feeling into a graceful shape: but I have neither power
nor patience to learn such things. I want you for my
wife - so wildly that no other feeling can abide in me;
but I should not have spoken out had I not been led
to hope."
The valentine again! O that valentine!" she
said to herself, but not a word to him.
"If you can love me say so, Miss Everdene. If not
- don't say no!"
"Mr. Boldwood, it is painful to have to say I am
surprised, so that I don't know how to answer you with
propriety and respect - but am only just able to speak
out my feeling - I mean my meaning; that I am afraid
I can't marry you, much as I respect you. You are too
dignified for me to suit you, sir."
"But, Miss Everdene!"
"I - I didn't - I know I ought never to have dreamt
of sending that valentine - forgive me, sir - it was a
wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect
should have done. If you will only pardon my thought-
lessness, I promise never to - - "
"No, no, no. Don't say thoughtlessness! Make me
think it was something more - that it was a sort of
prophetic instinct - the beginning of a feeling that you
would like me. You torture me to say it was done in
thoughtlessness - I never thought of it in that light, and
I can't endure it. Ah! I wish I knew how to win you!
but that I can't do - I can only ask if I have already got
you. If I have not, and it is not true that you have
come unwittingly to me as I have to you, I can say no
more."
"I have not fallen in love with you, Mr. Boldwood -
certainly I must say that." She allowed a very small
smile to creep for the first time over her serious face in
saying this, and the white row of upper teeth, and keenly-
cut lips already noticed, suggested an idea of heartless-
ness, which was immediately contradicted by the pleasant
eyes.
"But you will just think - in kindness and conde-
scension think - if you cannot bear with me as a husband!
I fear I am too old for you, but believe me I will take
more care of you than would many a man of your own
age. I will protect and cherish you with all my strength
- I will indeed! You shall have no cares - be worried
by no household affairs, and live quite at ease, Miss
Everdene. The dairy superintendence shall be done by
a man - I can afford it will - you shall never have so
much as to look out of doors at haymaking time, or to
think of weather in the harvest. I rather cling; to the
chaise, because it is he same my poor father and mother
drove, but if you don't like it I will sell it, and you shall
have a pony-carriage of your own. I cannot say how
far above every other idea and object on earth you seem
to me - nobody knows - God only knows - how much
you are to me!"
Bathsheba's heart was young, and it swelled with
sympathy for the deep-natured man who spoke so
simply.
"Don't say it! don't! I cannot bear you to feel so
much, and me to feel nothing. And I am afraid they
will notice us, Mr. Boldwood. Will you let the matter
rest now? I cannot think collectedly. I did not know
you were going to say this to me. O, I am wicked to
have made you suffer so!" She was frightened as well
as agitated at his vehemence.
"Say then, that you don't absolutely refuse. Do not
quite refuse?"
"I can do nothing. I cannot answer."I may speak to you again on the
subject?"
"Yes."
"I may think of you?"
"Yes, I suppose you may think of me."
"And hope to obtain you?"
"No - do not hope! Let us go on."
"I will call upon you again to-morrow."
"No - please not. Give me time."
"Yes - I will give you any time." he said earnestly and
gratefully. "I am happier now."
"No - I beg you! Don't be happier if happiness
only comes from my agreeing. Be neutral, Mr. Bold-
wood! I must think."
"I will wait." he said.
And then she turned away. Boldwood dropped his
gaze to the ground, and stood long like a man who did not
know where he was. Realities then returned upon him
like the pain of a wound received in an excitement
which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on.
CHAPTER XX
PERPLEXITY - GRINDING THE SHEARS - A QUARREL
"HE is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I
can desire." Bathsheba mused.
Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or
the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here.
The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-
indulgence, and no generosity at all.
Bathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was
eventually able to look calmly at his offer. It was one
which many women of her own station in the neighbour-
hood, and not a few of higher rank, would have been
wild to accept and proud to publish. In every point of
view, ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable
that she, a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this
earnest, well-to-do, and respected man. He was close
to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his qualities
were even supererogatory. Had she felt, which she did
not, any wish whatever for the married state in the
abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him,
being a woman who frequently appealed to her under,
standing for deliverance from her whims. Boldwood as
a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she esteemed
and liked him, yet she did not want him. It appears
that ordinary men take wives because possession is not
possible without marriage, and that ordinary women
accept husbands because marriage is not possible with,
out possession; with totally differing aims the method is
the same on both sides. But the understood incentive
on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bath-
sheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house
was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to
wear off.
