finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_5_part_0.txt
Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 6
chapter 6
{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-6", "summary": "Casterbridge was holding its February hiring fair. A few hundred hearty workers stood about, each showing the symbol of his trade: carters, a bit of whipcord on their hats; thatchers, straw; shepherds, their crooks. One young fellow's \"superiority was marked enough to lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as to a farmer, and to use 'Sir' as a finishing word. His answer always was, -- 'I am looking for a place myself -- a bailiff's.'\" No one seemed to need bailiffs. Toward the end of the day, Gabriel went to have a shepherd's crook fashioned, and he also exchanged his overcoat for a regulation smock. Now, ironically, bailiffs were in demand; yet prospective employers seemed to edge away when Gabriel said he'd lost his farm. Watching the evening's merriment, Gabriel felt his flute in his pocket. \"Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice.\" His tunes were so well received that soon he had earned enough pence to feel more secure. There was another fair in Shottsford the next day. Hearing that this town lay beyond Weatherbury, Gabriel thought of Bathsheba and resolved to go to the fair via Weatherbury. After going about four miles in that direction, he saw a haywagon without horses beside the road and lay down in it for a rest. After dark he wakened to find the wagon in motion. He eavesdropped on the conversation of the two men in front and conjectured that the vain woman whom they were discussing was Bathsheba. Dismissing the thought, since the woman under discussion seemed to be the owner of a large farm, he slipped out of the wagon unseen. Suddenly Gabriel saw a fire in the distance. As he ran toward it, he realized that the fire was in a rickyard. His familiarity with the nature of burning hay drove him to hurry to save it before it enveloped the piled-up corn. Others were converging on the fire, too. In the general confusion, Gabriel stood out as one who naturally takes command. To one side stood two veiled women. They identified Gabriel as a shepherd, for he was wielding a crook, but no one seemed to know him. Finally the fire was extinguished. One of the women sent the other, her maid, to thank Gabriel. The maid told Gabriel that the other woman owned the farm. Gabriel approached her, saying, \"Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?\" Silently, the astonished Bathsheba lifted her veil. Gabriel mechanically repeated his question.", "analysis": "This long chapter abounds with architectural terminology and with evidence of Hardy's skills as an artist and a writer. We view masses of people in motion, but from the immense canvas detailed individual figures emerge as well. Hardy portrays many facets of the fair -- speech, customs, costumes, indigenous trades, a sergeant, and a recruiter. Gabriel continues his service as an on-the-spot observer for Hardy. The farmer has been matured by the reverses he has experienced and is learning to compromise. Even as the workers are \"waiting on Chance,\" so is Gabriel. In Hardy's works, many such evidences of belief in fate and fortune exist. Oak's effort to \"help\" the fates by changing his costume is unavailing. When he decides to continue to Shottsford in his search for employment, the motivation is not too farfetched, for there are not many roads to choose; he is poor and cannot afford an inn. His rest in the wagon and the overheard conversation give Hardy an opportunity to introduce more dialect and to further characterize the Wessex folk. The animation of the fire scene is a dramatization of country life and of some of the hazards encountered in the seemingly serene landscape."}


THE FAIR--THE JOURNEY--THE FIRE


Two months passed away.  We are brought on to a day in February, on
which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town
of Casterbridge.

At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and
hearty labourers waiting upon Chance--all men of the stamp to whom
labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and
pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among
these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece
of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of
woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and
thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.

In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior
appearance to the rest--in fact, his superiority was marked enough to
lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly,
as to a farmer, and to use "Sir" as a finishing word.  His answer
always was,--

"I am looking for a place myself--a bailiff's.  Do ye know of anybody
who wants one?"

Gabriel was paler now.  His eyes were more meditative, and his
expression was more sad.  He had passed through an ordeal of
wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away.  He
had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very
slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he
had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though
it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when
it does not.  And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the
loss gain.

In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a
sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the
four streets.  As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself
not hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone
off to serve his country.  Weary of standing in the market-place, and
not much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided
to offer himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff.

All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds.  Sheep-tending was
Gabriel's speciality.  Turning down an obscure street and entering
an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.

"How long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook?"

"Twenty minutes."

"How much?"

"Two shillings."

He sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into
the bargain.

He then went to a ready-made clothes' shop, the owner of which had a
large rural connection.  As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's
money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for
a shepherd's regulation smock-frock.

This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the
centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a
shepherd, crook in hand.

Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that
bailiffs were most in demand.  However, two or three farmers noticed
him and drew near.  Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined
form:--

"Where do you come from?"

"Norcombe."

"That's a long way.

"Fifteen miles."

"Who's farm were you upon last?"

"My own."

This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The
inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously.
Gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never
made advance beyond this point.

It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize
a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for
a chance of using it.  Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his
colours as a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the
whole cycle of labour that was required in the fair.  It grew dusk.
Some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange.
Gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock
pocket, touched his flute which he carried there.  Here was an
opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice.

