finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_20_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 21
chapter 21
{"name": "Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-21", "summary": "Twenty-four hours after Oak leaves the farm, it's crisis time. The workmen come running to Bathsheba's house and tell her that all her sheep have gotten into a clover patch and have eaten so much that their bellies are swelling with gas. Um, eww. There's only one way to save them , but the only person who knows how to perform the operation properly is... mmm hmm... Gabriel Oak. Bathsheba swears she'll never go running back to Oak for help; but eventually she gives up and sends for him. Losing face is better than having a flock full of gassy sheep. Oak shows up and totally saves the day. Not all of the sheep make it, but most do. When everything is over, Bathsheba walks up to Gabriel and offers him his job back. He coolly accepts.", "analysis": ""}


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.

"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do!" she again exclaimed, wringing
her hands.  "I won't send for him.  No, I won't!"

The most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide
with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself.  It is often flung
out as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, whilst
strong, required no enunciation to prove it so.  The "No, I won't" of
Bathsheba meant virtually, "I think I must."

She followed her assistants through the gate, and lifted her hand to
one of them.  Laban answered to her signal.

"Where is Oak staying?"

"Across the valley at Nest Cottage!"

"Jump on the bay mare, and ride across, and say he must return
instantly--that I say so."

Tall scrambled off to the field, and in two minutes was on Poll,
the bay, bare-backed, and with only a halter by way of rein.  He
diminished down the hill.

Bathsheba watched.  So did all the rest.  Tall cantered along the
bridle-path through Sixteen Acres, Sheeplands, Middle Field, The
Flats, Cappel's Piece, shrank almost to a point, crossed the bridge,
and ascended from the valley through Springmead and Whitepits on the
other side.  The cottage to which Gabriel had retired before taking
his final departure from the locality was visible as a white spot on
the opposite hill, backed by blue firs.  Bathsheba walked up and
down.  The men entered the field and endeavoured to ease the anguish
of the dumb creatures by rubbing them.  Nothing availed.

Bathsheba continued walking.  The horse was seen descending the
hill, and the wearisome series had to be repeated in reverse order:
Whitepits, Springmead, Cappel's Piece, The Flats, Middle Field,
Sheeplands, Sixteen Acres.  She hoped Tall had had presence of mind
enough to give the mare up to Gabriel, and return himself on foot.
The rider neared them.  It was Tall.

"Oh, what folly!" said Bathsheba.

Gabriel was not visible anywhere.

"Perhaps he is already gone!" she said.

Tall came into the inclosure, and leapt off, his face tragic as
Morton's after the battle of Shrewsbury.

"Well?" said Bathsheba, unwilling to believe that her verbal
_lettre-de-cachet_ could possibly have miscarried.

"He says BEGGARS MUSTN'T BE CHOOSERS," replied Laban.

"What!" said the young farmer, opening her eyes and drawing in her
breath for an outburst.  Joseph Poorgrass retired a few steps behind
a hurdle.

"He says he shall not come onless you request en to come civilly and
in a proper manner, as becomes any 'ooman begging a favour."

"Oh, oh, that's his answer!  Where does he get his airs?  Who am I,
then, to be treated like that?  Shall I beg to a man who has begged
to me?"

Another of the flock sprang into the air, and fell dead.

The men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion.

Bathsheba turned aside, her eyes full of tears.  The strait she was
in through pride and shrewishness could not be disguised longer: she
burst out crying bitterly; they all saw it; and she attempted no
further concealment.

"I wouldn't cry about it, miss," said William Smallbury,
compassionately.  "Why not ask him softer like?  I'm sure he'd come
then.  Gable is a true man in that way."

Bathsheba checked her grief and wiped her eyes.  "Oh, it is a wicked
cruelty to me--it is--it is!" she murmured.  "And he drives me to do
what I wouldn't; yes, he does!--Tall, come indoors."

After this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an
establishment, she went into the house, Tall at her heels.  Here she
sat down and hastily scribbled a note between the small convulsive
sobs of convalescence which follow a fit of crying as a ground-swell
follows a storm.  The note was none the less polite for being written
in a hurry.  She held it at a distance, was about to fold it, then
added these words at the bottom:--


   "DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!"


She looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her lips,
as if thereby to suspend till too late the action of conscience in
examining whether such strategy were justifiable.  The note was
despatched as the message had been, and Bathsheba waited indoors
for the result.

It was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between the
messenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp again
outside.  She could not watch this time, but, leaning over the old
bureau at which she had written the letter, closed her eyes, as if
to keep out both hope and fear.

The case, however, was a promising one.  Gabriel was not angry: he
was simply neutral, although her first command had been so haughty.
Such imperiousness would have damned a little less beauty; and
on the other hand, such beauty would have redeemed a little less
imperiousness.

She went out when the horse was heard, and looked up.  A mounted
figure passed between her and the sky, and drew on towards the field
of sheep, the rider turning his face in receding.  Gabriel looked at
her.  It was a moment when a woman's eyes and tongue tell distinctly
opposite tales. Bathsheba looked full of gratitude, and she said:--

"Oh, Gabriel, how could you serve me so unkindly!"

Such a tenderly-shaped reproach for his previous delay was the
one speech in the language that he could pardon for not being
commendation of his readiness now.

Gabriel murmured a confused reply, and hastened on.  She knew from
the look which sentence in her note had brought him.  Bathsheba
followed to the field.

Gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms.  He had flung
off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and taken from his pocket
the instrument of salvation.  It was a small tube or trochar, with
a lance passing down the inside; and Gabriel began to use it with a
dexterity that would have graced a hospital surgeon.  Passing his
hand over the sheep's left flank, and selecting the proper point, he
punctured the skin and rumen with the lance as it stood in the tube;
then he suddenly withdrew the lance, retaining the tube in its place.
A current of air rushed up the tube, forcible enough to have
extinguished a candle held at the orifice.

It has been said that mere ease after torment is delight for a time;
and the countenances of these poor creatures expressed it now.
Forty-nine operations were successfully performed.  Owing to the
great hurry necessitated by the far-gone state of some of the flock,
Gabriel missed his aim in one case, and in one only--striking wide
of the mark, and inflicting a mortal blow at once upon the suffering
ewe.  Four had died; three recovered without an operation.  The total
number of sheep which had thus strayed and injured themselves so
dangerously was fifty-seven.

When the love-led man had ceased from his labours, Bathsheba came and
looked him in the face.

"Gabriel, will you stay on with me?" she said, smiling winningly,
and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end,
because there was going to be another smile soon.

"I will," said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.




Chapter 21
Twenty-four hours after Oak leaves the farm, it's crisis time. The workmen come running to Bathsheba's house and tell her that all her sheep have gotten into a clover patch and have eaten so much that their bellies are swelling with gas. Um, eww. There's only one way to save them , but the only person who knows how to perform the operation properly is... mmm hmm... Gabriel Oak. Bathsheba swears she'll never go running back to Oak for help; but eventually she gives up and sends for him. Losing face is better than having a flock full of gassy sheep. Oak shows up and totally saves the day. Not all of the sheep make it, but most do. When everything is over, Bathsheba walks up to Gabriel and offers him his job back. He coolly accepts.