But a disquiet filled her which was somewhat to her
credit, for it would have affected few. Beyond the men-
tioned reasons with which she combated her objections,
she had a strong feeling that, having been the one who
began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the conse-
quences. Still the reluctance remained. She said in the
same breath that it would be ungenerous not to marry
Boldwood, and that she couldn't do it to save her life.
Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a delibera-
tive aspect. An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart
in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest
temerity with a manner of extreme discretion. Many of
her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they
always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational
assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones
which most frequently grew into deeds.
The next day to that of the declaration she found
Gabriel Oak at the bottom of her garden, grinding his
shears for the sheep-shearing. All the surrounding
cottages were more or less scenes of the same operation;
the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts
of the village as from an armury previous to a campaign.
Peace and war kiss each other at their hours of prepara-
tion - sickles, scythes, shears, and pruning-hooks, ranking
with swords, bayonets, and lances, in their common
necessity for point and edge.
Cainy Ball turned the handle of Gabriel's grindstone,
his head performing a melancholy see-saw up and down
with each turn of the wheel. Oak stood somewhat as
Eros is represented when in the act of sharpening his
arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his body
thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced side-
ways, with a critical compression of the lips and contrac-
tion of the eyelids to crown the attitude.
His mistress came up and looked upon them in
silence for a minute or two; then she said -
"Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare.
I'll turn the winch of the grindstone. I want to speak
to you, Gabriel.
Cain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle.
Gabriel had glanced up in intense surprise, quelled its
expression, and looked down again. Bathsheba turned
the winch, and Gabriel applied the shears.
The peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel
has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. It
is a sort of attenuated variety of Ixion's punishment,
and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of
heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to
settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere be-
tween the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt
the unpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen
turns.
"Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears?"
she said. "My head is in a'whirl, and I can't talk.
Gabriel turned. Bathsheba then began, with some
awkwardness, allowing her thoughts to stray occasion-
ally from her story to attend to the shears, which
required a little nicety in sharpening.
"I wanted to ask you if the men made any observa-
tions on my going behind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood
yesterday?"
"Yes, they did." said Gabriel. "You don't hold
the shears right, miss - I knew you wouldn't know the
way - hold like this."
He relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two
hands completely in his own (taking each as we some-
times slap a child's hand in teaching him to write),
grasped the shears with her. "Incline the edge so,"
he said.
Hands and shears were inclined to suit the words,
and held thus for a peculiarly long time by the in-
structor as he spoke.
"That will do." exclaimed Bathsheba. "Loose my
hands. I won't have them held! Turn the winch."
Gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his
handle, and the grinding went on.
"Did the men think it odd?" she said again.
"Odd was not the idea, miss."
"What did they say?"
"That Farmer Boldwood's name and your own
were likely to be flung over pulpit together before the
year was out."
"I thought so by the look of them! Why, there's
nothing in it. A more foolish remark was never made,
and I want you to contradict it! that's what I came for."
Gabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between
his moments of incredulity, relieved.
"They must have heard our conversation." she
continued.
"Well, then, Bathsheba!" said Oak, stopping the
handle, and gazing into her face with astonishment.
"Miss Everdene, you mean," she said, with dignity.
"I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of
marriage, I bain't going to tell a story and say he
didn't to please you. I have already tried to please
you too much for my own good!"
Bathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity.
She did not know whether to pity him for disappointed
love of her, or to be angry with him for having got
over it - his tone being ambiguous.
"I said I wanted you just to mention that it was
not true I was going to be married to him." she mur-
mured, with a slight decline in her assurance.
"I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene.
And I could likewise give an opinion to 'ee on what
you have done."
"I daresay. But I don't want your opinion."I suppose not." said Gabriel
bitterly, and going on
with his turning, his words rising and falling in a
regular swell and cadence as he stooped or rose with
the winch, which directed them, according to his
position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally
along the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon
the ground.
With Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act;
but, as does not always happen, time gained was
prudence insured. It must be added, however, that
time was very seldom gained. At this period the
single opinion in the parish on herself and her doings
that she valued as sounder than her own was Gabriel
Oak's. And the outspoken honesty of his character
was such- that on any subject even that of her love
for, or marriage with, another man, the same disinter-
estedness of opinion might be calculated on, and be
had for the asking. Thoroughly convinced of the
impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained
him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's
most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most
venial sin. Knowing he would reply truly, she asked
the question, painful as she must have known the sub-
ject would be. Such is the selfishness of some charm-
ing women. Perhaps it was some excuse for her thus
torturing honesty to her own advantage, that she had
absolutely no other sound judgment within easy reach.
