CHAPTER XIII


SORTES SANCTORUM -- THE VALENTINE


IT was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth
of February.  Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a
better companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her.
The mouldy pile was dreary in winter-time before the candles
were lighted and the shutters closed; the atmosphere of the
place seemed as old as the walls; every nook behind the
furniture had a temperature of its own, for the fire was not
kindled in this part of the house early in the day; and
Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals,
looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped
floor before night threw a shade over its less prominent
angles and hid the unpleasantness.  Liddy, like a little
brook, though shallow, was always rippling; her presence had
not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to
exercise it.

On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather.
Liddy looking at it said, --

"Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by
means of the Bible and key?"

"Don't be so foolish, Liddy.  As if such things could be."

"Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same."

"Nonsense, child."

"And it makes your heart beat fearful.  Some believe in it;
some don't; I do."

"Very well, let's try it," said Bathsheba, bounding from her
seat with that total disregard of consistency which can be
indulged in towards a dependent, and entering into the
spirit of divination at once.  "Go and get the front door
key."

Liddy fetched it.  "I wish it wasn't Sunday," she said, on
returning." Perhaps 'tis wrong."

"What's right week days is right Sundays," replied her
mistress in a tone which was a proof in itself.

The book was opened -- the leaves, drab with age, being
quite worn away at much-read verses by the forefingers of
unpractised readers in former days, where they were moved
along under the line as an aid to the vision.  The special
verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by Bathsheba, and
the sublime words met her eye.  They slightly thrilled and
abashed her.  It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in
the concrete.  Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in
her intention, and placed the key on the book.  A rusty
patch immediately upon the verse, caused by previous
pressure of an iron substance thereon, told that this was
not the first time the old volume had been used for the
purpose.

"Now keep steady, and be silent," said Bathsheba.

The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba
blushed guiltily.

"Who did you try?" said Liddy curiously.

"I shall not tell you."

"Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this
morning, miss?" Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark
the track her thoughts had taken.

"No, indeed," said Bathsheba, with serene indifference.

"His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss."

"I know it."

"And you did not see his goings on!"

"Certainly I did not, I tell you."

Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips
decisively.

This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting.
"What did he do?" Bathsheba said perforce.

"Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service.

"Why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a
nettled look.  "I didn't ask him to.

"Oh no.  But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd
he didn't.  There, 'tis like him.  Rich and gentlemanly,
what does he care?"

Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that
she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's
comprehension, rather than that she had nothing to say.

"Dear me -- I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought
yesterday," she exclaimed at length.

"Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy.  "Farmer Boldwood?"

It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that
just at this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than
the right.

"Well, no.  It is only for little Teddy Coggan.  I have
promised him something, and this will be a pretty surprise
for him.  Liddy, you may as well bring me my desk and I'll
direct it at once."

Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and
embossed design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the
previous market-day at the chief stationer's in
Casterbridge.  In the centre was a small oval enclosure;
this was left blank, that the sender might insert tender
words more appropriate to the special occasion than any
generalities by a printer could possibly be.

"Here's a place for writing," said Bathsheba.  "What shall I
put?"

"Something of this sort, I should think', returned Liddy
promptly: --

"The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Carnation's sweet,
And so are you."

"Yes, that shall be it.  It just suits itself to a chubby-
faced child like him," said Bathsheba.  She inserted the
words in a small though legible handwriting; enclosed the
sheet in an envelope, and dipped her pen for the direction.

"What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood,
and how he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy,
lifting her eyebrows, and indulging in an awful mirth on the
verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social
magnitude of the man contemplated.

Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length.
Boldwood's had begun to be a troublesome image -- a species
of Daniel in her kingdom who persisted in kneeling eastward
when reason and common sense said that he might just as well
follow suit with the rest, and afford her the official
glance of admiration which cost nothing at all.  She was far
from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity.
Still, it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and
valuable man in the parish should withhold his eyes, and
that a girl like Liddy should talk about it.  So Liddy's
idea was at first rather harassing than piquant.

"No, I won't do that.  He wouldn't see any humour in it."

"He'd worry to death," said the persistent Liddy.

"Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy,"
remarked her mistress.  "He's rather a naughty child
sometimes."

"Yes -- that he is."

"Let's toss as men do," said Bathsheba, idly.  "Now then,
head, Boldwood; tail, Teddy.  No, we won't toss money on a
Sunday that would be tempting the devil indeed."

"Toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that,
miss."

"Very well.  Open, Boldwood -- shut, Teddy.  No; it's more
likely to fall open.  Open, Teddy -- shut, Boldwood."

The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut.

Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and
with off-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood.

"Now light a candle, Liddy.  Which seal shall we use?
Here's a unicorn's head -- there's nothing in that.  What's
this? -- two doves -- no.  It ought to be something
extraordinary, ought it not, Liddy?  Here's one with a motto
-- I remember it is some funny one, but I can't read it.
We'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have another."

A large red seal was duly affixed.  Bathsheba looked closely
at the hot wax to discover the words.

"Capital!" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter
frolicsomely.  "'Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and
clerke too."

Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read --

"MARRY ME."

The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in
Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to
Weatherbury again in the morning.

So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done.  Of love
as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love
subjectively she knew nothing.


CHAPTER XIV


EFFECT OF THE LETTER -- SUNRISE


AT dusk, on the evening of St. Valentine's Day, Bold-wood
sat down to supper as usual, by a beaming fire of aged logs.
Upon the mantel-shelf before him was a time-piece,
surmounted by a spread eagle, and upon the eagle's wings was
the letter Bathsheba had sent.  Here the bachelor's gaze was
continually fastening itself, till the large red seal became
as a blot of blood on the retina of his eye; and as he ate
and drank he still read in fancy the words thereon, although
they were too remote for his sight --

"MARRY ME."

The pert injunction was like those crystal substances which,
colourless themselves, assume the tone of objects about
them.  Here, in the quiet of Boldwood's parlour, where
everything that was not grave was extraneous, and where the
atmosphere was that of a Puritan Sunday lasting all the
week, the letter and its dictum changed their tenor from the
thoughtlessness of their origin to a deep solemnity, imbibed
from their accessories now.

Since the receipt of the missive in the morning, Boldwood
had felt the symmetry of his existence to be slowly getting
distorted in the direction of an ideal passion.  The
disturbance was as the first floating weed to Columbus --
the contemptibly little suggesting possibilities of the
infinitely great.

The letter must have had an origin and a motive.  That the
latter was of the smallest magnitude compatible with its
existence at all, Boldwood, of course, did not know.  And
such an explanation did not strike him as a possibility
even.  It is foreign to a mystified condition of mind to
realize of the mystifier that the processes of approving a
course suggested by circumstance, and of striking out a
course from inner impulse, would look the same in the
result.  The vast difference between starting a train of
events, and directing into a particular groove a series
already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded
by the issue.

When Boldwood went to bed he placed the valentine in the
corner of the looking-glass.  He was conscious of its
presence, even when his back was turned upon it.  It was the
first time in Boldwood's life that such an event had
occurred.  The same fascination that caused him to think it
an act which had a deliberate motive prevented him from
regarding it as an impertinence.  He looked again at the
direction.  The mysterious influences of night invested the
writing with the presence of the unknown writer.  Somebody's
some WOMAN'S -- hand had travelled softly over the paper
bearing his name; her unrevealed eyes had watched every
curve as she formed it; her brain had seen him in
imagination the while.  Why should she have imagined him?
Her mouth -- were the lips red or pale, plump or creased? --
had curved itself to a certain expression as the pen went on
-- the corners had moved with all their natural
tremulousness:  what had been the expression?

The vision of the woman writing, as a supplement to the
words written, had no individuality.  She was a misty shape,
and well she might be, considering that her original was at
that moment sound asleep and oblivious of all love and
letter-writing under the sky.  Whenever Boldwood dozed she
took a form, and comparatively ceased to be a vision:  when
he awoke there was the letter justifying the dream.

The moon shone to-night, and its light was not of a
customary kind.  His window admitted only a reflection of
its rays, and the pale sheen had that reversed direction
which snow gives, coming upward and lighting up his ceiling
in an unnatural way, casting shadows in strange places, and
putting lights where shadows had used to be.

The substance of the epistle had occupied him but little in
comparison with the fact of its arrival.  He suddenly
wondered if anything more might be found in the envelope
than what he had withdrawn.  He jumped out of bed in the
weird light, took the letter, pulled out the flimsy sheet,
shook the envelope -- searched it.  Nothing more was there.
Boldwood looked, as he had a hundred times the preceding
day, at the insistent red seal:  "Marry me," he said aloud.

The solemn and reserved yeoman again closed the letter, and
stuck it in the frame of the glass.  In doing so he caught
sight of his reflected features, wan in expression, and
insubstantial in form.  He saw how closely compressed was
his mouth, and that his eyes were wide-spread and vacant.
Feeling uneasy and dissatisfied with himself for this
nervous excitability, he returned to bed.

Then the dawn drew on.  The full power of the clear heaven
was not equal to that of a cloudy sky at noon, when Boldwood
arose and dressed himself.  He descended the stairs and went
out towards the gate of a field to the east, leaning over
which he paused and looked around.

It was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the
year, and the sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to
the northward, and murky to the east, where, over the snowy
down or ewe-lease on Weatherbury Upper Farm, and apparently
resting upon the ridge, the only half of the sun yet visible
burnt rayless, like a red and flameless fire shining over a
white hearthstone.  The whole effect resembled a sunset as
childhood resembles age.

In other directions, the fields and sky were so much of one
colour by the snow, that it was difficult in a hasty glance
to tell whereabouts the horizon occurred; and in general
there was here, too, that before-mentioned preternatural
inversion of light and shade which attends the prospect when
the garish brightness commonly in the sky is found on the
earth, and the shades of earth are in the sky.  Over the
west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow,
like tarnished brass.

Boldwood was listlessly noting how the frost had hardened
and glazed the surface of the snow, till it shone in the red
eastern light with the polish of marble; how, in some
portions of the slope, withered grass-bents, encased in
icicles, bristled through the smooth wan coverlet in the
twisted and curved shapes of old Venetian glass; and how the
footprints of a few birds, which had hopped over the snow
whilst it lay in the state of a soft fleece, were now frozen
to a short permanency.  A half-muffled noise of light wheels
interrupted him.  Boldwood turned back into the road.  It
was the mail-cart -- a crazy, two-wheeled vehicle, hardly
heavy enough to resist a puff of wind.  The driver held out
a letter.  Boldwood seized it and opened it, expecting
another anonymous one -- so greatly are people's ideas of
probability a mere sense that precedent will repeat itself.