He drew out his flute and began to play "Jockey to the Fair" in the
style of a man who had never known moment's sorrow.  Oak could pipe
with Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes
cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers.  He played on
with spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small
fortune to a destitute man.

By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at
Shottsford the next day.

"How far is Shottsford?"

"Ten miles t'other side of Weatherbury."

Weatherbury!  It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before.
This information was like coming from night into noon.

"How far is it to Weatherbury?"

"Five or six miles."

Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but
the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose
Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the
Weatherbury quarter.  Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means
uninteresting intrinsically.  If report spoke truly they were as
hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county.  Oak
resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford,
and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended
as the direct route to the village in question.

The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks,
whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and
folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more
rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode
on in undisturbed serenity.  On the higher levels the dead and
dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along
helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in
the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in
comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving,
but flying away if he stopped to look at them.  He passed by Yalbury
Wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the
crack-voiced cock-pheasants "cu-uck, cuck," and the wheezy whistle of
the hens.

By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the
landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness.  He descended
Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up
under a great over-hanging tree by the roadside.

On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the
spot being apparently quite deserted.  The waggon, from its position,
seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half
a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty.
Gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his
position.  He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of
the journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted
to lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the
village of Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging.

Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle
of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into
the lonely waggon.  Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and,
as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over
him by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling,
physically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life.  Inward
melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far
beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present
untoward page of his history.  So, thinking of his misfortunes,
amorous and pastoral, he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common
with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead
of having to wait for him.

On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no
idea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion.  He was being carried
along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without
springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his
head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a
kettledrum-stick.  He then distinguished voices in conversation,
coming from the forpart of the waggon.  His concern at this dilemma
(which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but
misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer
cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars
above him.  Charles's Wain was getting towards a right angle with
the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine
o'clock--in other words, that he had slept two hours.  This small
astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and
whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose
hands he had fallen.

Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs
outside the waggon, one of whom was driving.  Gabriel soon found that
this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from
Casterbridge fair, like himself.

A conversation was in progress, which continued thus:--

"Be as 'twill, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be
concerned.  But that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy
cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides."

"Ay--so 'a do seem, Billy Smallbury--so 'a do seem."  This utterance
was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of
the waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx.
It came from the man who held the reins.

"She's a very vain feymell--so 'tis said here and there."

"Ah, now.  If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face.
Lord, no: not I--heh-heh-heh!  Such a shy man as I be!"

"Yes--she's very vain.  'Tis said that every night at going to bed
she looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly."

"And not a married woman.  Oh, the world!"

"And 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said.  Can play so clever that
'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a
man can wish for."

"D'ye tell o't!  A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man!
And how do she pay?"

"That I don't know, Master Poorgrass."

On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed
into Gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba.  There
were, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the
waggon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going
beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some
estate.  They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to
alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon
unseen.

He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate,
and mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap
lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under
some hay or corn-stack.  The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon
his ear.  He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand
an unusual light--appearing about half a mile distant.  Oak watched
it, and the glow increased.  Something was on fire.

Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side
upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the
exact direction of the fire.  The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio
by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer
the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness.  A
rick-yard was the source of the fire.  His weary face now began to
be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his
smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of
thorn-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening
hedge--and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright
in the same abounding rays.  He came up to the boundary fence, and
stood to regain breath.  It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by
a living soul.

The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone
as to preclude a possibility of saving it.  A rick burns differently
from a house.  As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in
flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is
lost to the eye.  However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together,
will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the
outside.

This before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together,
and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness.  It glowed on
the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of
a cigar.  Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking
noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet
roar, but no crackle.  Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the
back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres,
illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow
uniformity.  Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a
creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms,
and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips,
glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks
flew in clusters like birds from a nest.

Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the
case to be more serious than he had at first imagined.  A scroll
of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling
juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of
others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead
of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively
isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining
stacks of the group.

Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone.  The
first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his
thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could
never drag on fast enough.

"O, man--fire, fire!  A good master and a bad servant is fire,
fire!--I mane a bad servant and a good master.  Oh, Mark Clark--come!
And you, Billy Smallbury--and you, Maryann Money--and you, Jan
Coggan, and Matthew there!"  Other figures now appeared behind this
shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from
being alone he was in a great company--whose shadows danced merrily
up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by
their owners' movements.  The assemblage--belonging to that class of
society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its
feelings into the form of commotion--set to work with a remarkable
confusion of purpose.

"Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!" cried Gabriel to those
nearest to him.  The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these,
tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted
playfully.  If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost.

"Get a tarpaulin--quick!" said Gabriel.

A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the
channel.  The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the
corn-stack, and stood up vertical.

"Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said
Gabriel again.

The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the
huge roof covering the wheat-stack.

"A ladder," cried Gabriel.

"The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,"
said a spectre-like form in the smoke.

Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage
in the operation of "reed-drawing," and digging in his feet, and
occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up
the beetling face.  He at once sat astride the very apex, and began
with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged
thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and
some water.

