Far from the Madding Crowd

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Far from the Madding Crowd


"And what shall I do without you? Oh, Gabriel, I don't think you
ought to go away. You've been with me so long--through bright times
and dark times--such old friends as we are--that it seems unkind
almost. I had fancied that if you leased the other farm as master,
you might still give a helping look across at mine. And now going
away!"

"I would have willingly."

"Yet now that I am more helpless than ever you go away!"

"Yes, that's the ill fortune o' it," said Gabriel, in a distressed
tone. "And it is because of that very helplessness that I feel bound
to go. Good afternoon, ma'am" he concluded, in evident anxiety to
get away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could
follow on no pretence whatever.

Bathsheba went home, her mind occupied with a new trouble, which
being rather harassing than deadly was calculated to do good by
diverting her from the chronic gloom of her life. She was set
thinking a great deal about Oak and of his wish to shun her;
and there occurred to Bathsheba several incidents of her latter
intercourse with him, which, trivial when singly viewed, amounted
together to a perceptible disinclination for her society. It broke
upon her at length as a great pain that her last old disciple was
about to forsake her and flee. He who had believed in her and argued
on her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at
last like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause,
and was leaving her to fight her battles alone.

Three weeks went on, and more evidence of his want of interest in
her was forthcoming. She noticed that instead of entering the small
parlour or office where the farm accounts were kept, and waiting, or
leaving a memorandum as he had hitherto done during her seclusion,
Oak never came at all when she was likely to be there, only entering
at unseasonable hours when her presence in that part of the house
was least to be expected. Whenever he wanted directions he sent a
message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was
obliged to reply in the same offhand style. Poor Bathsheba began to
suffer now from the most torturing sting of all--a sensation that she
was despised.

The autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these melancholy
conjectures, and Christmas-day came, completing a year of her legal
widowhood, and two years and a quarter of her life alone. On
examining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the
subject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive--the
event in the hall at Boldwood's--was not agitating her at all; but
instead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured her--for what
she could not tell--and that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants.
Coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak,
whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead
in a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in
the old way. There he was, as usual, coming down the path behind
her. But on seeing Bathsheba turn, he looked aside, and as soon
as he got beyond the gate, and there was the barest excuse for a
divergence, he made one, and vanished.

The next morning brought the culminating stroke; she had been
expecting it long. It was a formal notice by letter from him that he
should not renew his engagement with her for the following Lady-day.

Bathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most bitterly. She
was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from
Gabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for
life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this
way. She was bewildered too by the prospect of having to rely on her
own resources again: it seemed to herself that she never could again
acquire energy sufficient to go to market, barter, and sell.
Since Troy's death Oak had attended all sales and fairs for her,
transacting her business at the same time with his own. What should
she do now? Her life was becoming a desolation.

So desolate was Bathsheba this evening, that in an absolute hunger
for pity and sympathy, and miserable in that she appeared to have
outlived the only true friendship she had ever owned, she put on her
bonnet and cloak and went down to Oak's house just after sunset,
guided on her way by the pale primrose rays of a crescent moon a few
days old.

A lively firelight shone from the window, but nobody was visible in
the room. She tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if
it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived
alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call
on business without any real impropriety. Gabriel opened the door,
and the moon shone upon his forehead.

"Mr. Oak," said Bathsheba, faintly.

"Yes; I am Mr. Oak," said Gabriel. "Who have I the honour--O how
stupid of me, not to know you, mistress!"

"I shall not be your mistress much longer, shall I Gabriel?" she
said, in pathetic tones.

"Well, no. I suppose--But come in, ma'am. Oh--and I'll get a
light," Oak replied, with some awkwardness.

"No; not on my account."

"It is so seldom that I get a lady visitor that I'm afraid I haven't
proper accommodation. Will you sit down, please? Here's a chair, and
there's one, too. I am sorry that my chairs all have wood seats, and
are rather hard, but I--was thinking of getting some new ones." Oak
placed two or three for her.

"They are quite easy enough for me."

So down she sat, and down sat he, the fire dancing in their faces,
and upon the old furniture,


all a-sheenen
Wi' long years o' handlen, [3]

[Footnote 3: W. Barnes]

that formed Oak's array of household possessions, which sent back a
dancing reflection in reply. It was very odd to these two persons,
who knew each other passing well, that the mere circumstance of their
meeting in a new place and in a new way should make them so awkward
and constrained. In the fields, or at her house, there had never
been any embarrassment; but now that Oak had become the entertainer
their lives seemed to be moved back again to the days when they were
strangers.

