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CHAPTER XXI - TROUBLES IN THE FOLD -- A MESSAGE
GABRIEL OAK had ceased to feed the Weatherbury flock for
about four-and-twenty hours, when on Sunday afternoon the
elderly gentlemen Joseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, Fray, and
half-a-dozen others, came running up to the house of the
mistress of the Upper Farm.
"Whatever IS the matter, men?" she said, meeting them at the
door just as she was coming out on her way to church, and
ceasing in a moment from the close compression of her two
red lips, with which she had accompanied the exertion of
pulling on a tight glove. "Sixty!" said Joseph Poorgrass.
"Seventy!" said Moon.
"Fifty-nine!" said Susan Tall's husband.
"-- Sheep have broke fence," said Fray.
"-- And got into a field of young clover," said Tall.
"-- Young clover!" said Moon. "-- Clover!" said Joseph
Poorgrass.
"And they be getting blasted," said Henery Fray.
"That they be," said Joseph.
"And will all die as dead as nits, if they bain't got out
and cured!" said Tall.
Joseph's countenance was drawn into lines and puckers by his
concern. Fray's forehead was wrinkled both perpendicularly
and crosswise, after the pattern of a portcullis, expressive
of a double despair. Laban Tall's lips were thin, and his
face was rigid. Matthew's jaws sank, and his eyes turned
whichever way the strongest muscle happened to pull them.
"Yes," said Joseph, "and I was sitting at home, looking for
Ephesians, and says I to myself, ''Tis nothing but
Corinthians and Thessalonians in this danged Testament,'
when who should come in but Henery there: 'Joseph,' he
said, 'the sheep have blasted theirselves ----'"
With Bathsheba it was a moment when thought was speech and
speech exclamation. Moreover, she had hardly recovered her
equanimity since the disturbance which she had suffered from
Oak's remarks.
"That's enough -- that's enough! -- oh, you fools!" she
cried, throwing the parasol and Prayer-book into the
passage, and running out of doors in the direction
signified. "To come to me, and not go and get them out
directly! Oh, the stupid numskulls!"
Her eyes were at their darkest and brightest now.
Bathsheba's beauty belonged rather to the demonian than to
the angelic school, she never looked so well as when she was
angry -- and particularly when the effect was heightened by
a rather dashing velvet dress, carefully put on before a
glass.
All the ancient men ran in a jumbled throng after her to the
clover-field, Joseph sinking down in the midst when about
half-way, like an individual withering in a world which was
more and more insupportable. Having once received the
stimulus that her presence always gave them they went round
among the sheep with a will. The majority of the afflicted
animals were lying down, and could not be stirred. These
were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into the
adjoining field. Here, after the lapse of a few minutes,
several more fell down, and lay helpless and livid as the
rest.
Bathsheba, with a sad, bursting heart, looked at these
primest specimens of her prime flock as they rolled there --
Swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew.
Many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being
quick and short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully
distended.
"Oh, what can I do, what can I do!" said Bathsheba,
helplessly. "Sheep are such unfortunate animals! -- there's
always something happening to them! I never knew a flock
pass a year without getting into some scrape or other."
"There's only one way of saving them," said Tall.
"What way? Tell me quick!"
"They must be pierced in the side with a thing made on
purpose."
"Can you do it? Can I?"
"No, ma'am. We can't, nor you neither. It must be done in
a particular spot. If ye go to the right or left but an
inch you stab the ewe and kill her. Not even a shepherd can
do it, as a rule."
"Then they must die," she said, in a resigned tone.
"Only one man in the neighbourhood knows the way," said
Joseph, now just come up. "He could cure 'em all if he were
here."
"Who is he? Let's get him!"
"Shepherd Oak," said Matthew. "Ah, he's a clever man in
talents!"
"Ah, that he is so!" said Joseph Poorgrass.
"True -- he's the man," said Laban Tall.
"How dare you name that man in my presence!" she said
excitedly. "I told you never to allude to him, nor shall
you if you stay with me. Ah!" she added, brightening,
"Farmer Boldwood knows!"
"O no, ma'am" said Matthew. "Two of his store ewes got into
some vetches t'other day, and were just like these. He sent
a man on horseback here post-haste for Gable, and Gable went
and saved 'em, Farmer Boldwood hev got the thing they do it
with. 'Tis a holler pipe, with a sharp pricker inside.
Isn't it, Joseph?"
"Ay -- a holler pipe," echoed Joseph. "That's what 'tis."
"Ay, sure -- that's the machine," chimed in Henery Fray,
reflectively, with an Oriental indifference to the flight of
time.
"Well," burst out Bathsheba, "don't stand there with your
'ayes' and your 'sures' talking at me! Get somebody to cure
the sheep instantly!"
All then stalked off in consternation, to get somebody as
directed, without any idea of who it was to be. In a minute
they had vanished through the gate, and she stood alone with
the dying flock.
"Never will I send for him never!" she said firmly.
One of the ewes here contracted its muscles horribly,
extended itself, and jumped high into the air. The leap was
an astonishing one. The ewe fell heavily, and lay still.
Bathsheba went up to it. The sheep was dead.
"Oh, what shall I do -- what shall I do!" she again
exclaimed, wringing her hands. "I won't send for him. No,
I won't!"
The most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always
coincide with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself.
It is often flung out as a sort of prop to support a
decaying conviction which, whilst strong, required no
enunciation to prove it so. The "No, I won't" of Bathsheba
meant virtually, "I think I must."
She followed her assistants through the gate, and lifted her
hand to one of them. Laban answered to her signal.
"Where is Oak staying?"
"Across the valley at Nest Cottage!"