"I don't think it is for you, sir," said the man, when he
saw Boldwood's action.  "Though there is no name I think it
is for your shepherd."

Boldwood looked then at the address --


To the New Shepherd,

Weatherbury Farm,

Near Casterbridge.


"Oh -- what a mistake! -- it is not mine.  Nor is it for my
shepherd.  It is for Miss Everdene's. "You had better take
it on to him -- Gabriel Oak -- and say I opened it in
mistake."

At this moment, on the ridge, up against the blazing sky, a
figure was visible, like the black snuff in the midst of a
candle-flame.  Then it moved and began to bustle about
vigorously from place to place, carrying square skeleton
masses, which were riddled by the same rays.  A small figure
on all fours followed behind.  The tall form was that of
Gabriel Oak; the small one that of George; the articles in
course of transit were hurdles.

"Wait," said Boldwood. "That's the man on the hill.  I'll
take the letter to him myself."

To Boldwood it was now no longer merely a letter to I
another man.  It was an opportunity.  Exhibiting a face
pregnant with intention, he entered the snowy field.

Gabriel, at that minute, descended the hill towards the
right.  The glow stretched down in this direction now, and
touched the distant roof of Warren's Malthouse -- whither
the shepherd was apparently bent:  Boldwood followed at a
distance.


CHAPTER XV


A MORNING MEETING -- THE LETTER AGAIN


THE scarlet and orange light outside the malthouse did not
penetrate to its interior, which was, as usual, lighted by a
rival glow of similar hue, radiating from the hearth.

The maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a
few hours, was now sitting beside a three-legged table,
breakfasting of bread and bacon.  This was eaten on the
plateless system, which is performed by placing a slice of
bread upon the table, the meat flat upon the bread, a
mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt upon the
whole, then cutting them vertically downwards with a large
pocket-knife till wood is reached, when the severed lamp is
impaled on the knife, elevated, and sent the proper way of
food.

The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly
diminish his powers as a mill.  He had been without them for
so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a
defect than hard gums an acquisition.  Indeed, he seemed to
approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a
straight line -- less directly as he got nearer, till it was
doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.

In the ashpit was a heap of potatoes roasting, and a boiling
pipkin of charred bread, called "coffee." for the benefit of
whomsoever should call, for Warren's was a sort of
clubhouse, used as an alternative to the inn.

"I say, says I, we get a fine day, and then down comes a
snapper at night," was a remark now suddenly heard spreading
into the malthouse from the door, which had been opened the
previous moment.  The form of Henery Fray advanced to the
fire, stamping the snow from his boots when about half-way
there.  The speech and entry had not seemed to be at all an
abrupt beginning to the maltster, introductory matter being
often omitted in this neighbourhood, both from word and
deed, and the maltster having the same latitude allowed him,
did not hurry to reply.  He picked up a fragment of cheese,
by pecking upon it with his knife, as a butcher picks up
skewers.

Henery appeared in a drab kerseymere great-coat, buttoned
over his smock-frock, the white skirts of the latter being
visible to the distance of about a foot below the coat-
tails, which, when you got used to the style of dress,
looked natural enough, and even ornamental -- it certainly
was comfortable.

Matthew Moon, Joseph Poorgrass, and other carters and
waggoners followed at his heels, with great lanterns
dangling from their hands, which showed that they had just
come from the cart-horse stables, where they had been busily
engaged since four o'clock that morning.

"And how is she getting on without a baily?" the maltster
inquired.  Henery shook his head, and smiled one of the
bitter smiles, dragging all the flesh of his forehead into a
corrugated heap in the centre.

"She'll rue it -- surely, surely!" he said "Benjy Pennyways
were not a true man or an honest baily -- as big a betrayer
as Judas Iscariot himself.  But to think she can carr' on
alone!" He allowed his head to swing laterally three or four
times in silence.  "Never in all my creeping up -- never!"

This was recognized by all as the conclusion of some gloomy
speech which had been expressed in thought alone during the
shake of the head; Henery meanwhile retained several marks
of despair upon his face, to imply that they would be
required for use again directly he should go on speaking.

"All will be ruined, and ourselves too, or there's no meat
in gentlemen's houses!" said Mark Clark.

"A headstrong maid, that's what she is -- and won't listen
to no advice at all.  Pride and vanity have ruined many a
cobbler's dog.  Dear, dear, when I think o' it, I sorrows
like a man in travel!"

"True, Henery, you do, I've heard ye," said Joseph Poorgrass
in a voice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn
smile of misery.

"'Twould do a martel man no harm to have what's under her
bonnet," said Billy Smallbury, who had just entered, bearing
his one tooth before him.  "She can spaik real language, and
must have some sense somewhere.  Do ye foller me?"

"I do, I do; but no baily -- I deserved that place," wailed
Henery, signifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at
visions of a high destiny apparently visible to him on Billy
Smallbury's smock-frock.  "There, 'twas to be, I suppose.
Your lot is your lot, and Scripture is nothing; for if you
do good you don't get rewarded according to your works, but
be cheated in some mean way out of your recompense."

"No, no; I don't agree with'ee there," said Mark Clark.
God's a perfect gentleman in that respect."

"Good works good pay, so to speak it," attested Joseph
Poorgrass.

A short pause ensued, and as a sort of ENTR'ACTE Henery
turned and blew out the lanterns, which the increase of
daylight rendered no longer necessary even in the malthouse,
with its one pane of glass.

"I wonder what a farmer-woman can want with a harpsichord,
dulcimer, pianner, or whatever 'tis they d'call it?" said
the maltster.  "Liddy saith she've a new one."

"Got a pianner?"

"Ay.  Seems her old uncle's things were not good enough for
her.  She've bought all but everything new.  There's heavy
chairs for the stout, weak and wiry ones for the slender;
great watches, getting on to the size of clocks, to stand
upon the chimbley-piece."

Pictures, for the most part wonderful frames."

"And long horse-hair settles for the drunk, with horse-hair
pillows at each end," said Mr. Clark.  "Likewise looking-
glasses for the pretty, and lying books for the wicked."

A firm loud tread was now heard stamping outside; the door
was opened about six inches, and somebody on the other side
exclaimed --

"Neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?"

Ay, sure, shepherd," said the conclave.

The door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled
from top to bottom with the blow.  Mr. Oak appeared in the
entry with a steaming face, hay-bands wound about his ankles
to keep out the snow, a leather strap round his waist
outside the smock-frock, and looking altogether an epitome
of the world's health and vigour.  Four lambs hung in
various embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the
dog George, whom Gabriel had contrived to fetch from
Norcombe, stalked solemnly behind.

"Well, Shepherd Oak, and how's lambing this year, if I mid
say it?" inquired Joseph Poorgrass.

"Terrible trying," said Oak.  "I've been wet through twice
a-day, either in snow or rain, this last fortnight.  Cainy
and I haven't tined our eyes to-night."

"A good few twins, too, I hear?"

"Too many by half.  Yes; 'tis a very queer lambing this
year.  We shan't have done by Lady Day."

"And last year 'twer all over by Sexajessamine Sunday,"
Joseph remarked.

"Bring on the rest Cain," said Gabriel, " and then run back
to the ewes.  I'll follow you soon."

Cainy Ball -- a cheery-faced young lad, with a small
circular orifice by way of mouth, advanced and deposited two
others, and retired as he was bidden.  Oak lowered the lambs
from their unnatural elevation, wrapped them in hay, and
placed them round the fire.

"We've no lambing-hut here, as I used to have at Norcombe,"
said Gabriel, " and 'tis such a plague to bring the weakly
ones to a house.  If 'twasn't for your place here, malter, I
don't know what I should do! this keen weather.  And how is
it with you to-day, malter?"

"Oh, neither sick nor sorry, shepherd; but no younger."

"Ay -- I understand."

"Sit down, Shepherd Oak," continued the ancient man of malt.
"And how was the old place at Norcombe, when ye went for
your dog?  I should like to see the old familiar spot; but
faith, I shouldn't know a soul there now."

"I suppose you wouldn't.  'Tis altered very much."

"Is it true that Dicky Hill's wooden cider-house is pulled
down?"

"Oh yes -- years ago, and Dicky's cottage just above it."

"Well, to be sure!"

"Yes; and Tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted that used to
bear two hogsheads of cider; and no help from other trees."

"Rooted? -- you don't say it!  Ah! stirring times we live in
-- stirring times."

"And you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle
of the place?  That's turned into a solid iron pump with a
large stone trough, and all complete."

"Dear, dear -- how the face of nations alter, and what we
live to see nowadays!  Yes -- and 'tis the same here.
They've been talking but now of the mis'ess's strange
doings."

"What have you been saying about her?" inquired Oak, sharply
turning to the rest, and getting very warm.

"These middle-aged men have been pulling her over the coals
for pride and vanity," said Mark Clark; "but I say, let her
have rope enough.  Bless her pretty face shouldn't I like to
do so -- upon her cherry lips!" The gallant Mark Clark here
made a peculiar and well known sound with his own.

"Mark," said Gabriel, sternly, "now you mind this! none of
that dalliance-talk -- that smack-and-coddle style of yours
-- about Miss Everdene.  I don't allow it.  Do you hear?"

"With all my heart, as I've got no chance," replied Mr.
Clark, cordially.

"I suppose you've been speaking against her?" said Oak,
turning to Joseph Poorgrass with a very grim look.

"No, no -- not a word I -- 'tis a real joyful thing that
she's no worse, that's what I say," said Joseph, trembling
and blushing with terror.  "Matthew just said ----"

"Matthew Moon, what have you been saying?" asked Oak.

"I?  Why ye know I wouldn't harm a worm -- no, not one
underground worm?" said Matthew Moon, looking very uneasy.

