldn't know the way — hold like this.”

He relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two hands completely in his own (taking each as we sometimes slap a child's hand in teaching him to write), grasped the shears with her. “Incline the edge so,” he said.

Hands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a peculiarly long time by the instructor as he spoke.

“That will do,” exclaimed Bathsheba. “Loose my hands. I won't have them held! Turn the winch.”

Gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the grinding went on.

“Did the men think it odd?” she said again.

“Odd was not the idea, miss.”

“What did they say?”

“That Farmer Boldwood's name and your own were likely to be flung over pulpit together before the year was out.”

“I thought so, by the look of them! Why, there's nothing in it. A more foolish remark was never made, and I want you to contradict it! that's what I came for.”

Gabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between his moments of incredulity, relieved.

“They must have heard our conversation,” she continued.

“Well, then, Bathsheba!” said Oak, stopping the handle, and gazing into her face with astonishment.

“Miss Everdene, you mean,” she said, with dignity.

“I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of marriage, I bain't going to tell a story and say he didn't to please you. I have already tried to please you too much for my own good!”

Bathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity. She did not know whether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with him for having got over it — his tone being ambiguous.

“I said I wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going to be married to him,” she murmured, with a slight decline in her assurance.

“I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene. And I could likewise give an opinion to ‘ee on what you have done.”

“I daresay. But I don't want your opinion.”

“I suppose not,” said Gabriel bitterly, and going on with his turning, his words rising and falling in a regular swell and cadence as he stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according to his position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally along the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground.

With Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always happen, time gained was prudence insured. It must be added, however, that time was very seldom gained. At this period the single opinion in the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder than her own was Gabriel Oak's. And the outspoken honesty of his character was such that on any subject, even that of her love for, or marriage with, another man, the same disinterestedness of opinion might be calculated on, and be had for the asking. Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin. Knowing he would reply truly she asked the question, painful as she must have known the subject would be. Such is the selfishness of some charming women. Perhaps it was some excuse for her thus torturing honesty to her own advantage, that she had absolutely no other sound judgment within easy reach.

“Well, what is your opinion of my conduct,” she said, quietly.

“That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman.”

In an instant Bathsheba's face coloured with the angry crimson of a Danby sunset. But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the reticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more noticeable.

The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake.

“Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my reprimanding you, for I know it is rudeness; but I thought it would do good.”

She instantly replied sarcastically —

“On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that I see in your abuse the praise of discerning people!”

“I am glad you don't mind it, for I said it honestly and with every serious meaning.”

“I see. But, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you are amusing — just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes say a sensible word.”

It was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper, and on that account Gabriel had never in his life kept his own better. He said nothing. She then broke out —

“I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies? In my not marrying you, perhaps!”

“Not by any means,” said Gabriel quietly. “I have long given up thinking of that matter.”

“Or wishing it, I suppose,” she said; and it was apparent that she expected an unhesitating denial of this supposition.

Whatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words —

“Or wishing it, either.”

A woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her, and with a rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was still in love with her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes — there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. This was what she had been expecting, and what she had not got. To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating. He had not finished, either. He continued in a more agitated voice. “My opinion is, (since you ask it), that you are greatly to blame for playing pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime. Leading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action. And even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you might have let him find it out in some way of true loving-kindness, and not by sending him a valentine's letter.”

Bathsheba laid down the shears.

“I cannot allow any man to — to criticise my private conduct!” she exclaimed. “Nor will I for a minute. So you'll please leave the farm at the end of the week!”

It may have been a peculiarity — at any rate it was a fact — that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her nether lip quivered now.

“Very well, so I will,” said Gabriel calmly. He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break. “I should be even better pleased to go at once,” he added.

“Go at once then, in Heaven's name!” said she, her eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them. “Don't let me see your face any more.”

“Very well, Miss Everdene — so it shall be.”

And he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh.

TROUBLES IN THE FOLD — A MESSAGE

Gabriel Oak had ceased to feed the Weatherbury flock for about four-and-twenty hours, when on Sunday afternoon the elderly gentlemen Joseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, Fray, and half-a-dozen others, came running up to the house of the mistress of the Upper Farm.

“Whatever
is
the matter, men?” she said, meeting them at the door just as she was coming out on her way to church, and ceasing in a moment from the close compression of her two red lips, with which she had accompanied the exertion of pulling on a tight glove.

“Sixty!” said Joseph Poorgrass.