"Well, what is your opinion of my conduct." she
said, quietly.
"That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek,
and comely woman."
In an instant Bathsheba's face coloured with the
angry crimson of a danby sunset. But she forbore
to utter this feeling, and the reticence of her tongue
only made the loquacity of her face the more notice-
able.
The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake.
"Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my repri-
manding you, for I know it is rudeness; but I thought
it would do good."
She instantly replied sarcastically -
"On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that
I see in your abuse the praise of discerning people!"
"I am glad you don't mind it, for I said it honestly
and with every serious meaning."
"I see. But, unfortunately, when you try not to
speak in jest you are amusing - just as when you wish
to avoid seriousness you sometimes say a sensible word
It was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably
lost her temper, and on that account Gabriel had
never in his life kept his own better. He said nothing.
She then broke out -
"I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my
unworthiness lies? In my not marrying you, perhaps!
"Not by any means." said Gabriel quietly. "I have
long given up thinking of that matter."Or wishing it, I suppose." she
said; and it was
apparent that she expected an unhesitating denial of
this supposition.
Whatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words -
"Or wishing it either."
A woman may be treated with a bitterness which
is sweet to her, and with a rudeness which is not
offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted to an
indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel pro-
tested that he was loving her at the same time; the
impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if
it stings and anathematizes there is a triumph in the
humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. This was
what she had been expecting, and what she had not
got. To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in
the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion
was exasperating. He had not finished, either. He
continued in a more agitated voice: -
"My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are
greatly to blame for playing pranks upon a man like
Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime. Leading on a
man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action.
And even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined
towards him, you might have let him find it out in
some way of true loving-kindness, and not by sending
him a valentine's letter."
Bathsheba laid down the shears.
"I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private
Conduct!" she exclaimed. "Nor will I for a minute.
So you'll please leave the farm at the end of the week!"
It may have been a peculiarity - at any rate it was
a fact - that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion
of an earthly sort her lower lip trembled: when by a
refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her
nether lip quivered now.
"Very well, so I will." said Gabriel calmly. He had
been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained
him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he
could not break. "I should be even better pleased to
go at once." he added.
"Go at once then, in Heaven's name!" said she,her
eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them.
"Don't let me see your face any more."
"Very well, Miss Everdene - so it shall be."
And he took his shears and went away from her in
placid dignity, as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh.
CHAPTER XXI
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 were 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
With Bathsheba it was a moment when thought was
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 enought - 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 belonged 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, care-
fully 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.
"O, 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, brighten-
ing, "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 or in consternation, to get some-
body 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.
"O, 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.
"O, 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 unless you request en
to come civilly and in a proper manner, as becomes any
"woman 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 Small-
bury, 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.
"O, 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: -
"O, 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 de-
light 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 XXII
THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS
MEN thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as
often by not making the most of good spirits when they
have them as by lacking good spirits when they are
indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the first time since
his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in
thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent -
conditions which, powerless without an opportunity as
an opportunity without them is barren, would have
given him a sure lift upwards when the favourable-con-
junction should have occurred. But this incurable
loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time
ruinously. The spring tides were going by without
floating him off, and the neap might soon come which
could not.
It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing
season culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest
pasture, being all health and colour. Every green was
young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen
with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present
in the country, and the devil had gone with the world
to town. Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts
like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the
odd cuckoo-pint, - like an apoplectic saint in a niche
of malachite, - snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort,
approximating to human flesh, the enchanter's night-
shade, and the black-petaled doleful-bells, were among
the quainter objects of the vegetable world in and about
Weatherbury at this teeming time; and of the animal,
the metamorphosed figures of Mr. Jan Coggan, the
master-shearer; the second and third shearers, who
travelled in the exercise of their calling, and do not re-
quire definition by name; Henery Fray the fourth
shearer, Susan Tall's husband the fifth, Joseph Poorgrass
the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and
Gabriel Oak as general supervisor. None of these were
clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing
to have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean
between a high and low caste Hindoo. An angularity
of lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general,
proclaimed that serious work was the order of the day.
They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce
the Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a
church with transepts. It not only emulated the form
of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with
it in antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one
of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be
aware; no trace of such surroundings remained. The
vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon
laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were spanned
by heavy-pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut,
whose very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not
apparent in erections where more ornament has been
attempted. The dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced
and tied in by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was
far nobler in design, because more wealthy in material,
than nine-tenths of those in our modern churches.