"Well, somebody has -- and look here, neighbours," Gabriel,
though one of the quietest and most gentle men on earth,
rose to the occasion, with martial promptness and vigour.
"That's my fist." Here he placed his fist, rather smaller in
size than a common loaf, in the mathematical centre of the
maltster's little table, and with it gave a bump or two
thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly took
in the idea of fistiness before he went further.  "Now --
the first man in the parish that I hear prophesying bad of
our mistress, why" (here the fist was raised and let fall as
Thor might have done with his hammer in assaying it) --
"he'll smell and taste that -- or I'm a Dutchman."

All earnestly expressed by their features that their minds
did not wander to Holland for a moment on account of this
statement, but were deploring the difference which gave rise
to the figure; and Mark Clark cried "Hear, hear; just what I
should ha' said." The dog George looked up at the same time
after the shepherd's menace, and though he understood
English but imperfectly, began to growl.

"Now, don't ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down!" said
Henery, with a deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of
the kind in Christianity.

"We hear that ye be a extraordinary good and clever man,
shepherd," said Joseph Poorgrass with considerable anxiety
from behind the maltster's bedstead whither he had retired
for safety.  "'Tis a great thing to be clever, I'm sure," he
added, making movements associated with states of mind
rather than body; "we wish we were, don't we, neighbours?"

"Ay, that we do, sure," said Matthew Moon, with a small
anxious laugh towards Oak, to show how very friendly
disposed he was likewise.

"Who's been telling you I'm clever?" said Oak.

"'Tis blowed about from pillar to post quite common," said
Matthew.  "We hear that ye can tell the time as well by the
stars as we can by the sun and moon, shepherd."

"Yes, I can do a little that way," said Gabriel, as a man of
medium sentiments on the subject.

And that ye can make sun-dials and prent folks' names upon
their waggons almost like copper-plate, with beautiful
flourishes, and great long tails.  A excellent fine thing
for ye to be such a clever man, shepherd.  Joseph Poorgrass
used to prent to Farmer James Everdene's waggons before you
came, and 'a could never mind which way to turn the J's and
E's -- could ye, Joseph?" Joseph shook his head to express
how absolute was the fact that he couldn't.  "And so you
used to do 'em the wrong way, like this, didn't ye, Joseph?"
Matthew marked on the dusty floor with his whip-handle.

[the word J A M E S appears here with the "J" and "E"
printed as mirror images]

"And how Farmer James would cuss, and call thee a fool,
wouldn't he, Joseph, when 'a seed his name looking so
inside-out-like?" continued Matthew Moon with feeling.

"Ay -- 'a would," said Joseph, meekly.  "But, you see, I
wasn't so much to blame, for them J's and E's be such trying
sons o' witches for the memory to mind whether they face
backward or forward; and I always had such a forgetful
memory, too."

"'Tis a very bad afiction for ye, being such a man of
calamities in other ways."

"Well, 'tis; but a happy Providence ordered that it should
be no worse, and I feel my thanks.  As to shepherd, there,
I'm sure mis'ess ought to have made ye her baily -- such a
fitting man for't as you be."

"I don't mind owning that I expected it," said Oak, frankly.
"Indeed, I hoped for the place.  At the same time, Miss
Everdene has a right to be her own baily if she choose --
and to keep me down to be a common shepherd only." Oak drew
a slow breath, looked sadly into the bright ashpit, and
seemed lost in thoughts not of the most hopeful hue.

The genial warmth of the fire now began to stimulate the
nearly lifeless lambs to bleat and move their limbs briskly
upon the hay, and to recognize for the first time the fact
that they were born.  Their noise increased to a chorus of
baas, upon which Oak pulled the milk-can from before the
fire, and taking a small tea-pot from the pocket of his
smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of the
helpless creatures which were not to be restored to their
dams how to drink from the spout -- a trick they acquired
with astonishing aptitude.

"And she don't even let ye have the skins of the dead lambs,
I hear?" resumed Joseph Poorgrass, his eyes lingering on the
operations of Oak with the necessary melancholy.

"I don't have them," said Gabriel.

"Ye be very badly used, shepherd," hazarded Joseph again, in
the hope of getting Oak as an ally in lamentation after all.
"I think she's took against ye -- that I do."

"Oh no -- not at all," replied Gabriel, hastily, and a sigh
escaped him, which the deprivation of lamb skins could
hardly have caused.

Before any further remark had been added a shade darkened
the door, and Boldwood entered the malthouse, bestowing upon
each a nod of a quality between friendliness and
condescension.

"Ah! Oak, I thought you were here," he said.  "I met the
mail-cart ten minutes ago, and a letter was put into my
hand, which I opened without reading the address.  I believe
it is yours.  You must excuse the accident please."

"Oh yes -- not a bit of difference, Mr. Boldwood -- not a
bit," said Gabriel, readily.  He had not a correspondent on
earth, nor was there a possible letter coming to him whose
contents the whole parish would not have been welcome to
persue.

Oak stepped aside, and read the following in an unknown
hand: --


"DEAR FRIEND, -- I do not know your name, but l think these
few lines will reach you, which I wrote to thank you for
your kindness to me the night I left Weatherbury in a
reckless way.  I also return the money I owe you, which you
will excuse my not keeping as a gift.  All has ended well,
and I am happy to say I am going to be married to the young
man who has courted me for some time -- Sergeant Troy, of
the 11th Dragoon Guards, now quartered in this town.  He
would, I know, object to my having received anything except
as a loan, being a man of great respectability and high
honour -- indeed, a nobleman by blood.

"I should be much obliged to you if you would keep the
contents of this letter a secret for the present, dear
friend.  We mean to surprise Weatherbury by coming there
soon as husband and wife, though l blush to state it to one
nearly a stranger.  The sergeant grew up in Weatherbury.
Thanking you again for your kindness,

I am, your sincere well-wisher,
FANNY ROBIN."

"Have you read it, Mr. Boldwood?" said Gabriel; "if not, you
had better do so.  I know you are interested in Fanny
Robin."

Boldwood read the letter and looked grieved.

"Fanny -- poor Fanny! the end she is so confident of has not
yet come, she should remember -- and may never come.  I see
she gives no address."

"What sort of a man is this Sergeant Troy?" said Gabriel.

"H'm -- I'm afraid not one to build much hope upon in such a
case as this," the farmer murmured, "though he's a clever
fellow, and up to everything.  A slight romance attaches to
him, too.  His mother was a French governess, and it seems
that a secret attachment existed between her and the late
Lord Severn.  She was married to a poor medical man, and
soon after an infant was horn; and while money was
forthcoming all went on well.  Unfortunately for her boy,
his best friends died; and he got then a situation as second
clerk at a lawyer's in Casterbridge.  He stayed there for
some time, and might have worked himself into a dignified
position of some sort had he not indulged in the wild freak
of enlisting.  I have much doubt if ever little Fanny will
surprise us in the way she mentions -- very much doubt. A
silly girl! -- silly girl!"

The door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running
Cainy Ball out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the
bell of a penny trumpet, from which he coughed with noisy
vigour and great distension of face.

"Now, Cain Ball," said Oak, sternly, "why will you run so
fast and lose your breath so?  I'm always telling you of it."

"Oh -- I -- a puff of mee breath -- went -- the -- wrong
way, please, Mister Oak, and made me cough -- hok -- hok!"

"Well -- what have you come for?"

"I've run to tell ye," said the junior shepherd, supporting
his exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost, "that you
must come directly.  Two more ewes have twinned -- that's
what's the matter, Shepherd Oak."

"Oh, that's it," said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the
present his thoughts on poor Fanny.  "You are a good boy to
run and tell me, Cain, and you shall smell a large plum
pudding some day as a treat.  But, before we go, Cainy,
bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot and have done with
'em."

Oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped
it into the pot, and imprintcd on the buttocks of the infant
sheep the initials of her he delighted to muse on -- "B.
E.," which signified to all the region round that henceforth
the lambs belonged to Farmer Bathsheba Everdene, and to no
one else.

"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off. Good morning, Mr.
Boldwood." The shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and
four small bodies he had himself brought, and vanished with
them in the direction of the lambing field hard by -- their
frames being now in a sleek and hopeful state, pleasantly
contrasting with their death's-door plight of half an hour
before.

Boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated,
and turned back.  He followed him again with a last resolve,
annihilating return.  On approaching the nook in which the
fold was constructed, the farmer drew out his pocket-book,
unfastened-it, and allowed it to lie open on his hand.  A
letter was revealed -- Bathsheba's.

"I was going to ask you, Oak," he said, with unreal
carelessness, "if you know whose writing this is?"

Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a
flushed face, "Miss Everdene's."

Oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her
name.  He now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new
thought. "The letter could of course be no other than
anonymous, or the inquiry would not have been necessary.

Boldwood mistook his confusion:  sensitive persons are
always ready with their "Is it I?" in preference to
objective reasoning.

"The question was perfectly fair," he returned -- and there
was something incongruous in the serious earnestness with
which he applied himself to an argument on a valentine.
"You know it is always expected that privy inquiries will be
made:  that's where the -- fun lies." If the word "fun" had
been "torture." it could not have been uttered with a more
constrained and restless countenance than was Boldwood's
then."

Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man
returned to his house to breakfast -- feeling twinges of
shame and regret at having so far exposed his mood by those
fevered questions to a stranger.  He again placed the letter
on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of the
circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriel's
information.


CHAPTER XVI


ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'


ON a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting
mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy
nave of a church called All Saints', in the distant barrack-
town before mentioned, at the end of a service without a
sermon.  They were about to disperse, when a smart footstep,
entering the porch and coming up the central passage,
arrested their attention.  The step echoed with a ring
unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs.  Everybody
looked.  A young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the
three chevrons of a sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the
aisle, with an embarrassment which was only the more marked
by the intense vigour of his step, and by the determination
upon his face to show none.  A slight flush had mounted his
cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these
women; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never
paused till he came close to the altar railing.  Here for a
moment he stood alone.

The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice,
perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-
space.  He whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to
the clerk, who in his turn whispered to an elderly woman,
apparently his wife, and they also went up the chancel
steps.

"'Tis a wedding!" murmured some of the women, brightening.
"Let's wait!"

The majority again sat down.

