Thirty Eight: Far From The Madding Crowd: Thomas Hardy - Rain

It was now five o'clock in the morning.  The dawn was breaking.in brownish-grey.

The air was cool, a light gentle breeze caressed Oak's face. In ten minutes the breeze was gone and wind roamed at large.  Some of the thatching on the wheat-stacks whirled aloft, and had to be replaced and weighted with rails that lay at hand.  This done Oak went towards barley.  A huge drop of rain hit his face; fierce wind howled 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 he covered more and more safely from ruin the seven fifty pounds of barley.  The rain was getting heavy, and Oak soon felt the water to be tracking cold and clammy routes down his back.  After finishing the job he slided down and stood at the foot of the ladder, fully soaked in rain.  Picture of his fighting in the fire at the same spot, eight months ago, came to his memory. Fight against the fire brought him face to face with his sweet heart, now fighting against the water for the woman he lost. Gabriel dismissed his reflections and continued his work.

Faint sounds came from the barn, when he had finished his last stack.  Figures came in pairs and alone through the doors.  All walking awkwardly, and abashed, save sergeant Troy in 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 suitors tottering on towards infernal regions under the conductor of Mercury.  Troy entered the farm house and the others dispersed into the village.  Oak also went home by a different route.  Somebody was walking very slowly in front of him, under an umbrella.  The man turned; he was Boldwood.

"How are you this morning, sir?" said Oak.

"It is a wet day.  Oh, I am well, very well, I thank you; quite well." 

"I am glad to hear it, sir." 

Boldwood seemed to regain his presence of mind, he might have been in a reverie.

"You look tired and ill, Oak," he said casually.

"I am tired, you look strangely altered, sir." 

"I?  Not a bit of it: I am well enough.  What put that in your head?" 

"I thought you didn't look as good as you used to be." 

"Indeed, then you are mistaken," said Boldwood shortly.  "Nothing hurts me.  My constitution is an iron one." 

"I have been working hard to get out ricks covered, and was barely in time.  Never had such struggle in my life.  Yours, of course are safe, sir?"

"Oh yes," Boldwood added after an interval of silence. 

"What did you ask, Oak?" 

"Your ricks are all covered, before this?" 

"No."

"At any rate, the large one upon the stone staddles?" 

"They are not."

"Those under the hedge?"

"No.  I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it."

"Nor the little one by the stile?"

" Nor the little one by the stile.  I overlooked it this year."

"Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir."

"Possibly not."

"Overlooked them," repeated Gabriel slowly to himself.  It is difficult to describe the dramatic affect that announcement had upon Oak at such a moment.  All the night he had been feeling that the neglect he was feeling to repair was abnormal and isolated.  Yet, within the same parish, a greater waste had been going on.  A few months earlier Boldwood forgetting his husbandry would have been absurd.  Here was a man who had suffered more from Bathsheba's marriage.

"Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with me lately.  I may as well own it.  I was going to get a little settled in life; but in some way my plan has come to nothing." 

Gabriel was silent.

"I am a joke about the parish," continued Boldwood, as if the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable lightness he expressed his indifference.

"Oh, no: I don't think that," said Gabriel.

"The real truth is that there was not, as some fancy, any jilting on her part.

No engagement ever existed between us.  People say so, but she never promised me!" Boldwood stood still now, and turned his wild face to Oak.  "Oh, Gabriel, he continued, "I am weak and foolish, and I don't know what, and I meant to fend off my miserable grief.  I had some faint belief in the mercy of God till I lost that woman.  Yes, he prepared a gourd to shade me, and like a prophet I thanked Him and was glad.

But next day he prepared a worm to smite the gourd, and wither it; I feel it is better to die than to live." 

A silence followed.  Boldwood aroused himself from the momentary mood of confidence into which he had drifted, and walked again, resuming his unusual reserve.

"No, Gabriel," he returned with a clearness which was like the smile on the countenance of a skull; "it  was made more of by other people than ever it was by us.  I do feel a little regret occasionally, but no woman ever had power over me for any length of time.  Well, good morning.  I can trust you not to mention to others what has passed between us here."

        END OF THE CHAPTER