"Jump on the bay mare, and ride across, and say he must
return instantly -- that I say so."
Tall scrambled off to the field, and in two minutes was on
Poll, the bay, bare-backed, and with only a halter by way of
rein. He diminished down the hill.
Bathsheba watched. So did all the rest. Tall cantered
along the bridle-path through Sixteen Acres, Sheeplands,
Middle Field, The Flats, Cappel's Piece, shrank almost to a
point, crossed the bridge, and ascended from the valley
through Springmead and Whitepits on the other side. The
cottage to which Gabriel had retired before taking his final
departure from the locality was visible as a white spot on
the opposite hill, backed by blue firs. Bathsheba walked up
and down. The men entered the field and endeavoured to ease
the anguish of the dumb creatures by rubbing them. Nothing
availed.
Bathsheba continued walking. The horse was seen descending
the hill, and the wearisome series had to be repeated in
reverse order: Whitepits, Springmead, Cappel's Piece, The
Flats, Middle Field, Sheeplands, Sixteen Acres. She hoped
Tall had had presence of mind enough to give the mare up to
Gabriel, and return himself on foot. The rider neared them.
It was Tall.
"Oh, what folly!" said Bathsheba.
Gabriel was not visible anywhere.
"Perhaps he is already gone!" she said.
Tall came into the inclosure, and leapt off, his face tragic
as Morton's after the battle of Shrewsbury.
"Well?" said Bathsheba, unwilling to believe that her verbal
LETTRE-DE-CACHET could possibly have miscarried.
"He says BEGGARS MUSTN'T BE CHOOSERS," replied Laban.
"What!" said the young farmer, opening her eyes and drawing
in her breath for an outburst. Joseph Poorgrass retired a
few steps behind a hurdle.
"He says he shall not come unless you request en to come
civilly and in a proper manner, as becomes any 'ooman
begging a favour."
"Oh, oh, that's his answer! Where does he get his airs? Who
am I, then, to be treated like that? Shall I beg to a man
who has begged to me?"
Another of the flock sprang into the air, and fell dead.
The men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion.
Bathsheba turned aside, her eyes full of tears. The strait
she was in through pride and shrewishness could not be
disguised longer: she burst out crying bitterly; they all
saw it; and she attempted no further concealment.
"I wouldn't cry about it, miss," said William Small-bury,
compassionately. "Why not ask him softer like? I'm sure
he'd come then. Gable is a true man in that way."
Bathsheba checked her grief and wiped her eyes. "Oh, it is
a wicked cruelty to me -- it is -- it is!" she murmured.
"And he drives me to do what I wouldn't; yes, he does! --
Tall, come indoors."
After this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an
establishment, she went into the house, Tall at her heels.
Here she sat down and hastily scribbled a note between the
small convulsive sobs of convalescence which follow a fit of
crying as a ground-swell follows a storm. The note was none
the less polite for being written in a hurry. She held it
at a distance, was about to fold it, then added these words
at the bottom: --
"DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!"
She looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her
lips, as if thereby to suspend till too late the action of
conscience in examining whether such strategy were
justifiable. The note was despatched as the message had
been, and Bathsheba waited indoors for the result.
It was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between
the messenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp
again outside. She could not watch this time, but, leaning
over the old bureau at which she had written the letter,
closed her eyes, as if to keep out both hope and fear.
The case, however, was a promising one. Gabriel was not
angry: he was simply neutral, although her first command had
been so haughty. Such imperiousness would have damned a
little less beauty; and on the other hand, such beauty would
have redeemed a little less imperiousness.
She went out when the horse was heard, and looked up. A
mounted figure passed between her and the sky, and drew on
towards the field of sheep, the rider turning his face in
receding. Gabriel looked at her. It was a moment when a
woman's eyes and tongue tell distinctly opposite tales.
Bathsheba looked full of gratitude, and she said: --
"Oh, Gabriel, how could you serve me so unkindly!"
Such a tenderly-shaped reproach for his previous delay was
the one speech in the language that he could pardon for not
being commendation of his readiness now.
Gabriel murmured a confused reply, and hastened on. She
knew from the look which sentence in her note had brought
him. Bathsheba followed to the field.
Gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms. He
had flung off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and
taken from his pocket the instrument of salvation. It was a
small tube or trochar, with a lance passing down the inside;
and Gabriel began to use it with a dexterity that would have
graced a hospital surgeon. Passing his hand over the
sheep's left flank, and selecting the proper point, he
punctured the skin and rumen with the lance as it stood in
the tube; then he suddenly withdrew the lance, retaining the
tube in its place. A current of air rushed up the tube,
forcible enough to have extinguished a candle held at the
orifice.
It has been said that mere ease after torment is delight for
a time; and the countenances of these poor creatures
expressed it now. Forty-nine operations were successfully
performed. Owing to the great hurry necessitated by the
far-gone state of some of the flock, Gabriel missed his aim
in one case, and in one only -- striking wide of the mark,
and inflicting a mortal blow at once upon the suffering ewe.
Four had died; three recovered without an operation. The
total number of sheep which had thus strayed and injured
themselves so dangerously was fifty-seven.
When the love-led man had ceased from his labours, Bathsheba
came and looked him in the face.
"Gabriel, will you stay on with me?" she said, smiling
winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite
together again at the end, because there was going to be
another smile soon.
"I will," said Gabriel.
And she smiled on him again.
Content of CHAPTER XXI - TROUBLES IN THE FOLD -- A MESSAGE [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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Read next: CHAPTER XXII - THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS
Read previous: CHAPTER XX - PERPLEXITY -- GRINDING THE SHEARS -- A QUARREL
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