"You'll think it strange that I have come, but--"

"Oh no; not at all."

"But I thought--Gabriel, I have been uneasy in the belief that I
have offended you, and that you are going away on that account. It
grieved me very much and I couldn't help coming."

"Offended me! As if you could do that, Bathsheba!"

"Haven't I?" she asked, gladly. "But, what are you going away for
else?"

"I am not going to emigrate, you know; I wasn't aware that you would
wish me not to when I told 'ee or I shouldn't ha' thought of doing
it," he said, simply. "I have arranged for Little Weatherbury Farm
and shall have it in my own hands at Lady-day. You know I've had a
share in it for some time. Still, that wouldn't prevent my attending
to your business as before, hadn't it been that things have been said
about us."

"What?" said Bathsheba, in surprise. "Things said about you and me!
What are they?"

"I cannot tell you."

"It would be wiser if you were to, I think. You have played the part
of mentor to me many times, and I don't see why you should fear to do
it now."

"It is nothing that you have done, this time. The top and tail
o't is this--that I am sniffing about here, and waiting for poor
Boldwood's farm, with a thought of getting you some day."

"Getting me! What does that mean?"

"Marrying of 'ee, in plain British. You asked me to tell, so you
mustn't blame me."

Bathsheba did not look quite so alarmed as if a cannon had been
discharged by her ear, which was what Oak had expected. "Marrying
me! I didn't know it was that you meant," she said, quietly. "Such
a thing as that is too absurd--too soon--to think of, by far!"

"Yes; of course, it is too absurd. I don't desire any such thing;
I should think that was plain enough by this time. Surely, surely
you be the last person in the world I think of marrying. It is too
absurd, as you say."

"'Too--s-s-soon' were the words I used."

"I must beg your pardon for correcting you, but you said, 'too
absurd,' and so do I."

"I beg your pardon too!" she returned, with tears in her eyes. "'Too
soon' was what I said. But it doesn't matter a bit--not at all--but
I only meant, 'too soon.' Indeed, I didn't, Mr. Oak, and you must
believe me!"

Gabriel looked her long in the face, but the firelight being faint
there was not much to be seen. "Bathsheba," he said, tenderly and in
surprise, and coming closer: "if I only knew one thing--whether you
would allow me to love you and win you, and marry you after all--if
I only knew that!"

"But you never will know," she murmured.

"Why?"

"Because you never ask."

"Oh--Oh!" said Gabriel, with a low laugh of joyousness. "My own
dear--"

"You ought not to have sent me that harsh letter this morning," she
interrupted. "It shows you didn't care a bit about me, and were
ready to desert me like all the rest of them! It was very cruel of
you, considering I was the first sweetheart that you ever had, and
you were the first I ever had; and I shall not forget it!"

"Now, Bathsheba, was ever anybody so provoking," he said, laughing.
"You know it was purely that I, as an unmarried man, carrying on a
business for you as a very taking young woman, had a proper hard part
to play--more particular that people knew I had a sort of feeling for
'ee; and I fancied, from the way we were mentioned together, that it
might injure your good name. Nobody knows the heat and fret I have
been caused by it."

"And was that all?"

"All."

"Oh, how glad I am I came!" she exclaimed, thankfully, as she rose
from her seat. "I have thought so much more of you since I fancied
you did not want even to see me again. But I must be going now, or
I shall be missed. Why Gabriel," she said, with a slight laugh, as
they went to the door, "it seems exactly as if I had come courting
you--how dreadful!"

"And quite right too," said Oak. "I've danced at your skittish
heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long
day; and it is hard to begrudge me this one visit."

He accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of
his forthcoming tenure of the other farm. They spoke very little
of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being
probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Theirs was that
substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the
two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher
sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on,
the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic
reality. This good-fellowship--_camaraderie_--usually occurring
through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded
to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in
their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy
circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves
itself to be the only love which is strong as death--that love which
many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the
passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.




CHAPTER LVII


A FOGGY NIGHT AND MORNING--CONCLUSION


"The most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to
have."

Those had been Bathsheba's words to Oak one evening, some time after
the event of the preceding f, and he meditated a full hour by
the clock upon how to carry out her wishes to the letter.