Along each side wall was a range of striding buttresses,
throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them,
which were perforated by lancet openings, combining
in their proportions the precise requirements both of
beauty and ventilation.
One could say about this barn, what could hardly
be said of either the church or the castle, akin to it in
age and style, that the purpose which had dictated its
original erection was the same with that to which it
was still applied. Unlike and superior to either of
those two typical remnants of mediaevalism, the old
barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutila-
tion at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of
the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the
modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile,
the eye regarded its present usage, the mind-dwelt upon
its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional
continuity throughout - a feeling almost of gratitude,
and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea
which had heaped it up. The fact that four centuries
had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake,
inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to
any reaction that had battered it down, invested this
simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a
grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to
disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers. For
once medievalism and modernism had a common stand-
point. The lanccolate windows, the time-eaten arch-
stones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the
misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded
fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. The defence
and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study,
a religion, and a desire.
To-day the large side doors were thrown open
towards the sun to admit a bountiful light to the
immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was
the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick
oak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails
for many generations, till it had grown as slippery and
as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an Elizabethan
mansion. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in
upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished
shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a
thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man.
Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening
its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered
like the hot landscape outside.
This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred
years ago did not produce that marked contrast between
ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast
of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was
immutable. The citizen's Then is the rustic's Now.
In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times;
in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or
four score years were included in the mere present,
and nothing less than a century set a mark on its
face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of
a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth
of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of
a single phrase. In these Wessex nooks the busy out-
sider's ancient times are only old; his old times are still
new; his present is futurity.
So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the
shearers were in harmony with the barn.
The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesi-
astically to nave and chancel extremities, were fenced
off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a crowd
within these two enclosures; and in one angle a catching-
pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were
continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without
loss of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny
shade, were the three women, Maryann Money, and
Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the
fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for
tying them round. They were indifferently well assisted
by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from
October to April had passed, made himself useful upon
any of the bordering farmsteads.
"Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the
men to see that there was no cutting or wounding
through carelessness, and that the animals were shorn
close. Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her
bright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously,
half his time being spent in attending to the others
and selecting the sheep for them. At the present
moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of
mild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner,
and cut pieces of bread and cheese.
Bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution
there, and lecturing one of the younger operators who
had allowed his last finished sheep to go off among
the flock without re-stamping it with her initials, came
again to Gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to drag
a frightened ewe to his shear-station, flinging it over
upon its back with a dexterous twist of the arm
He lopped off the tresses about its head, and opened
up the neck and collar, his mistress quietly looking
on:
"She blushes at the insult." murmured Bathsheba,
watching the pink flush which arose and overspread
the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were
left bare by the clicking shears - a flush which was
enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries,
and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to
any woman in the world.
Poor Gabriel's soul was fed with a luxury of content
by having her over him, her eyes critically regarding
his skilful shears, which apparently were going to gather
up a piece of the flesh at every close, and yet never did
so. Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in that he was
not over happy. He had no wish to converse with her:
that his bright lady and himself formed one group,
exclusively their own, and containing no others in the
world, was enough.
So the chatter was all on her side. There is a
loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's;
and there is a silence which says much: that was
Gabriel's. Full of this dim and temperate bliss, he
went on to fling the ewe over upon her other side,
covering her head with his knee, gradually running
the shears line after line round her dewlap; thence
about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail.
"Well done, and done quickly!" said Bathsheba,
looking at her watch as the last snip resounded.
"How long, miss?" said Gabriel, wiping his brow.
"Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took
the first lock from its forehead. It is the first time that
I have ever seen one done in less than half an hour."
The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece - how
perfectly like Aphrodite rising from the foam should
have been seen to be realized - looking startled and
shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor
in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion visible
being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed,
was white as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the
minutest kind.
"Cain Ball!"
"Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!"
Cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot. "B. E." is
newly stamped upon the shorn skin, and away the simple
dam leaps, panting, over the board into the shirtless
flock outside. Then up comes Maryann; throws the
loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up,
and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half
pounds of unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoy-
ment of persons unknown and far away, who will,
however, never experience the superlative comfort
derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure
- before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a
living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out
- rendering it just now as superior to anything woollen
as cream is superior to milk-and-water.
But heartless circumstance could not leave entire
Gabriel's happiness of this morning. The rams, old
ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly undergone their
stripping, and the men were proceeding with the shear-
lings and hogs, when Oak's belief that she was going to
stand pleasantly by and time him through another
performance was painfully interrupted by Farmer Bold-
wood's appearance in the extremest corner of the barn.
Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there