AT AN UPPER WINDOW

It was very early the next morning--a time of sun and dew.  The
confused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air,
and the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin
webs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day.
All the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the
shadows were attenuated as to form.  The creeping plants about the
old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which
had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high
magnifying power.

Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the
village cross, and went on together to the fields.  They were yet
barely in view of their mistress's house, when Oak fancied he saw the
opening of a casement in one of the upper windows.  The two men were
at this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning
to be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before
emerging from its shade.

A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice.  He looked east and then
west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey.  The
man was Sergeant Troy.  His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but
not buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier
taking his ease.

Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window.

"She has married him!" he said.

Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his
back turned, making no reply.

"I fancied we should know something to-day," continued Coggan.  "I
heard wheels pass my door just after dark--you were out somewhere."
He glanced round upon Gabriel.  "Good heavens above us, Oak, how
white your face is; you look like a corpse!"

"Do I?" said Oak, with a faint smile.

"Lean on the gate: I'll wait a bit."

"All right, all right."

They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the
ground.  His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in
years of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this
work of haste.  That they were married he had instantly decided.  Why
had it been so mysteriously managed?  It had become known that she
had had a fearful journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the
distance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more
than two days getting there.  It was not Bathsheba's way to do things
furtively.  With all her faults, she was candour itself.  Could she
have been entrapped?  The union was not only an unutterable grief to
him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding
week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting
her away from home.  Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent
dispersed the dread.  Just as that imperceptible motion which appears
like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness
itself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from
despair indeed.

In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house.  The sergeant
still looked from the window.

"Morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came
up.

Coggan replied to the greeting.  "Bain't ye going to answer the man?"
he then said to Gabriel.  "I'd say good morning--you needn't spend a
hapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil."

Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the
best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he
loved.

"Good morning, Sergeant Troy," he returned, in a ghastly voice.

"A rambling, gloomy house this," said Troy, smiling.

"Why--they MAY not be married!" suggested Coggan.  "Perhaps she's not
there."

Gabriel shook his head.  The soldier turned a little towards the
east, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow.

"But it is a nice old house," responded Gabriel.

"Yes--I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here.
My notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these
old wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite
away, and the walls papered."

"It would be a pity, I think."

"Well, no.  A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old
builders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect
for the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and
altered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we?  'Creation and
preservation don't do well together,' says he, 'and a million of
antiquarians can't invent a style.' My mind exactly.  I am for making
this place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can."

The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to
assist his ideas of improvement in this direction.  Gabriel and
Coggan began to move on.

"Oh, Coggan," said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection "do you
know if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood's family?"

Jan reflected for a moment.

"I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don't
know the rights o't," he said.

"It is of no importance," said Troy, lightly.  "Well, I shall be down
in the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters
to attend to first.  So good-day to you.  We shall, of course, keep
on just as friendly terms as usual.  I'm not a proud man: nobody is
ever able to say that of Sergeant Troy.  However, what is must be,
and here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men."

Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the
fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning
to an angry red.  Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught
the money in its ricochet upon the road.

"Very well--you keep it, Coggan," said Gabriel with disdain and
almost fiercely.  "As for me, I'll do without gifts from him!"

"Don't show it too much," said Coggan, musingly.  "For if he's
married to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our
master here.  Therefore 'tis well to say 'Friend' outwardly, though
you say 'Troublehouse' within."

"Well--perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can't go further than
that.  I can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by
smoothing him down, my place must be lost."

A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now
appeared close beside them.

"There's Mr. Boldwood," said Oak.  "I wonder what Troy meant by his
question."

Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their
paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not
stood back to let him pass on.

The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating
through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour
in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in
his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth.
The horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed
significant of dogged despair.  Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his
own grief in noticing Boldwood's.  He saw the square figure sitting
erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows
steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in
its onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood's shape sank by
degrees over the hill.  To one who knew the man and his story there
was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse.
The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced
painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more
dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of
this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.

WEALTH 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 x 30 = 150 quarters = 500 L.
      3 x 40 = 120 quarters = 250 L.
                            -------
                    Total . . 750 L.

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.

THE STORM--THE TWO TOGETHER

A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent
wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air.  It was the
first move of the approaching storm.

The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible
lightning.  Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba's bedroom,
and soon a shadow swept to and fro upon the blind.