There was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the
young ones turned their heads.  From the interior face of
the west wall of the tower projected a little canopy with a
quarter-jack and small bell beneath it, the automaton being
driven by the same clock machinery that struck the large
bell in the tower.  Between the tower and the church was a
close screen, the door of which was kept shut during
services, hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight.  At
present, however, the door was open, and the egress of the
jack, the blows on the bell, and the mannikin's retreat into
the nook again, were visible to many, and audible through-
out the church.

The jack had struck half-past eleven.

"Where's the woman?" whispered some of the spectators.

The young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of
the old pillars around.  He faced the south-east, and was as
silent as he was still.

The silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes
went on, and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved.
The rattle of the quarter-jack again from its niche, its
blows for three-quarters, its fussy retreat, were almost
painfully abrupt, and caused many of the congregation to
start palpably.

"I wonder where the woman is!" a voice whispered again.

There began now that slight shifting of feet, that
artificial coughing among several, which betrays a nervous
suspense.  At length there was a titter.  But the soldier
never moved.  There he stood, his face to the south-east,
upright as a column, his cap in his hand.

The clock ticked on.  The women threw off their nervousness,
and titters and giggling became more frequent.  Then came a
dead silence.  Every one was waiting for the end.  Some
persons may have noticed how extraordinarily the striking of
quarters.  seems to quicken the flight of time.  It was
hardly credible that the jack had not got wrong with the
minutes when the rattle began again, the puppet emerged, and
the four quarters were struck fitfully as before: One could
almost be positive that there was a malicious leer upon the
hideous creature's face, and a mischievous delight in its
twitchings.  Then, followed the dull and remote resonance of
the twelve heavy strokes in the tower above.  The women were
impressed, and there was no giggle this time.

The clergyman glided into the vestry, and the clerk
vanished.  The sergeant had not yet turned; every woman in
the church was waiting to see his face, and he appeared to
know it.  At last he did turn, and stalked resolutely down
the nave, braving them all, with a compressed lip.  Two
bowed and toothless old almsmen then looked at each other
and chuckled, innocently enough; but the sound had a strange
weird effect in that place.

Opposite to the church was a paved square, around which
several overhanging wood buildings of old time cast a
picturesque shade.  The young man on leaving the door went
to cross the square, when, in the middle, he met a little
woman.  The expression of her face, which had been one of
intense anxiety, sank at the sight of his nearly to terror.

"Well?" he said, in a suppressed passion, fixedly looking at
her.

"Oh, Frank -- I made a mistake! -- I thought that church
with the spire was All Saints', and I was at the door at
half-past eleven to a minute as you said.  I waited till a
quarter to twelve, and found then that I was in All Souls'.
But I wasn't much frightened, for I thought it could be to-
morrow as well."

"You fool, for so fooling me!  But say no more."

"Shall it be to-morrow, Frank?" she asked blankly.

"To-morrow!" and he gave vent to a hoarse laugh.  "I don't
go through that experience again for some time, I warrant
you!"

"But after all," she expostulated in a trembling voice, "the
mistake was not such a terrible thing! Now, dear Frank, when
shall it be?"

"Ah, when?  God knows!" he said, with a light irony, and
turning from her walked rapidly away.


CHAPTER XVII


IN THE MARKET-PLACE


ON Saturday Boldwood was in Casterbridge market house as
usual, when the disturber of his dreams entered and became
visible to him.  Adam had awakened from his deep sleep, and
behold! there was Eve.  The farmer took courage, and for the
first time really looked at her.

Material causes and emotional effects are not to be arranged
in regular equation.  The result from capital employed in
the production of any movement of a mental nature is
sometimes as tremendous as the cause itself is absurdly
minute.  When women are in a freakish mood, their usual
intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect,
seemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that
Bathsheba was fated to be astonished today.

Boldwood looked at her -- not slily, critically, or
understandingly, but blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper
looks up at a passing train -- as something foreign to his
element, and but dimly understood.  To Boldwood women had
been remote phenomena rather than necessary complements --
comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and permanence,
that whether their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable,
and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic
as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his
duty to consider.

He saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and
profile, and the roundness of her chin and throat.  He saw
then the side of her eyelids, eyes, and lashes, and the
shape of her ear.  Next he noticed her figure, her skirt,
and the very soles of her shoes.

Boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was
right in his thought, for it seemed impossible that this
romance in the flesh, if so sweet as he imagined, could have
been going on long without creating a commotion of delight
among men, and provoking more inquiry than Bathsheba had
done, even though that was not a little.  To the best of his
judgement neither nature nor art could improve this perfect
one of an imperfect many.  His heart began to move within
him.  Boldwood, it must be remembered, though forty years of
age, had never before inspected a woman with the very centre
and force of his glance; they had struck upon all his senses
at wide angles.

Was she really beautiful?  He could not assure himself that
his opinion was true even now.  He furtively said to a
neighbour, "Is Miss Everdene considered handsome?"

"Oh yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she
came, if you remember.  A very handsome girl indeed."

A man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable
opinions on the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in
love with; a mere child's word on the point has the weight
of an R.A.'s.  Boldwood was satisfied now.

And this charming woman had in effect said to him, "Marry
me."  Why should she have done that strange thing?
Boldwood's blindness to the difference between approving of
what circumstances suggest, and originating what they do not
suggest, was well matched by Bathsheba's insensibility to
the possibly great issues of little beginnings.

She was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young
farmer, adding up accounts with him as indifferently as if
his face had been the pages of a ledger.  It was evident
that such a nature as his had no attraction for a woman of
Bathsheba's taste.  But Boldwood grew hot down to his hands
with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the first time the
threshold of "the injured lover's hell."  His first impulse
was to go and thrust himself between them.  This could be
done, but only in one way -- by asking to see a sample of
her corn.  Boldwood renounced the idea.  He could not make
the request; it was debasing loveliness to ask it to buy and
sell, and jarred with his conceptions of her.

All this time Bathsheba was conscious of having broken into
that dignified stronghold at last.  His eyes, she knew, were
following her everywhere.  This was a triumph; and had it
come naturally, such a triumph would have been the sweeter
to her for this piquing delay.  But it had been brought
about by misdirected ingenuity, and she valued it only as
she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.

Being a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects
wherein her heart was not involved, Bathsheba genuinely
repented that a freak which had owed its existence as much
to Liddy as to herself, should ever have been undertaken, to
disturb the placidity of a man she respected too highly to
deliberately tease.

She that day nearly formed the intention of begging his
pardon on the very next occasion of their meeting.  The
worst features of this arrangement were that, if he thought
she ridiculed him, an apology would increase the offence by
being disbelieved; and if he thought she wanted him to woo
her, it would read like additional evidence of her
forwardness.


CHAPTER XVIII


BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION -- REGRET


BOLDWOOD was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury
Farm, and his person was the nearest approach to aristocracy
that this remoter quarter of the parish could boast of.
Genteel strangers, whose god was their town, who might
happen to be compelled to linger about this nook for a day,
heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good
society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the
very least, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the
day.  They heard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were
re-animated to expectancy:  it was only Mr. Boldwood coming
home again.

His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables,
which are to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were
behind, their lower portions being lost amid bushes of
laurel.  Inside the blue door, open half-way down, were to
be seen at this time the backs and tails of half-a-dozen
warm and contented horses standing in their stalls; and as
thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay, in
shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the
midst of each.  Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in
from the outer light, the mouths of the same animals could
be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and
plumpness by quantities of oats and hay.  The restless and
shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a loose-box at the
end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was
occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the
stamp of a foot.

Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer
Boldwood himself.  This place was his almonry and cloister
in one: here, after looking to the feeding of his four-
footed dependants, the celibate would walk and meditate of
an evening till the moon's rays streamed in through the
cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the scene.

His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now
than in the crowd and bustle of the market-house.  In this
meditative walk his foot met the floor with heel and toe
simultaneously, and his fine reddish-fleshed face was bent
downwards just enough to render obscure the still mouth and
the well-rounded though rather prominent and broad chin.  A
few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the only
interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large
forehead.

The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his
was not an ordinary nature.  That stillness, which struck
casual observers more than anything else in his character
and habit, and seemed so precisely like the rest of
inanition, may have been the perfect balance of enormous
antagonistic forces -- positives and negatives in fine
adjustment.  His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity
at once.  If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him;
a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent.  Stagnant
or rapid, it was never slow.  He was always hit mortally, or
he was missed.

He had no light and careless touches in his constitution,
either for good or for evil.  Stern in the outlines of
action, mild in the details, he was serious throughout all.
He saw no absurd sides to the follies of life, and thus,
though not quite companionable in the eyes of merry men and
scoffers, and those to whom all things show life as a jest,
he was not intolerable to the earnest and those acquainted
with grief.  Being a man-who read all the dramas of life
seriously, if he failed to please when they were comedies,
there was no frivolous treatment to reproach him for when
they chanced to end tragically.

Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent
shape upon which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a
hotbed of tropic intensity.  Had she known Boldwood's moods,
her blame would have been fearful, and the stain upon her
heart ineradicable.  Moreover, had she known her present
power for good or evil over this man, she would have
trembled at her responsibility.  Luckily for her present,
unluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had
not yet told her what Boldwood was.  Nobody knew entirely;
for though it was possible to form guesses concerning his
wild capabilities from old floodmarks faintly visible, he
had never been seen at the high tides which caused them.

Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth
across the level fields.  Beyond the first enclosure was a
hedge, and on the other side of this a meadow belonging to
Bathsheba's farm.

It was now early spring -- the time of going to grass with
the sheep, when they have the first feed of the meadows,
before these are laid up for mowing.  The wind, which had
been blowing east for several weeks, had veered to the
southward, and the middle of spring had come abruptly --
almost without a beginning.  It was that period in the
vernal quarter when we map suppose the Dryads to be waking
for the season.  The vegetable world begins to move and
swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence
of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything
seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of
frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and
pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful
tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy
efforts.

Boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three
figures.  They were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak,
and Cainy Ball.

When Bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it
lighted him up as the moon lights up a great tower.  A man's
body is as the shell, or the tablet, of his soul, as he is
reserved or ingenuous, overflowing or self-contained.  There
was a change in Boldwood's exterior from its former
impassibleness; and his face showed that he was now living
outside his defences for the first time, and with a fearful
sense of exposure.  It is the usual experience of strong
natures when they love.