"A license--O yes, it must be a license," he said to himself at last.
"Very well, then; first, a license."

On a dark night, a few days later, Oak came with mysterious steps
from the surrogate's door, in Casterbridge. On the way home he heard
a heavy tread in front of him, and, overtaking the man, found him to
be Coggan. They walked together into the village until they came to
a little lane behind the church, leading down to the cottage of Laban
Tall, who had lately been installed as clerk of the parish, and was
yet in mortal terror at church on Sundays when he heard his lone
voice among certain hard words of the Psalms, whither no man ventured
to follow him.

"Well, good-night, Coggan," said Oak, "I'm going down this way."

"Oh!" said Coggan, surprised; "what's going on to-night then, make so
bold Mr. Oak?"

It seemed rather ungenerous not to tell Coggan, under the
circumstances, for Coggan had been true as steel all through the time
of Gabriel's unhappiness about Bathsheba, and Gabriel said, "You can
keep a secret, Coggan?"

"You've proved me, and you know."

"Yes, I have, and I do know. Well, then, mistress and I mean to get
married to-morrow morning."

"Heaven's high tower! And yet I've thought of such a thing from time
to time; true, I have. But keeping it so close! Well, there, 'tis
no consarn of of mine, and I wish 'ee joy o' her."

"Thank you, Coggan. But I assure 'ee that this great hush is not
what I wished for at all, or what either of us would have wished if
it hadn't been for certain things that would make a gay wedding seem
hardly the thing. Bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish
shall not be in church, looking at her--she's shy-like and nervous
about it, in fact--so I be doing this to humour her."

"Ay, I see: quite right, too, I suppose I must say. And you be now
going down to the clerk."

"Yes; you may as well come with me."

"I am afeard your labour in keeping it close will be throwed away,"
said Coggan, as they walked along. "Labe Tall's old woman will horn
it all over parish in half-an-hour."

"So she will, upon my life; I never thought of that," said Oak,
pausing. "Yet I must tell him to-night, I suppose, for he's working
so far off, and leaves early."

"I'll tell 'ee how we could tackle her," said Coggan. "I'll knock
and ask to speak to Laban outside the door, you standing in the
background. Then he'll come out, and you can tell yer tale. She'll
never guess what I want en for; and I'll make up a few words about
the farm-work, as a blind."

This scheme was considered feasible; and Coggan advanced boldly, and
rapped at Mrs. Tall's door. Mrs. Tall herself opened it.

"I wanted to have a word with Laban."

"He's not at home, and won't be this side of eleven o'clock. He've
been forced to go over to Yalbury since shutting out work. I shall
do quite as well."

"I hardly think you will. Stop a moment;" and Coggan stepped round
the corner of the porch to consult Oak.

"Who's t'other man, then?" said Mrs. Tall.

"Only a friend," said Coggan.

"Say he's wanted to meet mistress near church-hatch to-morrow morning
at ten," said Oak, in a whisper. "That he must come without fail,
and wear his best clothes."

"The clothes will floor us as safe as houses!" said Coggan.

"It can't be helped," said Oak. "Tell her."

So Coggan delivered the message. "Mind, het or wet, blow or snow,
he must come," added Jan. "'Tis very particular, indeed. The fact
is, 'tis to witness her sign some law-work about taking shares wi'
another farmer for a long span o' years. There, that's what 'tis,
and now I've told 'ee, Mother Tall, in a way I shouldn't ha' done
if I hadn't loved 'ee so hopeless well."

Coggan retired before she could ask any further; and next they called
at the vicar's in a manner which excited no curiosity at all. Then
Gabriel went home, and prepared for the morrow.


"Liddy," said Bathsheba, on going to bed that night, "I want you to
call me at seven o'clock to-morrow, In case I shouldn't wake."

"But you always do wake afore then, ma'am."

"Yes, but I have something important to do, which I'll tell you of
when the time comes, and it's best to make sure."

Bathsheba, however, awoke voluntarily at four, nor could she by any
contrivance get to sleep again. About six, being quite positive that
her watch had stopped during the night, she could wait no longer.
She went and tapped at Liddy's door, and after some labour awoke her.

"But I thought it was I who had to call you?" said the bewildered
Liddy. "And it isn't six yet."

"Indeed it is; how can you tell such a story, Liddy? I know it must
be ever so much past seven. Come to my room as soon as you can; I
want you to give my hair a good brushing."