Then there came a third flash.  Manoeuvres of a most extraordinary
kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead.  The
lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens
like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles.  Gabriel from his
elevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen
miles in front.  Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a
line engraving.  In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of
heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the
act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging
their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth.
A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on
burnished tin.  Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so
intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands.

He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently
called--a long iron lance, polished by handling--into the stack,
used to support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom
used on houses.  A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some
indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod.  It
was the fourth of the larger flashes.  A moment later and there was
a smack--smart, clear, and short.  Gabriel felt his position to be
anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend.

Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet.  He wiped his weary brow, and
looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks.  Was his
life so valuable to him after all?  What were his prospects that he
should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour
could not be carried on without such risk?  He resolved to stick to
the stack.  However, he took a precaution.  Under the staddles was a
long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses.
This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog
at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the
ground.  The spike attached to it he drove in.  Under the shadow of
this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively
safe.

Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the
fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend.
It was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning.  What
was this the light revealed to him?  In the open ground before him,
as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently
female form.  Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the
parish--Bathsheba?  The form moved on a step: then he could see no
more.

"Is that you, ma'am?" said Gabriel to the darkness.

"Who is there?" said the voice of Bathsheba.

"Gabriel.  I am on the rick, thatching."

"Oh, Gabriel!--and are you?  I have come about them.  The weather
awoke me, and I thought of the corn.  I am so distressed about
it--can we save it anyhow?  I cannot find my husband.  Is he with
you?"

"He is not here."

"Do you know where he is?"

"Asleep in the barn."

"He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all
neglected!  Can I do anything to help?  Liddy is afraid to come out.
Fancy finding you here at such an hour!  Surely I can do something?"

"You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you
are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark," said Gabriel.
"Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of
time.  It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit."

"I'll do anything!" she said, resolutely.  She instantly took a sheaf
upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind
the rod, and descended for another.  At her third ascent the rick
suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica--every
knot in every straw was visible.  On the slope in front of him
appeared two human shapes, black as jet.  The rick lost its
sheen--the shapes vanished.  Gabriel turned his head.  It had been
the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two
dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and
Bathsheba.

Then came the peal.  It hardly was credible that such a heavenly
light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.

"How terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve.
Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding
her arm.  At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his
attitude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the
tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn.
It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash
in the west.

The next flare came.  Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering
another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching--thunder
and all--and again ascended with the load.  There was then a silence
everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as
Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard.  He
thought the crisis of the storm had passed.  But there came a burst
of light.

"Hold on!" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and
grasping her arm again.

Heaven opened then, indeed.  The flash was almost too novel for its
inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could
only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty.  It sprang from
east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death.  The
forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for
bones--dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling
altogether in unparalleled confusion.  With these were intertwined
undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of
lesser light.  Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling
sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came
near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else
earthly.  In the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon
the point of Gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain,
and into the earth.  Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel
Bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand--a sensation novel and
thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and
trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe.

Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought,
and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this
light, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire
to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled
with the last crash of those preceding.  It was a stupefying blast,
harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow,
without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more
distant thunder.  By the lustre reflected from every part of the
earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the
tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a
huge riband of bark being apparently flung off.  The other portion
remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white
down the front.  The lightning had struck the tree.  A sulphurous
smell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in
Hinnom.

"We had a narrow escape!" said Gabriel, hurriedly.  "You had better
go down."

Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical
pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response
to her frightened pulsations.  She descended the ladder, and, on
second thoughts, he followed her.  The darkness was now impenetrable
by the sharpest vision.  They both stood still at the bottom, side by
side.  Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather--Oak thought
only of her just then.  At last he said--

"The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate."

"I think so too," said Bathsheba.  "Though there are multitudes of
gleams, look!"

The sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition
melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from
the successive strokes on a gong.

"Nothing serious," said he.  "I cannot understand no rain falling.
But Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us.  I am now going
up again."

"Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve!  I will stay and help you
yet.  Oh, why are not some of the others here!"

"They would have been here if they could," said Oak, in a hesitating
way.

"O, I know it all--all," she said, adding slowly: "They are all
asleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them.
That's it, is it not?  Don't think I am a timid woman and can't
endure things."

"I am not certain," said Gabriel.  "I will go and see."

