Far from the Madding Crowd (23 page)

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 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 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.”

It was the unvarying 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 Fray. 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 a husband for poor me?” said Maryann. “A perfect one I don't expect to get at my time of life. All he needs is his wedding tackle primed and ready, and the wit to know where to stick it. If I could hear of such a thing,' twould do me more good than toast and ale.”

Coggan, raising his beetling eyebrows, 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.