“Seventy!” said Moon.

“Fifty-nine!” said Susan Tall's husband.

“ — Sheep have broke fence,” said Fray.

“ — And got into a field of young clover,” said Tall.

“ — Young clover!” said Moon.

“ — Clover!” said Joseph Poorgrass.

“And they be getting blasted,” said Henery Fray.

“That they be,” said Joseph.

“And will all die as dead as nits, if they bain't got out and cured!” said Tall.

Joseph's countenance was drawn into lines and puckers by his concern. Fray's forehead was wrinkled both perpendicularly and crosswise, after the pattern of a portcullis, expressive of a double despair. Laban Tall's lips were thin, and his face was rigid. Matthew's jaws sank, and his eyes turned whichever way the strongest muscle happened to pull them.

“Yes,” said Joseph, “and I was sitting at home, looking for Ephesians, and says I to myself, “Tis nothing but Corinthians and Thessalonians in this danged Testament,' when who should come in but Henery there: ‘Joseph,' he said, ‘the sheep have blasted theirselves — ‘”

With Bathsheba it was a moment when thought was speech and speech exclamation. Moreover, she had hardly recovered her equanimity since the disturbance which she had suffered from Oak's remarks.

“That's enough — that's enough! — oh, you fools!” she cried, throwing the parasol and Prayer-book into the passage, and running out of doors in the direction signified. “To come to me, and not go and get them out directly! Oh, the stupid numskulls!”

Her eyes were at their darkest and brightest now. Bathsheba's beauty belonging rather to the demonian than to the angelic school, she never looked so well as when she was angry — and particularly when the effect was heightened by a rather dashing velvet dress, carefully put on before a glass.

All the ancient men ran in a jumbled throng after her to the clover-field, Joseph sinking down in the midst when about half-way, like an individual withering in a world which was more and more insupportable. Having once received the stimulus that her presence always gave them they went round among the sheep with a will. The majority of the afflicted animals were lying down, and could not be stirred. These were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into the adjoining field. Here, after the lapse of a few minutes, several more fell down, and lay helpless and livid as the rest.

Bathsheba, with a sad, bursting heart, looked at these primest specimens of her prime flock as they rolled there —
“Swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew.”

Many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being quick and short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully distended.

“Oh, what can I do, what can I do!” said Bathsheba, helplessly. “Sheep are such unfortunate animals! — there's always something happening to them! I never knew a flock pass a year without getting into some scrape or other.”

“There's only one way of saving them,” said Tall.

“What way? Tell me quick!”

“They must be pierced in the side with a thing made on purpose.”

“Can you do it? Can I?”

“No, ma'am. We can't, nor you neither. It must be done in a particular spot. If ye go to the right or left but an inch you stab the ewe and kill her. Not even a shepherd can do it, as a rule.”

“Then they must die,” she said, in a resigned tone.

“Only one man in the neighbourhood knows the way,” said Joseph, now just come up. “He could cure ‘em all if he were here.”

“Who is he? Let's get him!”

“Shepherd Oak,” said Matthew. “Ah, he's a clever man in talents!”

“Ah, that he is so!” said Joseph Poorgrass.

“True — he's the man,” said Laban Tall.

“How dare you name that man in my presence!” she said excitedly. “I told you never to allude to him, nor shall you if you stay with me. Ah!” she added, brightening, “Farmer Boldwood knows!”

“O no, ma'am” said Matthew. “Two of his store ewes got into some vetches t'other day, and were just like these. He sent a man on horseback here post-haste for Gable, and Gable went and saved ‘em. Farmer Boldwood hev got the thing they do it with. ‘Tis a holler pipe, with a sharp pricker inside. Isn't it, Joseph?”

“Ay — a holler pipe,” echoed Joseph. “That's what ‘tis.”

“Ay, sure — that's the machine,” chimed in Henery Fray, reflectively, with an Oriental indifference to the flight of time.

“Well,” burst out Bathsheba, “don't stand there with your ‘ayes' and your ‘sures' talking at me! Get somebody to cure the sheep instantly!”

All then stalked off in consternation, to get somebody as directed, without any idea of who it was to be. In a minute they had vanished through the gate, and she stood alone with the dying flock.

“Never will I send for him — never!” she said firmly.

One of the ewes here contracted its muscles horribly, extended itself, and jumped high into the air. The leap was an astonishing one. The ewe fell heavily, and lay still.

Bathsheba went up to it. The sheep was dead.