He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone.  He looked through
the chinks of the door.  All was in total darkness, as he had left
it, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of
many snores.

He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned.  It was
Bathsheba's breath--she had followed him, and was looking into the
same chink.

He endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of
their thoughts by remarking gently, "If you'll come back again,
miss--ma'am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time."

Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder
for greater expedition, and went on thatching.  She followed, but
without a sheaf.

"Gabriel," she said, in a strange and impressive voice.

Oak looked up at her.  She had not spoken since he left the barn.
The soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble
face high against the black sky of the opposite quarter.  Bathsheba
was sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up
beneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder.

"Yes, mistress," he said.

"I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night
it was on purpose to be married?"

"I did at last--not at first," he answered, somewhat surprised at the
abruptness with which this new subject was broached.

"And others thought so, too?"

"Yes."

"And you blamed me for it?"

"Well--a little."

"I thought so.  Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and
I want to explain something--I have longed to do it ever since I
returned, and you looked so gravely at me.  For if I were to die--and
I may die soon--it would be dreadful that you should always think
mistakenly of me.  Now, listen."

Gabriel ceased his rustling.

"I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my
engagement to Mr. Troy.  It was owing to circumstances which occurred
after I got there that--that we were married.  Now, do you see the
matter in a new light?"

"I do--somewhat."

"I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun.  And perhaps
it's no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever
loved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that
object I have mentioned.  Well, I was alone in a strange city, and
the horse was lame.  And at last I didn't know what to do.  I saw,
when it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting
him alone in that way.  But I was coming away, when he suddenly said
he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his
constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his....
And I was grieved and troubled--"  She cleared her voice, and waited
a moment, as if to gather breath.  "And then, between jealousy
and distraction, I married him!" she whispered with desperate
impetuosity.

Gabriel made no reply.

"He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about--about his
seeing somebody else," she quickly added.  "And now I don't wish for
a single remark from you upon the subject--indeed, I forbid it.  I
only wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before
a time comes when you could never know it.--You want some more
sheaves?"

She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded.  Gabriel soon
perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and
he said to her, gently as a mother--

"I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired.  I can finish
the rest alone.  If the wind does not change the rain is likely to
keep off."

"If I am useless I will go," said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence.
"But O, if your life should be lost!"

"You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer.  You
have done well."

"And you better!" she said, gratefully.  "Thank you for your
devotion, a thousand times, Gabriel!  Goodnight--I know you are doing
your very best for me."

She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch
of the gate fall as she passed through.  He worked in a reverie
now, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that
feminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him
to-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak
as warmly as she chose.

He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the
coach-house.  It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this
change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.

RAIN--ONE SOLITARY MEETS ANOTHER

It was now five o'clock, and the dawn was promising to break in hues
of drab and ash.

The air changed its temperature and stirred itself more vigorously.
Cool breezes coursed in transparent eddies round Oak's face.  The
wind shifted yet a point or two and blew stronger.  In ten minutes
every wind of heaven seemed to be roaming at large.  Some of the
thatching on the wheat-stacks was now whirled fantastically aloft,
and had to be replaced and weighted with some rails that lay near at
hand.  This done, Oak slaved away again at the barley.  A huge drop
of rain smote his face, the wind snarled round every corner, the
trees rocked to the bases of their trunks, and the twigs clashed in
strife.  Driving in spars at any point and on any system, inch by
inch he covered more and more safely from ruin this distracting
impersonation of seven hundred pounds.  The rain came on in earnest,
and Oak soon felt the water to be tracking cold and clammy routes
down his back.  Ultimately he was reduced well-nigh to a homogeneous
sop, and the dyes of his clothes trickled down and stood in a pool
at the foot of the ladder.  The rain stretched obliquely through the
dull atmosphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity between
their beginnings in the clouds and their points in him.

Oak suddenly remembered that eight months before this time he had
been fighting against fire in the same spot as desperately as he
was fighting against water now--and for a futile love of the same
woman.  As for her--But Oak was generous and true, and dismissed
his reflections.

It was about seven o'clock in the dark leaden morning when Gabriel
came down from the last stack, and thankfully exclaimed, "It is
done!"  He was drenched, weary, and sad, and yet not so sad as
drenched and weary, for he was cheered by a sense of success in a
good cause.