At last he arrived at a conclusion.  It was to go across and
inquire boldly of her.

The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many
years, without a channel of any kind for disposable emotion,
had worked its effect.  It has been observed more than once
that the causes of love are chiefly subjective, and Boldwood
was a living testimony to the truth of the proposition.  No
mother existed to absorb his devotion, no sister for his
tenderness, no idle ties for sense.  He became surcharged
with the compound, which was genuine lover's love.

He approached the gate of the meadow.  Beyond it the ground
was melodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low
bleating of the flock mingling with both.  Mistress and man
were engaged in the operation of making a lamb "take," which
is performed whenever an ewe has lost her own offspring, one
of the twins of another ewe being given her as a substitute.
Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and was tying the skin
over the body of the live lamb, in the customary manner,
whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four
hurdles, into which the Mother and foisted lamb were driven,
where they would remain till the old sheep conceived an
affection for the young one.

Bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manouvre, and
saw the farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a
willow tree in full bloom.  Gabriel, to whom her face was as
the uncertain glory of an April day, was ever regardful of
its faintest changes, and instantly discerned thereon the
mark of some influence from without, in the form of a keenly
self-conscious reddening.  He also turned and beheld
Boldwood.

At once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had
shown him, Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish
procedure begun by that means, and carried on since, he knew
not how.

Farmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they
were aware of his presence, and the perception was as too
much light turned upon his new sensibility.  He was still in
the road, and by moving on he hoped that neither would
recognize that he had originally intended to enter the
field.  He passed by with an utter and overwhelming
sensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt.  Perhaps in her
manner there were signs that she wished to see him --
perhaps not -- he could not read a woman.  The cabala of
this erotic philosophy seemed to consist of the subtlest
meanings expressed in misleading ways.  Every turn, look,
word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct from its
obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him
until now.

As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that
Farmer Boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness.
She collected the probabilities of the case, and concluded
that she was herself responsible for Boldwood's appearance
there.  It troubled her much to see what a great flame a
little wildfire was likely to kindle.  Bathsheba was no
schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a trifler
with the affections of men, and a censor's experience on
seeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a
feeling of surprise that Bathsheba could be so different
from such a one, and yet so like what a flirt is supposed to
be.

She resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt
the steady flow of this man's life.  But a resolution to
avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far
advanced as to make avoidance impossible.


CHAPTER XIX


THE SHEEP-WASHING -- THE OFFER


BOLDWOOD did eventually call upon her.  She was not at home.
"Of course not," he murmured.  In contemplating Bathsheba as
a woman, he had forgotten the accidents of her position as
an agriculturist -- that being as much of a farmer, and as
extensive a farmer, as himself, her probable whereabouts was
out-of-doors at this time of the year.  This, and the other
oversights Boldwood was guilty of, were natural to the mood,
and still more natural to the circumstances.  The great aids
to idealization in love were present here:  occasional
observation of her from a distance, and the absence of
social intercourse with her -- visual familiarity, oral
strangeness.  The smaller human elements were kept out of
sight; the pettinesses that enter so largely into all
earthly living and doing were disguised by the accident of
lover and loved-one not being on visiting terms; and there
was hardly awakened a thought in Boldwood that sorry
household realities appertained to her, or that she, like
all others, had moments of commonplace, when to be least
plainly seen was to be most prettily remembered.  Thus a
mild sort of apotheosis took place in his fancy, whilst she
still lived and breathed within his own horizon, a troubled
creature like himself.

It was the end of May when the farmer determined to be no
longer repulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense.
He had by this time grown used to being in love; the passion
now startled him less even when it tortured him more, and he
felt himself adequate to the situation.  On inquiring for
her at her house they had told him she was at the
sheepwashing, and he went off to seek her there.

The sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of
brickwork in the meadows, full of the clearest water.  To
birds on the wing its glassy surface, reflecting the light
sky, must have been visible for miles around as a glistening
Cyclops' eye in a green face.  The grass about the margin at
this season was a sight to remember long -- in a minor sort
of way.  Its activity in sucking the moisture from the rich
damp sod was almost a process observable by the eye.  The
outskirts of this level water-meadow were diversified by
rounded and hollow pastures, where just now every flower
that was not a buttercup was a daisy.  The river slid along
noiselessly as a shade, the swelling reeds and sedge forming
a flexible palisade upon its moist brink.  To the north of
the mead were trees, the leaves of which were new, soft, and
moist, not yet having stiffened and darkened under summer
sun and drought, their colour being yellow beside a green --
green beside a yellow.  From the recesses of this knot of
foliage the loud notes of three cuckoos were resounding
through the still air.

Boldwood went meditating down the slopes with his eyes on
his boots, which the yellow pollen from the buttercups had
bronzed in artistic gradations.  A tributary of the main
stream flowed through the basin of the pool by an inlet and
outlet at opposite points of its diameter.  Shepherd Oak,
Jan Coggan, Moon, Poorgrass, Cain Ball, and several others
were assembled here, all dripping wet to the very roots of
their hair, and Bathsheba was standing by in a new riding-
habit -- the most elegant she had ever worn -- the reins of
her horse being looped over her arm.  Flagons of cider were
rolling about upon the green.  The meek sheep were pushed
into the pool by Coggan and Matthew Moon, who stood by the
lower hatch, immersed to their waists; then Gabriel, who
stood on the brink, thrust them under as they swam along,
with an instrument like a crutch, formed for the purpose,
and also for assisting the exhausted animals when the wool
became saturated and they began to sink.  They were let out
against the stream, and through the upper opening, all
impurities flowing away below.  Cainy Ball and Joseph, who
performed this latter operation, were if possible wetter
than the rest; they resembled dolphins under a fountain,
every protuberance and angle of their clothes dribbling
forth a small rill.

Boldwood came close and bade her good morning, with such
constraint that she could not but think he had stepped
across to the washing for its own sake, hoping not to find
her there; more, she fancied his brow severe and his eye
slighting.  Bathsheba immediately contrived to withdraw, and
glided along by the river till she was a stone's throw off.
She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a
consciousness that love was encircling her like a perfume.
Instead of turning or waiting, Bathsheba went further among
the high sedges, but Boldwood seemed determined, and pressed
on till they were completely past the bend of the river.
Here, without being seen, they could hear the splashing and
shouts of the washers above.

"Miss Everdene!" said the farmer.

She trembled, turned, and said "Good morning." His tone was
so utterly removed from all she had expected as a beginning.
It was lowness and quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep
meanings, their form, at the same time, being scarcely
expressed.  Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of
showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering
without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than
speech.  In the same way, to say a little is often to tell
more than to say a great deal.  Boldwood told everything in
that word.

As the consciousness expands on learning that what was
fancied to be the rumble of wheels is the reverberation of
thunder, so did Bathsheba's at her intuitive conviction.

"I feel -- almost too much -- to think," he said, with a
solemn simplicity.  "I have come to speak to you without
preface.  My life is not my own since I have beheld you
clearly, Miss Everdene -- I come to make you an offer of
marriage."

Bathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral
countenance, and all the motion she made was that of closing
lips which had previously been a little parted.

"I am now forty-one years old," he went on.  "I may have
been called a confirmed bachelor, and I was a confirmed
bachelor.  I had never any views of myself as a husband in
my earlier days, nor have I made any calculation on the
subject since I have been older.  But we all change, and my
change, in this matter, came with seeing you.  I have felt
lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad
in every respect.  Beyond all things, I want you as my
wife."

"I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do
not feel -- what would justify me to -- in accepting your
offer," she stammered.

This giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the
sluices of feeling that Boldwood had as yet kept closed.

"My life is a burden without you," he exclaimed, in a low
voice.  "I want you -- I want you to let me say I love you
again and again!"

Bathsheba answered nothing, and the horse upon her arm
seemed so impressed that instead of cropping the herbage she
looked up.

"I think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what I
have to tell!"

Bathsheba's momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why
he thought that, till she remembered that, far from being a
conceited assumption on Boldwood's part, it was but the
natural conclusion of serious reflection based on deceptive
premises of her own offering.

"I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you," the farmer
continued in an easier tone, "and put my rugged 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 thoughtlessness, 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 heartlessness, which
was immediately contradicted by the pleasant eyes.

"But you will just think -- in kindness and condescension
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.  Oh, 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. Boldwood!  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 neighbourhood,
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
understanding 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 without 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, Bathsheba'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 mentioned
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 consequences.  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 deliberative
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
armoury previous to a campaign.  Peace and war kiss each
other at their hours of preparation -- 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 contraction 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 goals. The brain gets
muddled, the head grows heavy, and the body's centre of
gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump
somewhere between 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 occasionally
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 observations 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 sometimes 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 instructor 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 murmured, 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 disinterestedness 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
subject would be.  Such is the selfishness of some charming
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 noticeable.

The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake.

"Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my reprimanding 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 protested 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 was rigid.  Matthew's jaws sank, and his eyes turned
whichever way the strongest muscle happened to pull them.

"Yes," said Joseph, "and I was sitting at home, looking for
Ephesians, and says I to myself, ''Tis nothing but
Corinthians and Thessalonians in this danged Testament,'
when who should come in but Henery there:  'Joseph,' he
said, 'the sheep have blasted theirselves ----'"

With Bathsheba it was a moment when thought was speech and
speech exclamation.  Moreover, she had hardly recovered her
equanimity since the disturbance which she had suffered from
Oak's remarks.

"That's enough -- that's enough! -- oh, you fools!" she
cried, throwing the parasol and Prayer-book into the
passage, and running out of doors in the direction
signified.  "To come to me, and not go and get them out
directly!  Oh, the stupid numskulls!"

Her eyes were at their darkest and brightest now.
Bathsheba's beauty 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, carefully put on before a
glass.

All the ancient men ran in a jumbled throng after her to the
clover-field, Joseph sinking down in the midst when about
half-way, like an individual withering in a world which was
more and more insupportable.  Having once received the
stimulus that her presence always gave them they went round
among the sheep with a will.  The majority of the afflicted
animals were lying down, and could not be stirred.  These
were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into the
adjoining field.  Here, after the lapse of a few minutes,
several more fell down, and lay helpless and livid as the
rest.