Billy Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by this
time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside
Oak upon the thatch.  The smoke at this corner was stifling, and
Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed
Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a
long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other,
kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.

On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing
all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much.
They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying
pattern.  Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct
rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back.
By her side was another woman, on foot.  These two seemed to keep at
a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.

"He's a shepherd," said the woman on foot.  "Yes--he is. See how his
crook shines as he beats the rick with it.  And his smock-frock is
burnt in two holes, I declare!  A fine young shepherd he is too,
ma'am."

"Whose shepherd is he?" said the equestrian in a clear voice.

"Don't know, ma'am."

"Don't any of the others know?"

"Nobody at all--I've asked 'em.  Quite a stranger, they say."

The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked
anxiously around.

"Do you think the barn is safe?" she said.

"D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?" said the second woman,
passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.

"Safe-now--leastwise I think so.  If this rick had gone the barn
would have followed.  'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done
the most good--he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great
long-arms about like a windmill."

"He does work hard," said the young woman on horseback, looking up at
Gabriel through her thick woollen veil.  "I wish he was shepherd
here.  Don't any of you know his name."

"Never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore."

The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being
no longer required of him, he made as if to descend.

"Maryann," said the girl on horseback, "go to him as he comes down,
and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he
has done."

Maryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the
ladder.  She delivered her message.

"Where is your master the farmer?" asked Gabriel, kindling with the
idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.

"'Tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd."

"A woman farmer?"

"Ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!" said a bystander. "Lately
'a came here from a distance.  Took on her uncle's farm, who died
suddenly.  Used to measure his money in half-pint cups.  They say
now that she've business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks
no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I, do
pitch-halfpenny--not a bit in the world, shepherd."

"That's she, back there upon the pony," said Maryann; "wi' her face
a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it."

Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke
and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water,
the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, advanced
with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the
slight female form in the saddle.  He lifted his hat with respect,
and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said
in a hesitating voice,--

"Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?"

She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all
astonishment.  Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba
Everdene, were face to face.

Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed
and sad voice,--

"Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?"




Chapter 6
Casterbridge was holding its February hiring fair. A few hundred hearty workers stood about, each showing the symbol of his trade: carters, a bit of whipcord on their hats; thatchers, straw; shepherds, their crooks. One young fellow's "superiority was marked enough to lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as to a farmer, and to use 'Sir' as a finishing word. His answer always was, -- 'I am looking for a place myself -- a bailiff's.'" No one seemed to need bailiffs. Toward the end of the day, Gabriel went to have a shepherd's crook fashioned, and he also exchanged his overcoat for a regulation smock. Now, ironically, bailiffs were in demand; yet prospective employers seemed to edge away when Gabriel said he'd lost his farm. Watching the evening's merriment, Gabriel felt his flute in his pocket. "Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice." His tunes were so well received that soon he had earned enough pence to feel more secure. There was another fair in Shottsford the next day. Hearing that this town lay beyond Weatherbury, Gabriel thought of Bathsheba and resolved to go to the fair via Weatherbury. After going about four miles in that direction, he saw a haywagon without horses beside the road and lay down in it for a rest. After dark he wakened to find the wagon in motion. He eavesdropped on the conversation of the two men in front and conjectured that the vain woman whom they were discussing was Bathsheba. Dismissing the thought, since the woman under discussion seemed to be the owner of a large farm, he slipped out of the wagon unseen. Suddenly Gabriel saw a fire in the distance. As he ran toward it, he realized that the fire was in a rickyard. His familiarity with the nature of burning hay drove him to hurry to save it before it enveloped the piled-up corn. Others were converging on the fire, too. In the general confusion, Gabriel stood out as one who naturally takes command. To one side stood two veiled women. They identified Gabriel as a shepherd, for he was wielding a crook, but no one seemed to know him. Finally the fire was extinguished. One of the women sent the other, her maid, to thank Gabriel. The maid told Gabriel that the other woman owned the farm. Gabriel approached her, saying, "Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?" Silently, the astonished Bathsheba lifted her veil. Gabriel mechanically repeated his question.
This long chapter abounds with architectural terminology and with evidence of Hardy's skills as an artist and a writer. We view masses of people in motion, but from the immense canvas detailed individual figures emerge as well. Hardy portrays many facets of the fair -- speech, customs, costumes, indigenous trades, a sergeant, and a recruiter. Gabriel continues his service as an on-the-spot observer for Hardy. The farmer has been matured by the reverses he has experienced and is learning to compromise. Even as the workers are "waiting on Chance," so is Gabriel. In Hardy's works, many such evidences of belief in fate and fortune exist. Oak's effort to "help" the fates by changing his costume is unavailing. When he decides to continue to Shottsford in his search for employment, the motivation is not too farfetched, for there are not many roads to choose; he is poor and cannot afford an inn. His rest in the wagon and the overheard conversation give Hardy an opportunity to introduce more dialect and to further characterize the Wessex folk. The animation of the fire scene is a dramatization of country life and of some of the hazards encountered in the seemingly serene landscape.