Faint sounds came from the barn, and he looked that way.  Figures
stepped singly and in pairs through the doors--all walking awkwardly,
and abashed, save the foremost, who wore a red jacket, and advanced
with his hands in his pockets, whistling.  The others shambled after
with a conscience-stricken air: the whole procession was not unlike
Flaxman's group of the suitors tottering on towards the infernal
regions under the conduct of Mercury.  The gnarled shapes passed
into the village, Troy, their leader, entering the farmhouse.  Not a
single one of them had turned his face to the ricks, or apparently
bestowed one thought upon their condition.

Soon Oak too went homeward, by a different route from theirs.  In
front of him against the wet glazed surface of the lane he saw a
person walking yet more slowly than himself under an umbrella.  The
man turned and plainly started; he was Boldwood.

"How are you this morning, sir?" said Oak.

"Yes, it is a wet day.--Oh, I am well, very well, I thank you; quite
well."

"I am glad to hear it, sir."

Boldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees.  "You look tired
and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.

"I am tired.  You look strangely altered, sir."

"I?  Not a bit of it: I am well enough.  What put that into your
head?"

"I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to, that was
all."

"Indeed, then you are mistaken," said Boldwood, shortly.  "Nothing
hurts me.  My constitution is an iron one."

"I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was barely in
time.  Never had such a struggle in my life....  Yours of course are
safe, sir."

"Oh yes," Boldwood added, after an interval of silence: "What did you
ask, Oak?"

"Your ricks are all covered before this time?"

"No."

"At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?"

"They are not."

"Them under the hedge?"

"No.  I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it."

"Nor the little one by the stile?"

"Nor the little one by the stile.  I overlooked the ricks this year."

"Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir."

"Possibly not."

"Overlooked them," repeated Gabriel slowly to himself.  It is
difficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcement
had upon Oak at such a moment.  All the night he had been feeling
that the neglect he was labouring to repair was abnormal and
isolated--the only instance of the kind within the circuit of the
county.  Yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greater
waste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded.  A few
months earlier Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as
preposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship.  Oak
was just thinking that whatever he himself might have suffered from
Bathsheba's marriage, here was a man who had suffered more, when
Boldwood spoke in a changed voice--that of one who yearned to make
a confidence and relieve his heart by an outpouring.

"Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with me
lately.  I may as well own it.  I was going to get a little settled
in life; but in some way my plan has come to nothing."

"I thought my mistress would have married you," said Gabriel, not
knowing enough of the full depths of Boldwood's love to keep silence
on the farmer's account, and determined not to evade discipline by
doing so on his own.  "However, it is so sometimes, and nothing
happens that we expect," he added, with the repose of a man whom
misfortune had inured rather than subdued.

"I daresay I am a joke about the parish," said Boldwood, as if
the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable
lightness meant to express his indifference.

"Oh no--I don't think that."

"--But the real truth of the matter is that there was not, as some
fancy, any jilting on--her part.  No engagement ever existed between
me and Miss Everdene.  People say so, but it is untrue: she never
promised me!"  Boldwood stood still now and turned his wild face to
Oak.  "Oh, Gabriel," he continued, "I am weak and foolish, and I
don't know what, and I can't fend off my miserable grief! ...  I had
some faint belief in the mercy of God till I lost that woman.  Yes,
He prepared a gourd to shade me, and like the prophet I thanked Him
and was glad.  But the next day He prepared a worm to smite the gourd
and wither it; and I feel it is better to die than to live!"

A silence followed.  Boldwood aroused himself from the momentary
mood of confidence into which he had drifted, and walked on again,
resuming his usual reserve.

"No, Gabriel," he resumed, with a carelessness which was like
the smile on the countenance of a skull: "it was made more of by
other people than ever it was by us.  I do feel a little regret
occasionally, but no woman ever had power over me for any length of
time.  Well, good morning; I can trust you not to mention to others
what has passed between us two here."