Bathsheba, with a sad, bursting heart, looked at these
primest specimens of her prime flock as they rolled there --


Swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew.


Many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being
quick and short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully
distended.

"Oh, what can I do, what can I do!" said Bathsheba,
helplessly.  "Sheep are such unfortunate animals! -- there's
always something happening to them!  I never knew a flock
pass a year without getting into some scrape or other."

"There's only one way of saving them," said Tall.

"What way?  Tell me quick!"

"They must be pierced in the side with a thing made on
purpose."

"Can you do it?  Can I?"

"No, ma'am.  We can't, nor you neither.  It must be done in
a particular spot.  If ye go to the right or left but an
inch you stab the ewe and kill her.  Not even a shepherd can
do it, as a rule."

"Then they must die," she said, in a resigned tone.

"Only one man in the neighbourhood knows the way," said
Joseph, now just come up.  "He could cure 'em all if he were
here."

"Who is he?  Let's get him!"

"Shepherd Oak," said Matthew.  "Ah, he's a clever man in
talents!"

"Ah, that he is so!" said Joseph Poorgrass.

"True -- he's the man," said Laban Tall.

"How dare you name that man in my presence!" she said
excitedly.  "I told you never to allude to him, nor shall
you if you stay with me.  Ah!" she added, brightening,
"Farmer Boldwood knows!"

"O no, ma'am" said Matthew.  "Two of his store ewes got into
some vetches t'other day, and were just like these.  He sent
a man on horseback here post-haste for Gable, and Gable went
and saved 'em, Farmer Boldwood hev got the thing they do it
with.  'Tis a holler pipe, with a sharp pricker inside.
Isn't it, Joseph?"

"Ay -- a holler pipe," echoed Joseph.  "That's what 'tis."

"Ay, sure -- that's the machine," chimed in Henery Fray,
reflectively, with an Oriental indifference to the flight of
time.

"Well," burst out Bathsheba, "don't stand there with your
'ayes' and your 'sures' talking at me!  Get somebody to cure
the sheep instantly!"

All then stalked off in consternation, to get somebody as
directed, without any idea of who it was to be.  In a minute
they had vanished through the gate, and she stood alone with
the dying flock.

"Never will I send for him never!" she said firmly.

One of the ewes here contracted its muscles horribly,
extended itself, and jumped high into the air.  The leap was
an astonishing one.  The ewe fell heavily, and lay still.

Bathsheba went up to it.  The sheep was dead.

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

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

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

"Where is Oak staying?"

"Across the valley at Nest Cottage!"

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

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

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

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

"Oh, what folly!" said Bathsheba.

Gabriel was not visible anywhere.

"Perhaps he is already gone!" she said.

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

"Well?" said Bathsheba, unwilling to believe that her verbal
LETTRE-DE-CACHET could possibly have miscarried.

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

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

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

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

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

The men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion.

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

"I wouldn't cry about it, miss," said William 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.  "Oh, it is
a wicked cruelty to me -- it is -- it is!" she murmured.
"And he drives me to do what I wouldn't; yes, he does! --
Tall, come indoors."

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


"DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!"


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I will," said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.


CHAPTER 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 conjunction 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 require 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 mutilation 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 lanceolate 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 outsider'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
ecclesiastically 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 enjoyment 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 Boldwood's appearance in the extremest corner of the
barn.  Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there
he certainly was.  Boldwood always carried with him a social
atmosphere of his own, which everybody felt who came near
him; and the talk, which Bathsheba's presence had somewhat
suppressed, was now totally suspended.

He crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him
with a carriage of perfect ease.  He spoke to her in low
tones, and she instinctively modulated her own to the same
pitch, and her voice ultimately even caught the inflection
of his.  She was far from having a wish to appear
mysteriously connected with him; but woman at the
impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in
her choice of words, which is apparent every day, but even
in her shades of tone and humour, when the influence is
great.

What they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who
was too independent to get near, though too concerned to
disregard.  The issue of their dialogue was the taking of
her hand by the courteous farmer to help her over the
spreading-board into the bright June sunlight outside.
Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went on
talking again.  Concerning the flock?  Apparently not.
Gabriel theorized, not without truth, that in quiet
discussion of any matter within reach of the speakers' eyes,
these are usually fixed upon it.  Bathsheba demurely
regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the ground, in a
way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly
embarrassment.  She became more or less red in the cheek,
the blood wavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the
sensitive space between ebb and flood.  Gabriel sheared on,
constrained and sad.

She left Boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone
for nearly a quarter of an hour.  Then she reappeared in her
new riding-habit of myrtle-green, which fitted her to the
waist as a rind fits its fruit; and young Bob Coggan led on
her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse from the tree
under which it had been tied.

Oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to
continue his shearing at the same time that he watched
Boldwood's manner, he snipped the sheep in the groin.  The
animal plunged; Bathsheba instantly gazed towards it, and
saw the blood.

"Oh, Gabriel!" she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, "you
who are so strict with the other men -- see what you are
doing yourself!"

To an outsider there was not much to complain of in this
remark; but to Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that
she herself was the cause of the poor ewe's wound, because
she had wounded the ewe's shearer in a -- still more vital
part, it had a sting which the abiding sense of his
inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not calculated
to heal.  But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he
had no longer a lover's interest in her, helped him
occasionally to conceal a feeling.

"Bottle!" he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine.  Cainy
Ball ran up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing
continued.

Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before
they turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same
dominative and tantalizing graciousness.

"I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood's Leicesters.  Take my
place in the barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to
their work."

The horses' heads were put about, and they trotted away.

Boldwood's deep attachment was a matter of great interest
among all around him; but, after having been pointed out for
so many years as the perfect exemplar of thriving
bachelorship, his lapse was an anticlimax somewhat
resembling that of St. John Long's death by consumption in
the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal disease.

"That means matrimony," said Temperance Miller, following
them out of sight with her eyes.

"I reckon that's the size o't," said Coggan, working along
without looking up.

"Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor," said
Laban Tall, turning his sheep.

Henery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same
time: "I don't see why a maid should take a husband when
she's bold enough to fight her own battles, and don't want a
home; for 'tis keeping another woman out.  But let it be,
for 'tis a pity he and she should trouble two houses."

As usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably
provoked the criticism of individuals like Henery Fray.  Her
emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections,
and not sufficiently overt in her likings.  We learn that it
is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they
reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in
the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and
antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no
attribute at all.

Henery continued in a more complaisant mood:  "I once hinted
my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered
frame dared to do so to such a froward piece.  You all know,
neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my
powerful words when my pride is boiling wi' scarn?"

"We do, we do, Henery."

"So I said, 'Mistress Everdene, there's places empty, and
there's gifted men willing; but the spite' -- no, not the
spite -- I didn't say spite -- 'but the villainy of the
contrarikind,' I said (meaning womankind), 'keeps 'em out.'
That wasn't too strong for her, say?"

"Passably well put."

"Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation
overtook me for it.  Such is my spirit when I have a mind."

"A true man, and proud as a lucifer."

"You see the artfulness?  Why, 'twas about being baily
really; but I didn't put it so plain that she could
understand my meaning, so I could lay it on all the
stronger.  That was my depth! ... However, let her marry an
she will.  Perhaps 'tis high time.  I believe Farmer
Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-
washing t'other day -- that I do."

"What a lie!" said Gabriel.

"Ah, neighbour Oak -- how'st know?" said, Henery, mildly.

"Because she told me all that passed," said Oak, with a
pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this
matter.

"Ye have a right to believe it," said Henery, with dudgeon;
"a very true right.  But I mid see a little distance into
things!  To be long-headed enough for a baily's place is a
poor mere trifle -- yet a trifle more than nothing.
However, I look round upon life quite cool.  Do you heed me,
neighbours?  My words, though made as simple as I can, mid be
rather deep for some heads."

"O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye."

"A strange old piece, goodmen -- whirled about from here to
yonder, as if I were nothing!  A little warped, too.  But I
have my depths; ha, and even my great depths!  I might gird
at a certain shepherd, brain to brain.  But no -- O no!"

"A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster, in a
querulous voice.  "At the same time ye be no old man worth
naming -- no old man at all.  Yer teeth bain't half gone
yet; and what's a old man's standing if so be his teeth
bain't gone?  Weren't I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of
arms?  'Tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there's people far
past four-score -- a boast'weak as water."

It was the unvaying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor
differences when the maltster had to be pacified.

"Weak as-water! yes," said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye
to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it."

"Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass.  "Ye be a very rare old
spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift. "

"Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity,
I was likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me," said the
maltster.

"'Ithout doubt you was -- 'ithout doubt."

The bent and hoary 'man was satisfied, and so apparently was
Henery Frag.  That matters should continue pleasant Maryann
spoke, who, what with her brown complexion, and the working
wrapper of rusty linsey, had at present the mellow hue of an
old sketch in oils -- notably some of Nicholas Poussin's: --

"Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-
hand fellow at all that would do for poor me?" said Maryann.
"A perfect one I don't expect to at my time of life.  If I
could hear of such a thing twould do me more good than toast
and ale."

Coggan furnished a suitable reply.  Oak went on with his
shearing, and said not another word.  Pestilent moods had
come, and teased away his quiet.  Bathsheba had shown
indications of anointing him above his fellows by installing
him as the bailiff that the farm imperatively required.  He
did not covet the post relatively to the farm:  in relation
to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to another, he
had coveted it.  His readings of her seemed now to be
vapoury and indistinct.  His lecture to her was, he thought,
one of the absurdest mistakes.  Far from coquetting with
Boldwood, she had trifled with himself in thus feigning that
she had trifled with another.  He was inwardly convinced
that, in accordance with the anticipations of his easy-going
and worse-educated comrades, that day would see Boldwood the
accepted husband of Miss Everdene.  Gabriel at this time of
his life had out-grown the instinctive dislike which every
Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now
quite frequently, and he inwardly said, "I find more bitter
than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!" This
was mere exclamation -- the froth of the storm.  He adored
Bathsheba just the same.

"We workfolk shall have some lordly-junketing to-night,"
said Cainy Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new
direction.  "This morning I see'em making the great puddens
in the milking-pails -- lumps of fat as big as yer thumb,
Mister Oak!  I've never seed such splendid large
knobs of fat before in the days of my life -- they never
used to be bigger then a horse-bean.  And there was a great
black crock upon the brandish with his legs a-sticking out,
but I don't know what was in within."

