Twenty Three: Far From The Madding Crowd: Thomas Hardy - An Evening

Evening.  

Shearing supper. 

A long table was set on the grass-plot beside the house.  The end of the table was thrust over the sill of the wide parlour window, and the end being thrust into the room. Miss Everdene sat inside facing down the table. She was thus at the head of the table, without mingling with the men. 

Bathsheba was unusually excited.  Her red cheeks and lips contrasting lustrously with the mazy skeins of her shadowy hair. The seat at the bottom of the table was at her request left vacant. They have already begun the meal. She wanted Gabriel to take the seat at the bottom of the table and the duties appertaining to it, which he accepted with great readiness. 

Mr Boldwood appeared at the gate, and walked across the green to Bathsheba at the window.  He was late, and he apologized for it.

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

Gabriel moved silently to his original seat. 

Boldwood was dressed in a cheerful style, in new coat and white wastecoat, contrasting his sober suits of gray. Inwardly too he was cheerful and ignored the consequences of his new mood.  Bathsheba too was happy on his arrival, though unexpected.  The uninvited presence of Pennyways, the bailiff who had been dismissed for theft disturbed her calm and composure.

At the end of the supper came the verses of Coggan:-

"I have lost my love, but I care not,

I have lost my love, and I care not;

I shall soon have another, 

That's better than the t'other;

I have lost my love and I care not."

This melody was received with appreciation.

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

"I am all in shudder, and I am not gifted with," said Joseph Poorgrass.

"Nonsense," said Coggan, "don't be so ungrateful.  And mistress is looking hard at you, as much as to say, 'Sing at once Joseph Poorgrass,'" mimicking the female voice and gesture.

"So she is; well, I must suffer it! .....How do I bear her gaze?  Do I blush prodigally?  Just eye my features, and see if the tell tale blood overpowers me much, neighbours."

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

"A very reasonable depth, indeed," testified Oak.

"I always try to keep my colours from rising when a beauty's eye get fixed on me," said Joseph, diffidently; 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 voice, "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, began to sing in a high pitch:-'

I sowed the -e . . . .

I sow -ed . .  .  .

I sowed the seeds of love

It was all in the spring 

April May and sunny June

When small birds they do sing

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

"Aye; and there was a pretty place at 'seeds of love,' and 'twas well rehersed ..... And thus the discussion continued.

At the climax of the rendering a belch accompanied the verses and it attacked young Bob Coggan with unrestrained laughter, and in trying to check it he pushed down his throat as much of the table-cloth as he could get hold of, but finally it jumped out of his nose.  The singer got a glimpse of it, and instantly stopped singing. Coggan immediately boxed Bob's ear.

"Go on, Joseph, go on, and never mind the scamp," said Coggan.  "A very catching ballet.  Now then again -- the next bar; I will help you to flourish up  your shrill notes where your wind is rather wheezy:-

"Oh the willow tree will twist

And the willow tree will twine."

But the singer could not be set going again.  Bob Coggan was sent home for his ill manners, and peace was restored by Jacob Smallbury, who volunteered a ballad as inclusive and 

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Night was stealthily making itself visible low down upon the ground. The sun began to sink. Shearers legs were steeped in brown twilight, but their heads and shoulders were in the daylight.

The sun went down leaving ochre colour upon the earth.  They continued to sit and talk. Bathsheba sat at the head, now engaged herself knitting, and occasionally looked up to view the fading scene outside. The Twilight enveloped them completely. 

Gabriel suddenly missed Boldwood from his seat at the bottom of the table. Liddy brought candles into the back part of the room overlooking the shearers, and their flames reflected on the table and over the men, and dispersed among the green shadows behind.  The candle light exposed Bathsheba in her seat, but Boldwood was now sitting near her.

"Would Miss Everdene sing to them the song she always sang so charmingly -- " The Banks of Allan Water ?"

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

"Have you brought your flute?" she whispered.

"Yes, miss." 

"Play to my singing, then." 

The table was withdrawn from the window, and the chairs and bench were rearranged in rows outside. She stood up inside facing the men, the candles behind her, and Gabriel on her right hand  immediately outside the sash-frame.  Boldwood had drawn up on her left within the room. All the men seated on chairs and benches facing her.

Her singing was soft and rather tremulous in the beginning, but it soon swelled to a steady clearness. The events that followed made the verses that Bathsheba rendered here to remain in the memory, for a considerable length of time, of those present in the shearing supper.

"For his bride a soldier sought her, 

And a winning tongue had he; 

On the banks of Allan Water

None was gay as she!"

Gabriel's dulcet piping accompanied  the verses, as also a bass in customary profound voice of Boldwood.  Uttering his notes so softly, they formed a rich unexplored shadow, which threw her tones into relief.

The shearers reclined against each other, silent and absorbed, that her breathing could almost be heard between the bars; and at the end of the ballad, the last tone loitered onto

a profound close, and a round applause clapping their hands.

Gabriel could not observe anything special about Boldwood's bearing towards Bathsheba. Boldwood took care to look.at her when others looked away from him.

Bathsheba then wished the men goodnight, withdrew from the window.  Boldwood thereupon closed the sash and shutters.  Oak wandered away under quiet and scented trees. Shearers rose to leave, Coggan turning to Pennyways as he pushed back the bench to pass out said, "I like to give praise where praise is due." 

"I am sure I should never have believed, if we hadn't proved it," said Joseph Poorgrass, that every cup, every one of the best knives and forks, and every bottle in their place as perfect now as at the begining."

"I am sure, I don't deserve half the praise you give me," said Pennyways grimly.

Miss Everdene and Boldwood were alone. 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. He was happy and restless.

"I will try to.love you," she said in a trembling voice quite unlike her usual self-confidence.  "And if I can believe in any way that I shall make a good wife, I shall indeed be willing to marry you. I don't want to give you a solemn promise tonight. I would rather ask you to wait for 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 five or six weeks, between this time and  harvest, that you say that you are going to be away from home, I shall be able to promise to be your wife," she said firmly.  "But remember 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, goodnight!"

"Goodnight," she said graciously, almost tenderly.  And Boldwood returned with a serene smile.

Bathsheba knew more of him now; he had entirely bared his heart before her.

The end of the Chapter 

 

==============================1.Chromis and Mnasylus

The author compares the situation here to how two shepherds, Chromis and Mnasylus brought Silenus and made him to sing. Even without a reference to Silenus, Shearing supper provides enough for laughing.