Far from the Madding Crowd

EALTH IN JEOPARDY—THE REVEL

One night, at the end of August, when Bathsheba’s experiences as a
married woman were still new, and when the weather was yet dry and
sultry, a man stood motionless in the stockyard of Weatherbury Upper
Farm, looking at the moon and sky.

The night had a sinister aspect. A heated breeze from the south slowly
fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes of buoyant
cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that of another
stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze below. The
moon, as seen through these films, had a lurid metallic look. The
fields were sallow with the impure light, and all were tinged in
monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass. The same evening the
sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the behaviour of the rooks had
been confused, and the horses had moved with timidity and caution.

Thunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appearances into
consideration, it was likely to be followed by one of the lengthened
rains which mark the close of dry weather for the season. Before twelve
hours had passed a harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing.

Oak gazed with misgiving at eight naked and unprotected ricks, massive
and heavy with the rich produce of one-half the farm for that year. He
went on to the barn.

This was the night which had been selected by Sergeant Troy—ruling now
in the room of his wife—for giving the harvest supper and dance. As Oak
approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine, and the
regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct. He came close to the
large doors, one of which stood slightly ajar, and looked in.

The central space, together with the recess at one end, was emptied of
all incumbrances, and this area, covering about two-thirds of the
whole, was appropriated for the gathering, the remaining end, which was
piled to the ceiling with oats, being screened off with sail-cloth.
Tufts and garlands of green foliage decorated the walls, beams, and
extemporized chandeliers, and immediately opposite to Oak a rostrum had
been erected, bearing a table and chairs. Here sat three fiddlers, and
beside them stood a frantic man with his hair on end, perspiration
streaming down his cheeks, and a tambourine quivering in his hand.

The dance ended, and on the black oak floor in the midst a new row of
couples formed for another.

“Now, ma’am, and no offence I hope, I ask what dance you would like
next?” said the first violin.

“Really, it makes no difference,” said the clear voice of Bathsheba,
who stood at the inner end of the building, observing the scene from
behind a table covered with cups and viands. Troy was lolling beside
her.

“Then,” said the fiddler, “I’ll venture to name that the right and
proper thing is ‘The Soldier’s Joy’—there being a gallant soldier
married into the farm—hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?”

“It shall be ‘The Soldier’s Joy,’” exclaimed a chorus.

“Thanks for the compliment,” said the sergeant gaily, taking Bathsheba
by the hand and leading her to the top of the dance. “For though I have
purchased my discharge from Her Most Gracious Majesty’s regiment of
cavalry the 11th Dragoon Guards, to attend to the new duties awaiting
me here, I shall continue a soldier in spirit and feeling as long as I
live.”

So the dance began. As to the merits of “The Soldier’s Joy,” there
cannot be, and never were, two opinions. It has been observed in the
musical circles of Weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at
the end of three-quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still
possesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the
majority of other dances at their first opening. “The Soldier’s Joy”
has, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the
tambourine aforesaid—no mean instrument in the hands of a performer who
understands the proper convulsions, spasms, St. Vitus’s dances, and
fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their highest
perfection.

The immortal tune ended, a fine DD rolling forth from the bass-viol
with the sonorousness of a cannonade, and Gabriel delayed his entry no
longer. He avoided Bathsheba, and got as near as possible to the
platform, where Sergeant Troy was now seated, drinking
brandy-and-water, though the others drank without exception cider and
ale. Gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance
of the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a
moment. The sergeant said he could not attend.

“Will you tell him, then,” said Gabriel, “that I only stepped ath’art
to say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something
should be done to protect the ricks?”

“Mr. Troy says it will not rain,” returned the messenger, “and he
cannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets.”

In juxtaposition with Troy, Oak had a melancholy tendency to look like
a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again, thinking he
would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no heart for the
scene in the barn. At the door he paused for a moment: Troy was
speaking.

“Friends, it is not only the harvest home that we are celebrating
to-night; but this is also a Wedding Feast. A short time ago I had the
happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not until
now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event in
Weatherbury. That it may be thoroughly well done, and that every man
may go happy to bed, I have ordered to be brought here some bottles of
brandy and kettles of hot water. A treble-strong goblet will be handed
round to each guest.”

Bathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face, said
imploringly, “No—don’t give it to them—pray don’t, Frank! It will only
do them harm: they have had enough of everything.”

“True—we don’t wish for no more, thank ye,” said one or two.

“Pooh!” said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as if
lighted up by a new idea. “Friends,” he said, “we’ll send the
women-folk home! ’Tis time they were in bed. Then we cockbirds will
have a jolly carouse to ourselves! If any of the men show the white
feather, let them look elsewhere for a winter’s work.”

Bathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and
children. The musicians, not looking upon themselves as “company,”
slipped quietly away to their spring waggon and put in the horse. Thus
Troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the place.
Oak, not to appear unnecessarily disagreeable, stayed a little while;
then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure, followed by a
friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a second round of
grog.

Gabriel proceeded towards his home. In approaching the door, his toe
kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and distended,
like a boxing-glove. It was a large toad humbly travelling across the
path. Oak took it up, thinking it might be better to kill the creature
to save it from pain; but finding it uninjured, he placed it again
among the grass. He knew what this direct message from the Great Mother
meant. And soon came another.

When he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin
glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged
across it. Oak’s eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other side,
where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come indoors
to-night for reasons of its own. It was Nature’s second way of hinting
to him that he was to prepare for foul weather.

Oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour. During this time two black
spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the ceiling,
ultimately dropping to the floor. This reminded him that if there was
one class of manifestation on this matter that he thoroughly
understood, it was the instincts of sheep. He left the room, ran across
two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a hedge, and looked
over among them.

They were crowded close together on the other side around some furze
bushes, and the first peculiarity observable was that, on the sudden
appearance of Oak’s head over the fence, they did not stir or run away.
They had now a terror of something greater than their terror of man.
But this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all grouped in
such a way that their tails, without a single exception, were towards
that half of the horizon from which the storm threatened. There was an
inner circle closely huddled, and outside these they radiated wider
apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a whole not being unlike a
vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of furze-bushes stood in the
position of a wearer’s neck.

This was enough to re-establish him in his original opinion. He knew
now that he was right, and that Troy was wrong. Every voice in nature
was unanimous in bespeaking change. But two distinct translations
attached to these dumb expressions. Apparently there was to be a
thunder-storm, and afterwards a cold continuous rain. The creeping
things seemed to know all about the later rain, but little of the
interpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the
thunder-storm and nothing of the later rain.

This complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be
feared. Oak returned to the stack-yard. All was silent here, and the
conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky. There were five
wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley. The wheat when
threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the barley,
at least forty. Their value to Bathsheba, and indeed to anybody, Oak
mentally estimated by the following simple calculation:—

5 × 30 = 150 quarters = 500 £.
3 × 40 = 120 quarters = 250 £.
––––
Total . . 750 £.

Seven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can
wear—that of necessary food for man and beast: should the risk be run
of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value, because
of the instability of a woman? “Never, if I can prevent it!” said
Gabriel.

Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man, even
to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another
beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend
under the utilitarian one: “I will help to my last effort the woman I
have loved so dearly.”

He went back to the barn to endeavour to obtain assistance for covering
the ricks that very night. All was silent within, and he would have
passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had not a dim
light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish whiteness
outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors.

Gabriel looked in. An unusual picture met his eye.

The candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their
sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.
Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank, grease
dropping from them upon the floor. Here, under the table, and leaning
against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except the
perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk, the hair
of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops and brooms.
In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure of Sergeant
Troy, leaning back in a chair. Coggan was on his back, with his mouth
open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others; the united
breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued roar like
London from a distance. Joseph Poorgrass was curled round in the
fashion of a hedge-hog, apparently in attempts to present the least
possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him was dimly
visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury. The glasses and
cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being overturned, from
which a small rill, after tracing its course with marvellous precision
down the centre of the long table, fell into the neck of the
unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip, like the dripping
of a stalactite in a cave.

Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two
exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm. He saw at
once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the next
morning, he must save them with his own hands.

A faint “ting-ting” resounded from under Coggan’s waistcoat. It was
Coggan’s watch striking the hour of two.

Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook
the rough thatching of the home-stead, and shook him. The shaking was
without effect.

Gabriel shouted in his ear, “where’s your thatching-beetle and
rick-stick and spars?”

“Under the staddles,” said Moon, mechanically, with the unconscious
promptness of a medium.

Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl. He
then went to Susan Tall’s husband.

“Where’s the key of the granary?”

No answer. The question was repeated, with the same result. To be
shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall’s
husband than to Matthew Moon. Oak flung down Tall’s head into the
corner again and turned away.

To be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and
demoralizing termination to the evening’s entertainment. Sergeant Troy
had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should be the
bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly liked to be
so unmannerly under the circumstances. Having from their youth up been
entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it
was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all, with extraordinary
uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.

Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that wilful
and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt within him
as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.

He put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be endangered,
closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious sleep, and
went again into the lone night. A hot breeze, as if breathed from the
parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the globe, fanned him from
the south, while directly opposite in the north rose a grim misshapen
body of cloud, in the very teeth of the wind. So unnaturally did it
rise that one could fancy it to be lifted by machinery from below.
Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had flown back into the south-east corner
of the sky, as if in terror of the large cloud, like a young brood
gazed in upon by some monster.

Going on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window of
Laban Tall’s bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody stirred.
He went round to the back door, which had been left unfastened for
Laban’s entry, and passed in to the foot of the staircase.

“Mrs. Tall, I’ve come for the key of the granary, to get at the
rick-cloths,” said Oak, in a stentorian voice.

“Is that you?” said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.

“Yes,” said Gabriel.

“Come along to bed, do, you drawlatching rogue—keeping a body awake
like this!”

“It isn’t Laban—’tis Gabriel Oak. I want the key of the granary.”

“Gabriel! What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban for?”

“I didn’t. I thought you meant—”

“Yes you did! What do you want here?”

“The key of the granary.”

“Take it then. ’Tis on the nail. People coming disturbing women at this
time of night ought—”

Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the
tirade. Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen
dragging four large water-proof coverings across the yard, and soon two
of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug—two cloths to
each. Two hundred pounds were secured. Three wheat-stacks remained
open, and there were no more cloths. Oak looked under the staddles and
found a fork. He mounted the third pile of wealth and began operating,
adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one over the other; and,
in addition, filling the interstices with the material of some untied
sheaves.

So far all was well. By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba’s property
in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that
there was not much wind.

Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by
systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished not to
reappear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. The
night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an
utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow
breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now nothing was
heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the
spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.