Far from the Madding Crowd Page 31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  How unendurable it was, to be thus near to the form of his beloved, and only by supreme exercise of will, not to lay a gentle hand on her, or move his lips, already so close to hers, to claim the kiss of gratitude she owed him. Gabriel, being merely mortal, had to bear the hardening of his arousal with no hint of the cause of it; he moved back a step, and after a while, so did she.

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

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

  “Gabriel,” she said, in a strange and impressive voice.

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

  “Yes, mistress,” he said.

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

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

  “And others thought so, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you blamed me for it?”

  “Well — a little.”

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

  Gabriel ceased his rustling.

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

  “I do — somewhat.” Oak was grateful for the darkness. He determined not to show, by word or look, how this tale tormented him.

  “I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun. And perhaps it’s no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever loved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that object I have mentioned. Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame. I didn’t know what to do. After I found Sergeant Troy, I forgot myself, I was carried away, and he is not to blame, for I meant
to bid him adieu, but fell instead into his arms, and he was too soft-hearted to push me away. I saw that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him in that way. But I was intending to come away alone when he suddenly said he had that day made an assignation with a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once gave myself to him as if we were man and wife … And I was grieved and troubled — and I did as he asked.”

  She cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. “And then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!” she whispered with desperate impetuosity.

  Gabriel made no reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  RAIN — ONE SOLITARY MEETS ANOTHER

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

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

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

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

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

  Troy had no thoughts, save perhaps of breakfasting, his debauches of the night to be soothed by a fragrant cup of cheer dispensed by an attentive wife. So to find the house in darkness, no fires lit, no Liddy bringing his shaving water, and no Bathsheba at her accustomed place by the tea-pot, made him leave off whistling and ascend the staircase with as much celerity as his frowsy condition would allow.

  Coming to the bedroom, he heard no sound within. He flung open the door.

  Bathsheba, still dressed, was standing by the window in an attitude of sorrow, gazing out toward the barn.

  “There are straws in your hair,” he began, but she turned on him with a spark of anger.

  “Is it any wonder? O, Frank, I have been awake all night, working — ”

  “And so you come in this disarray to our chamber, reeking of the midden!”

  “I was climbing the ricks to save the wheat and barley — ”

  “Oho, and were you now? With your gallant swain Oak to pull you close and put his arm through yours?”

  Her cheek flushed crimson as she recalled the touch of her arm on Gabriel’s; their shared warmth.

  “Indeed, Frank, it was only for work that was sorely neglected that I was beside him — ”

  Troy laughed, with a flash of the teeth in his red mouth that had nothing in it of man, but rather the rank lust of the fox.

  “Did I ask my wife to work? Your place last night was here, in our bed, sleeping like a Christian, not toiling like a milkmaid and sweating in the barn with that gawkhammer and his ricking rod.”

  Bathsheba shrank away from his hard look and sank on the bed, her voice growing weak and despairing.

  “O my dear Frank, I beg you, leave off this distemper and let me alone — ”

  “Let you alone? These are not words a husband should hear from any wife.”

  Troy grasped impatiently at the waist of her dress, dragging the fine silk in his hands.

  “Off, off with all your tawdry finery, my lady of the dunghill.”

  He wrenched the straw hat from her hair, scattering pins as he flung it toward the chair, where it perched like a bird, its red feathers quivering.

  Trembling, she undid the front hooks of her corset, and stood uncertain in her white shift as Troy pulled off his red coat and his sweat-darkened shirt, and threw himself into the small armchair.

  “Now take these off.”

  He offered her his boots as carelessly as if she had been a servant and beneath his notice. He was unfastening his trouser lacings, but as she turned away from him, his voice called her back.

  “Off, off, everything; I want you naked as the animal you are. I will show you country ways, my fine Lady Disdain.”

  And now they stood, face to face; how she trembled afresh as he pressed his hot red mouth against hers; how her flesh, as always, unwillingly kindled to his.

  “On the bed, wife. No, not thus, not lying back at your ease. Kneel. Kneel and be taken like the beast that you are.”

  She braced herself against the headboard of the bed and Troy fell against her, pulling himself over her as a ram covers a ewe.

  “O, dear Heavens — Frank!”

  Troy’s hand across her mouth cut short whatever prayer it was she tried to utter.

  “No more of your fine ways a
nd airs. We will couple like brutes, with grunts and groans.”

  At every coarse word he plunged his dearest weapon further in her, and she cried out with the terror, the pain, and the shame of her deepening pleasure. His aim was so true, so cruel, so exact, that she felt her centre must crack with its force.

  Again and again he thrust into her, gripping her breasts so hard she felt their thrills of pain, and finally he spent himself, with a veritable bull’s bellow of rage and triumph blasting upon the air.

  Troy tore himself from her, and she fell face down upon the pillow, too weak to move, panting and yet unsatisfied.

  Now he ran his hands over her hair, pulling her to face him, not gently, but with a certainty that she was his again.

  “This it is, to be a wife of mine. To couple like sheep or dogs, to be beastly in all things, because I choose it. Do you hear me and obey?”

  “O Frank — ”

  “Do you hear me? Obey me you will, in all things.!”

  “I cannot but obey,” she murmured, lying on her back, while he carelessly ran his hands wherever he would on her white skin and shuddering flesh. With a sneer and a few careless strokes of his fingers between her thighs, he broke down the dam of her pleasure, laughing to see her lost to all but the dizzying quiverings of her tambourine, its skin stretched beyond all bearing.

  “So, was this not well done? he said, more tranquil now. “I play the husband’s part, do I not?”

  Bathsheba could not meet his eyes, so full of scorn and loveless dislike toward her were they.

  “Yes. I cannot deny it, Frank.”

  He was brisk now, buttoning his old red soldier’s coat; the campaign was won.

  “So, Bathsheba. No more of your virtuous reproaches as I take my ease. No more interference from your sharp tongue with those simple men whose heads ache still from last night’s revelry. I am no booby in a shepherd’s smock. I am your husband, and I will be your master here.”

  There was a noisy gathering of boots and belts, and Troy passed from the chamber.