"And there's two bushels of biffins for apple-pies," said
Maryann.

"Well, I hope to do my duty by it all," said Joseph
Poorgrass, in a pleasant, masticating manner of
anticipation.  "Yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing,
and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may
be used.  'Tis the gospel of the body, without which we
perish, so to speak it."


CHAPTER XXIII


EVENTIDE -- A SECOND DECLARATION


FOR the shearing-supper a long table was placed on the
grass-plot beside the house, the end of the table being
thrust over the sill of the wide parlour window and a foot
or two into the room.  Miss Everdene sat inside the window,
facing down the table.  She was thus at the head without
mingling with the men.

This evening Bathsheba was unusually excited, her red cheeks
and lips contrasting lustrously with the mazy skeins of her
shadowy hair.  She seemed to expect assistance, and the seat
at the bottom of the table was at her request left vacant
until after they had begun the meal. She then asked Gabriel
to take the place and the duties appertaining to that end,
which he did with great readiness.

At this moment Mr. Boldwood came in at the gate, and crossed
the green to Bathsheba at the window.  He apologized for his
lateness:  his arrival was evidently by arrangement.

"Gabriel," said she, "will you move again, please, and let
Mr. Boldwood come there?"

Oak moved in silence back to his original seat.

The gentleman-farmer was dressed in cheerful style, in a new
coat and white waistcoat, quite contrasting with his usual
sober suits of grey.  Inwardy, too, he was blithe, and
consequently chatty to an exceptional degree.  So also was
Bathsheba now that he had come, though the uninvited
presence of Pennyways, the bailiff who had been dismissed
for theft, disturbed her equanimity for a while.

Supper being ended, Coggan began on his own private account,
without reference to listeners: --


I've lost my love, and l care not,
I've lost my love, and l care not;
I shall soon have another
That's better than t'other;
I've lost my love, and I care not.


This lyric, when concluded, was received with a silently
appreciative gaze at the table, implying that the
performance, like a work by those established authors who
are independent of notices in the papers, was a well-known
delight which required no applause.

"Now, Master Poorgrass, your song!" said Coggan.

"I be all but in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me,"
said Joseph, diminishing himself.

"Nonsense; wou'st never be so ungrateful, Joseph -- never!"
said Coggan, expressing hurt feelings by an inflection of
voice.  "And mistress is looking hard at ye, as much as to
say, "Sing at once, Joseph Poorgrass."

"Faith, so she is; well, I must suffer it! ... Just eye my
features, and see if the tell-tale blood overheats me much,
neighbours?"

"No, yer blushes be quite reasonable," said Coggan.

"I always tries to keep my colours from rising when a
beauty's eyes get fixed on me," said Joseph, differently;
"but if so be 'tis willed they do, they must."

"Now, Joseph, your song, please," said Bathsheba, from the
window.

"Well, really, ma'am," he replied, in a yielding tone, "I
don't know what to say.  It would be a poor plain ballet of
my own composure."

"Hear, hear!" said the supper-party.

Poorgrass, thus assured, trilled forth a flickering yet
commendable piece of sentiment, the tune of which consisted
of the key-note and another, the latter being the sound
chiefly dwelt upon.  This was so successful that he rashly
plunged into a second in the same breath, after a few false
starts: --


I sow'-ed th'-e .....
I sow'-ed .....
I sow'-ed the'-e seeds' of love',
  I-it was' all' i'-in the'-e spring',
I-in A'-pril', Ma'-ay, a'-nd sun'-ny' June',
  When sma'-all bi'-irds they' do' sing.


"Well put out of hand," said Coggan, at the end of the
verse.  'They do sing' was a very taking paragraph."

"Ay; and there was a pretty place at "seeds of love." and
'twas well heaved out.  Though "love" is a nasty high corner
when a man's voice is getting crazed.  Next verse, Master
Poorgrass."

But during this rendering young Bob Coggan exhibited one of
those anomalies which will afflict little people when other
persons are particularly serious:  in trying to check his
laughter, he pushed down his throat as much of the
tablecloth as he could get hold of, when, after continuing
hermetically sealed for a short time, his mirth burst out
through his nose.  Joseph perceived it, and with hectic
cheeks of indignation instantly ceased singing.  Coggan
boxed Bob's ears immediately.

"Go on, Joseph -- go on, and never mind the young scamp,"
said Coggan.  "'Tis a very catching ballet.  Now then again
-- the next bar; I'll help ye to flourish up the shrill
notes where yer wind is rather wheezy: --


Oh the wi'-il-lo'-ow tree' will' twist',
And the wil'-low' tre'-ee wi'ill twine'.

But the singer could not be set going again.  Bob Coggan was
sent home for his ill manners, and tranquility was restored
by Jacob Smallbury, who volunteered a ballad as inclusive
and interminable as that with which the worthy toper old
Silenus amused on a similar occasion the swains Chromis and
Mnasylus, and other jolly dogs of his day.

It was still the beaming time of evening, though night was
stealthily making itself visible low down upon the ground,
the western lines of light taking the earth without
alighting upon it to any extent, or illuminating the dead
levels at all.  The sun had crept round the tree as a last
effort before death, and then began to sink, the shearers'
lower parts becoming steeped in embrowning twilight, whilst
their heads and shoulders were still enjoying day, touched
with a yellow of self-sustained brilliancy that seemed
inherent rather than acquired.

The sun went down in an ochreous mist; but they sat, and
talked on, and grew as merry as the gods in Homer's heaven.
Bathsheba still remained enthroned inside the window, and
occupied herself in knitting, from which she sometimes
looked up to view the fading scene outside.  The slow
twilight expanded and enveloped them completely before the
signs of moving were shown.

Gabriel suddenly missed Farmer Boldwood from his place at
the bottom of the table.  How long he had been gone Oak did
not know; but he had apparently withdrawn into the
encircling dusk.  Whilst he was thinking of this, Liddy
brought candles into the back part of the room overlooking
the shearers, and their lively new flames shone down the
table and over the men, and dispersed among the green
shadows behind.  Bathsheba's form, still in its original
position, was now again distinct between their eyes and the
light, which revealed that Boldwood had gone inside the
room, and was sitting near her.

Next came the question of the evening.  Would Miss Everdene
sing to them the song she always sang so charmingly -- "The
Banks of Allan Water" -- before they went home?

After a moment's consideration Bathsheba assented, beckoning
to Gabriel, who hastened up into the coveted atmosphere.

"Have you brought your flute?" she whispered.

"Yes, miss."

"Play to my singing, then."

She stood up in the window-opening, facing the men, the
candles behind her, Gabriel on her right hand, immediately
outside the sash-frame.  Boldwood had drawn up on her left,
within the room.  Her singing was soft and rather tremulous
at first, but it soon swelled to a steady clearness.
Subsequent events caused one of the verses to be remembered
for many months, and even years, by more than one of those
who were gathered there: --


For his bride a soldier sought her,
And a winning tongue had he:
On the banks of Allan Water
None was gay as she!


In addition to the dulcet piping of Gabriel's flute,
Boldwood supplied a bass in his customary profound voice,
uttering his notes so softly, however, as to abstain
entirely from making anything like an ordinary duet of the
song; they rather formed a rich unexplored shadow, which
threw her tones into relief.  The shearers reclined against
each other as at suppers in the early ages of the world, and
so silent and absorbed were they that her breathing could
almost be heard between the bars; and at the end of the
ballad, when the last tone loitered on to an inexpressible
close, there arose that buzz of pleasure which is the attar
of applause.

It is scarcely necessary to state that Gabriel could not
avoid noting the farmer's bearing to-night towards their
entertainer.  Yet there was nothing exceptional in his
actions beyond what appertained to his time of performing
them.  It was when the rest were all looking away that
Boldwood observed her; when they regarded her he turned
aside; when they thanked or praised he was silent; when they
were inattentive he murmured his thanks.  The meaning lay in
the difference between actions, none of which had any
meaning of itself; and the necessity of being jealous, which
lovers are troubled with, did not lead Oak to underestimate
these signs.

Bathsheba then wished them good-night, withdrew from the
window, and retired to the back part of the room, Boldwood
thereupon closing the sash and the shutters, and remaining
inside with her.  Oak wandered away under the quiet and
scented trees.  Recovering from the softer impressions
produced by Bathsheba's voice, the shearers rose to leave,
Coggan turning to Pennyways as he pushed back the bench to
pass out: --

"I like to give praise where praise is due, and the man
deserves it -- that 'a do so," he remarked, looking at the
worthy thief, as if he were the masterpiece of some world-
renowned artist.

"I'm sure I should never have believed it if we hadn't
proved it, so to allude," hiccupped Joseph Poorgrass, "that
every cup, every one of the best knives and forks, and every
empty bottle be in their place as perfect now as at the
beginning, and not one stole at all."

"I'm sure I don't deserve half the praise you give me," said
the virtuous thief, grimly.

"Well, I'll say this for Pennyways," added Coggan, "that
whenever he do really make up his mind to do a noble thing
in the shape of a good action, as I could see by his face he
did to-night afore sitting down, he's generally able to
carry it out.  Yes, I'm proud to say.  neighbours, that he's
stole nothing at all."

"Well, 'tis an honest deed, and we thank ye for it,
Pennyways," said Joseph; to which opinion the remainder of
the company subscribed unanimously.

At this time of departure, when nothing more was visible of
the inside of the parlour than a thin and still chink of
light between the shutters, a passionate scene was in course
of enactment there.

Miss Everdene and Boldwood were alone.  Her cheeks had lost
a great deal of their healthful fire from the very
seriousness of her position; but her eye was bright with the
excitement of a triumph -- though it was a triumph which had
rather been contemplated than desired.

She was standing behind a low arm-chair, from which she had
just risen, and he was kneeling in it -- inclining himself
over its back towards her, and holding her hand in both his
own.  His body moved restlessly, and it was with what Keats
daintily calls a too happy happiness.  This unwonted
abstraction by love of all dignity from a man of whom it had
ever seemed the chief component, was, in its distressing
incongruity, a pain to her which quenched much of the
pleasure she derived from the proof that she was idolized.