Gabriel and Coggan learn of the secret marriage the next day, when Sergeant Troy appears, greeting them and throwing money at them patronizingly, to Gabriel's great distress. Gabriel's feelings are registered by Coggan's comment that his face is as white as a corpse's. Soon afterward, Gabriel runs into Boldwood and notices Boldwood's look of despair. He foresees much future misery resulting from the hasty wedding. The next scene occurs at night, when Gabriel begins to notice signs of bad weather. It is the night of the harvest supper and dance, and Bathsheba and Troy have invited all the workers to celebrate the harvest and their marriage. We see the festivities from Gabriel's perspective. Then, Troy announces that he wants the laborers to be served brandy and water. None of the laborers are used to hard liquor, and Bathsheba objects, but Troy overrules her. She leaves with the women and children, and Troy insists that the men drink brandy with him. Gabriel slips outside and sees yet more signs of a huge oncoming storm: The sheep are huddled together; toads and slugs are seeking shelter. He calculates that with the wheat ricks and barley ricks, Bathsheba has 750 pounds' worth of produce lying exposed to the rain, and he goes to the barn to get help in covering it. Every single one of the workers is lying passed out with Troy in the barn, inexperienced with hard liquor. Gabriel decides he will have to save the wheat and barley single-handedly before the storm arrives. He works heroically to cover the wheat and then heads for the barley. Chapter 37 gives a dramatic account of the powerful lightning storm that hits just as Gabriel works atop one of the ricks, thatching it to protect it from rain. As he struggles there in the dark, he sees a figure and realizes it is Bathsheba, coming to his aid. As they thatch side by side, in grave danger of being hit by lightning, she confesses that she did not go to Bath with the intention of marrying. This is yet another moment in the novel when Bathsheba and Gabriel engage in an intimate conversation in which she turns to him for guidance, and her confession provides us with our first insight into the motivation behind Bathsheba's mysterious acts. She explains that she had gone to Bath meaning to break off her engagement to Troy. However, upon arriving in Bath, Troy again fell to lavishing compliments on her and said that "his constancy could not be counted on" unless she at once married him. Bathsheba recounts that she was "grieved and troubled," and married him in a state between "jealousy and distraction." At seven in the morning, once he has sent Bathsheba home and covered the ricks in the rain, Gabriel finishes and heads home. He sees the farm workers just waking up from their excesses, unaware that the ricks were ever endangered, and then he runs across Boldwood. Gabriel asks after Boldwood's own ricks, only to find that he has left them all uncovered. Gabriel is intensely shocked at Boldwood's negligence: "A few months earlier Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as preposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship." Boldwood ashamedly declares himself weak and foolish, unable to fend off his miserable grief.

Commentary Throughout this section, Gabriel acts as overseer and observer, the only truly sane man in a time of trouble. He is a stand-in for the reader, who also sees the folly of Bathsheba and Boldwood's actions but without being able to stop them. Through his sensibility, we are given a measure of the madness that has taken over the others, even the normally reliable, down-to-earth farm workers. The storm is one of the few catastrophes in the novel inflicted by the natural world. In this struggle with nature, we see how different people respond to forces beyond human control. Gabriel emerges as the person most attuned to the signals of nature and able to read what will happen and control it as well as he can. Chapter 36 gives an extraordinary account of a series of natural signs--a toad on the path, a slug crawling across the table, and sheep huddling together. Hardy first presents this information to us, though we don't know what it means, and then shows how Gabriel is able to interpret it correctly: Gabriel realizes that the sheep's position foretells a long and constant rain after the initial storm. The storm's destructive force symbolizes that of Troy upon the people around him, from Bathsheba and Boldwood to the laborers. Hardy depicts a world in which one must be constantly attentive and responsible in order to survive; that is the reality of farm life. Troy dismisses such attention to work and the natural world, but in this scene, we begin to realize why Gabriel's cautious, responsible qualities, while perhaps less beguiling than Troy's extravagantly romantic manner, are more valuable in the world of the novel. Bathsheba realizes this too. As he stands on the rick, saving it from the storm, Gabriel remembers the time eight months earlier when he saved a rick from the fire. By linking the two scenes, Hardy indicates how the characters and circumstances have changed since the first event. Similarly, Bathsheba's conversation with Gabriel is one of several she has with him alone, the first being the conversation in which Gabriel first proposes to her. In each of these talks, questions come up regarding marriage and the motivations for it. Gabriel is the one intelligent person in whom Bathsheba can confide. By isolating these conversations and studying their progression in series, a reader can see the transformations Bathsheba experiences over the course of the novel. Notice the suspense Hardy builds into this section as Gabriel wonders what has driven Bathsheba to marry. Just when a crucial event has occurred, Hardy removes the reader from Bathsheba's point of view, intentionally leaving us wondering.