Far from the Madding Crowd Page 18

  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 mediævalism, 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 mediævalism and modernism had a common stand-point. The slender, spear-shaped windows, the time-eaten archstones 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.

  Her unguarded words gave rise to a sequence of vividly imagined images and indeed, seeming sensations, in the unprepared minds of both speaker and listener; for Gabriel, was startled to feel almost in reality the imagined thrill of Bathsheba’s willing body positioned, unresisting, between his thighs, and his ears deceived him into hearing her soft moans of pleasure as he, with skilful shears, first laid bare her neck of its ebony tresses, then, travelling down her shoulders, cut through the jacket of her new riding habit, which fell away as softly as the fleeces, exposing the tantalising secrets of her peach-coloured breasts, down lower still, about her waist, and below; and in his fancy her skin took on that blush, like a light shining from within a heap of rose petals, which a maiden might display on her wedding night; it was with a mighty effort of will that he forebore to continue his fantastic imaginings, easing his hold on the shorn ewe, innocent arouser of such sensual thoughts, and looking quickly away from the eye of his young mistress, while she, no less startled, saw and almost felt in the bend and twitch of his sun-browned hands busy with their shearing business, the liveliest sensations of a lover’s fingers upon her quivering flesh. Bathsheba, the colour mounting in her cheeks, felt prompted to turn away and leave him to his work, but her pride outweighed her shame, and she continued to gaze at the spectacle of Oak clipping his ewe, as if no thoughts save the natural ones of enjoyment of his agricultural skills and an appreciation of the likely value of the snowy fleeces, were her sole concern.

  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 abou
t 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 woolen 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.”