"I will try to love you," she was saying, in a trembling
voice quite unlike her usual self-confidence.  "And if I can
believe in any way that I shall make you a good wife I shall
indeed be willing to marry you.  But, Mr. Boldwood,
hesitation on so high a matter is honourable in any woman,
and I don't want to give a solemn promise to-night.  I would
rather ask you to wait a few weeks till I can see my
situation better.

"But you have every reason to believe that THEN ----"

"I have every reason to hope that at the end of the five or
six weeks, between this time and harvest, that you say you
are going to be away from home, I shall be able to promise
to be your wife," she said, firmly.  "But remember this
distinctly, I don't promise yet."

"It is enough I don't ask more.  I can wait on those dear
words.  And now, Miss Everdene, good-night!"

"Good-night," she said, graciously -- almost tenderly; and
Boldwood withdrew with a serene smile.

Bathsheba knew more of him now; he had entirely bared his
heart before her, even until he had almost worn in her eyes
the sorry look of a grand bird without the feathers that
make it grand.  She had been awe-struck at her past
temerity, and was struggling to make amends without thinking
whether the sin quite deserved the penalty she was schooling
herself to pay.  To have brought all this about her ears was
terrible; but after a while the situation was not without a
fearful joy.  The facility with which even the most timid
woman sometimes acquire a relish for the dreadful when that
is amalgamated with a little triumph, is marvellous.


CHAPTER XXIV


THE SAME NIGHT -- THE FIR PLANTATION


AMONG the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had
voluntarily imposed upon herself by dispensing with the
services of a bailiff, was the particular one of looking
round the homestead before going to bed, to see that all was
right and safe for the night.  Gabriel had almost constantly
preceded her in this tour every evening, watching her
affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of
surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was
to a great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as
was known was somewhat thanklessly received.  Women are
never tired of bewailing man's fickleness in love, but they
only seem to snub his constancy.

As watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a
dark lantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on
the light to examine nooks and corners with the coolness of
a metropolitan policeman.  This coolness may have owed its
existence not so much to her fearlessness of expected danger
as to her freedom from the suspicion of any; her worst
anticipated discovery being that a horse might not be well
bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed.

This night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she
went round to the farm paddock.  Here the only sounds
disturbing the stillness were steady munchings of many
mouths, and stentorian breathings from all but invisible
noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing of
bellows slowly.  Then the munching would recommence, when
the lively imagination might assist the eye to discern a
group of pink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very
clammy and humid on their surfaces, not exactly pleasant to
the touch until one got used to them; the mouths beneath
having a great partiality for closing upon any loose end of
Bathsheba's apparel which came within reach of their
tongues.  Above each of these a still keener vision
suggested a brown forehead and two staring though not
unfriendly eyes, and above all a pair of whitish crescent-
shaped horns like two particularly new moons, an occasional
stolid "moo!" proclaiming beyond the shade of a doubt that
these phenomena were the features and persons of Daisy,
Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot, Twinkle-eye, etc.,
etc. -- the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging to
Bathsheba aforesaid.

Her way back to the house was by a path through a young
plantation of tapering firs, which had been planted some
years earlier to shelter the premises from the north wind.
By reason of the density of the interwoven foliage overhead,
it was gloomy there at cloudless noontide, twilight in the
evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the ninth
plague of Egypt at midnight.  To describe the spot is to
call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy
ceiling of which was supported by slender pillars of living
wood, the floor being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead
spikelets and mildewed cones, with a tuft of grass-blades
here and there.

This bit of the path was always the crux of the night's
ramble, though, before starting, her apprehensions of danger
were not vivid enough to lead her to take a companion.
Slipping along here covertly as Time, Bathsheba fancied she
could hear footsteps entering the track at the opposite end.
It was certainly a rustle of footsteps.  Her own instantly
fell as gently as snowflakes.  She reassured herself by a
remembrance that the path was public, and that the traveller
was probably some villager returning home; regetting, at the
same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the
darkest point of her route, even though only just outside
her own door.

The noise approached, came close, and a figure was
apparently on the point of gliding past her when something
tugged at her skirt and pinned it forcibly to the ground.
The instantaneous check nearly threw Bathsheba off her
balance.  In recovering she struck against warm clothes and
buttons.

"A rum start, upon my soul!" said a masculine voice, a foot
or so above her head.  "Have I hurt you, mate?"

"No," said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink a way.

"We have got hitched together somehow, I think."

"Yes."

"Are you a woman?"

"Yes."

"A lady, I should have said."

"It doesn't matter."

"I am a man."

"Oh!"

Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.

"Is that a dark lantern you have?  I fancy so," said the man.
"Yes."

"If you'll allow me I'll open it, and set you free."

A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays
burst out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her
position with astonishment.

The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and
scarlet.  He was a soldier.  His sudden appearance was to
darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silense.  Gloom,
the genius loci at all times hitherto, was now totally
overthrown, less by the lantern-light than by what the
lantern lighted.  The contrast of this revelation with her
anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so
great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy
transformation.

It was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had
become entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of
her dress.  He caught a view of her face.

"I'll unfasten you in one moment, miss," he said, with new-
born gallantry.

"Oh no -- I can do it, thank you," she hastily replied, and
stooped for the performance.

The unfastening was not such a trifling affair.  The rowel
of the spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in
those few moments, that separation was likely to be a matter
of time.

He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground
betwixt them threw the gleam from its open side among the
fir-tree needles and the blades of long damp grass with the
effect of a large glowworm.  It radiated upwards into their
faces, and sent over half the plantation gigantic shadows of
both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming distorted and
mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.

He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a
moment; Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too
strong to be received point-blank with her own.  But she had
obliquely noticed that he was young and slim, and that he
wore three chevrons upon his sleeve.

Bathsheba pulled again.

"You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the
matter," said the soldier, drily.  "I must cut your dress if
you are in such a hurry."

"Yes -- please do!" she exclaimed, helplessly."

"It wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment," and
he unwound a cord from the little wheel.  She withdrew her
own hand, but, whether by accident or design, he touched it.
Bathsheba was vexed; she hardly knew why.

His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming
to no end.  She looked at him again.

"Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!" said the
young sergeant, without ceremony.

She coloured with embarrassment.  "'Twas un-willingly
shown," she replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity --
which was very little -- as she could infuse into a position
of captivity.

"I like you the better for that incivility, miss," he said.

"I should have liked -- I wish -- you had never shown
yourself to me by intruding here!" She pulled again, and the
gathers of her dress began to give way like liliputian
musketry.

"I deserve the chastisement your words give me.  But why
should such a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to
her father's sex?"

"Go on your way, please."

"What, Beauty, and drag you after me?  Do but look; I never
saw such a tangle!"

"Oh, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on
purpose to keep me here -- you have!"

"Indeed, I don't think so," said the sergeant, with a merry
twinkle.

"I tell you you have!" she exclaimed, in high temper.  I
insist upon undoing it.  Now, allow me!"

"Certainly, miss; I am not of steel." He added a sigh which
had as much archness in it as a sigh could possess without
losing its nature altogether.  "I am thankful for beauty,
even when 'tis thrown to me like a bone to a dog.  These
moments will be over too soon!"

She closed her lips in a determined silence.

Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and
desperate rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving
her skirt bodily behind her.  The thought was too dreadful.
The dress -- which she had put on to appear stately at the
supper -- was the head and front of her wardrobe; not
another in her stock became her so well.  What woman in
Bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call
of her retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing
soldier at so dear a price?

"All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive," said
her cool friend.

"This trifling provokes, and -- and ----"

"Not too cruel!"

"-- Insults me!"

"It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of
apologizing to so charming a woman, which I straightway do
most humbly, madam," he said, bowing low.

Bathsheba really knew not what to say.

"I've seen a good many women in my time," continued the
young man in a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto,
critically regarding her bent head at the same time; "but
I've never seen a woman so beautiful as you.  Take it or
leave it -- be offended or like it -- I don't care."

"Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise
opinion?"

"No stranger.  Sergeant Troy.  I am staying in this place. --
There! it is undone at last, you see.  Your light fingers
were more eager than mine.  I wish it had been the knot of
knots, which there's no untying!"

This was worse and worse.  She started up, and so did he.
How to decently get away from him -- that was her difficulty
now.  She sidled off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand,
till she could see the redness of his coat no longer.

"Ah, Beauty; good-bye!" he said.

She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or
thirty yards, turned about, and ran indoors.

Liddy had just retired to rest.  In ascending to her own
chamber, Bathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two,
and, panting, said --

"Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village -- sergeant
somebody -- rather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good
looking -- a red coat with blue facings?"

"No, miss ... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant
Troy home on furlough, though I have not seen him.  He was
here once in that way when the regiment was at
Casterbridge."

"Yes; that's the name.  Had he a moustache -- no whiskers or
beard?"

"He had."

"What kind of a person is he?"

"Oh! miss -- I blush to name it -- a gay man!  But I know him
to be very quick and trim, who might have made his
thousands, like a squire.  Such a clever young dandy as he
is!  He's a doctor's son by name, which is a great deal; and
he's an earl's son by nature!"

"Which is a great deal more.  Fancy!  Is it true?"

"Yes.  And, he was brought up so well, and sent to
Casterbridge Grammar School for years and years.  Learnt all
languages while he was there; and it was said he got on so
far that he could take down Chinese in shorthand; but that I
don't answer for, as it was only reported.  However, he
wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier; but even then
he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all.  Ah! such a
blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine
out even in the ranks and files.  And is he really come
home, miss?"

"I believe so.  Good-night, Liddy."

After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be
permanently offended with the man?  There are occasions when
girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of
unconventional behaviour.  When they want to be praised,
which is often, when they want to be mastered, which is
sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.
Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with
Bathsheba, with a dash of the second.  Moreover, by chance
or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made
interesting by being a handsome stranger who had evidently
seen better days.

So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion
that he had insulted her or not. "

"Was ever anything so odd!" she at last exclaimed to
herself, in her own room.  "And was ever anything so meanly
done as what I did do to sulk away like that from a man who
was only civil and kind!" Clearly she did not think his
barefaced praise of her person an insult now.

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once
told her she was beautiful.