When Liddy came to Bathsheba's room her mistress was already waiting.
Liddy could not understand this extraordinary promptness. "Whatever
IS going on, ma'am?" she said.

"Well, I'll tell you," said Bathsheba, with a mischievous smile in
her bright eyes. "Farmer Oak is coming here to dine with me to-day!"

"Farmer Oak--and nobody else?--you two alone?"

"Yes."

"But is it safe, ma'am, after what's been said?" asked her companion,
dubiously. "A woman's good name is such a perishable article that--"

Bathsheba laughed with a flushed cheek, and whispered in Liddy's ear,
although there was nobody present. Then Liddy stared and exclaimed,
"Souls alive, what news! It makes my heart go quite bumpity-bump!"

"It makes mine rather furious, too," said Bathsheba. "However,
there's no getting out of it now!"

It was a damp disagreeable morning. Nevertheless, at twenty minutes
to ten o'clock, Oak came out of his house, and


Went up the hill side
With that sort of stride
A man puts out when walking in search of a bride,


and knocked Bathsheba's door. Ten minutes later a large and a
smaller umbrella might have been seen moving from the same door, and
through the mist along the road to the church. The distance was not
more than a quarter of a mile, and these two sensible persons deemed
it unnecessary to drive. An observer must have been very close
indeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of
Oak and Bathsheba, arm-in-arm for the first time in their lives, Oak
in a greatcoat extending to his knees, and Bathsheba in a cloak that
reached her clogs. Yet, though so plainly dressed, there was a
certain rejuvenated appearance about her:--


As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.


Repose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at Gabriel's
request, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago
on Norcombe Hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like a girl of
that fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only
three or four-and-twenty, was perhaps not very wonderful. In the
church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short
space of time the deed was done.

The two sat down very quietly to tea in Bathsheba's parlour in the
evening of the same day, for it had been arranged that Farmer Oak
should go there to live, since he had as yet neither money, house,
nor furniture worthy of the name, though he was on a sure way towards
them, whilst Bathsheba was, comparatively, in a plethora of all
three.

Just as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were
greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a
tremendous blowing of trumpets, in the front of the house.

"There!" said Oak, laughing, "I knew those fellows were up to
something, by the look on their faces"

Oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba
with a shawl over her head. The rays fell upon a group of male
figures gathered upon the gravel in front, who, when they saw the
newly-married couple in the porch, set up a loud "Hurrah!" and at the
same moment bang again went the cannon in the background, followed by
a hideous clang of music from a drum, tambourine, clarionet, serpent,
hautboy, tenor-viol, and double-bass--the only remaining relics
of the true and original Weatherbury band--venerable worm-eaten
instruments, which had celebrated in their own persons the victories
of Marlborough, under the fingers of the forefathers of those who
played them now. The performers came forward, and marched up to the
front.

"Those bright boys, Mark Clark and Jan, are at the bottom of all
this," said Oak. "Come in, souls, and have something to eat and
drink wi' me and my wife."

"Not to-night," said Mr. Clark, with evident self-denial. "Thank
ye all the same; but we'll call at a more seemly time. However, we
couldn't think of letting the day pass without a note of admiration
of some sort. If ye could send a drop of som'at down to Warren's,
why so it is. Here's long life and happiness to neighbour Oak and
his comely bride!"

"Thank ye; thank ye all," said Gabriel. "A bit and a drop shall be
sent to Warren's for ye at once. I had a thought that we might very
likely get a salute of some sort from our old friends, and I was
saying so to my wife but now."

"Faith," said Coggan, in a critical tone, turning to his companions,
"the man hev learnt to say 'my wife' in a wonderful naterel way,
considering how very youthful he is in wedlock as yet--hey,
neighbours all?"

"I never heerd a skilful old married feller of twenty years'
standing pipe 'my wife' in a more used note than 'a did," said Jacob
Smallbury. "It might have been a little more true to nater if't had
been spoke a little chillier, but that wasn't to be expected just
now."

"That improvement will come wi' time," said Jan, twirling his eye.

Then Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled (for she never laughed readily
now), and their friends turned to go.

"Yes; I suppose that's the size o't," said Joseph Poorgrass with a
cheerful sigh as they moved away; "and I wish him joy o' her; though
I were once or twice upon saying to-day with holy Hosea, in my
scripture manner, which is my second nature, 'Ephraim is joined to
idols: let him alone.' But since 'tis as 'tis, why, it might have
been worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly."