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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.
Soon Oak too went homeward, by a different route from
theirs. In front of him against the wet glazed surface of
the lane he saw a person walking yet more slowly than
himself under an umbrella. The man turned and plainly
started; he was Boldwood.
"How are you this morning, sir?" said Oak.
"Yes, 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 awake to the present by degrees. "You
look tired and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily
regarding his companion.
"I am tired. You look strangely altered, sir."
"I? Not a bit of it: I am well enough. What put that into
your head?"
"I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to,
that was all."
"Indeed, then you are mistaken," said Boldwood, shortly.
"Nothing hurts me. My constitution is an iron one."
"I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was
barely in time. Never had such a 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 time?"
"No."
"At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?"
"They are not."
"Them 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 the ricks
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 intensely dramatic effect that
announcement had upon Oak at such a moment. All the night
he had been feeling that the neglect he was labouring to
repair was abnormal and isolated -- the only instance of the
kind within the circuit of the county. Yet at this very
time, within the same parish, a greater waste had been going
on, uncomplained of and disregarded. A few months earlier
Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as
preposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a
ship. Oak was just thinking that whatever he himself might
have suffered from Bathsheba's marriage, here was a man who
had suffered more, when Boldwood spoke in a changed voice --
that of one who yearned to make a confidence and relieve his
heart by an outpouring.
"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."
"I thought my mistress would have married you," said
Gabriel, not knowing enough of the full depths of Boldwood's
love to keep silence on the farmer's account, and determined
not to evade discipline by doing so on his own. "However,
it is so sometimes, and nothing happens that we expect," he
added, with the repose of a man whom misfortune had inured
rather than subdued.
"I daresay I am a joke about the parish," said Boldwood, as
if the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a
miserable lightness meant to express his indifference.
"Oh no -- I don't think that."
"-- But the real truth of the matter is that there was not,
as some fancy, any jilting on -- her part. No engagement
ever existed between me and Miss Everdene. People say so,
but it is untrue: 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 can't 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 the prophet I
thanked Him and was glad. But the next day He prepared a
worm to smite the gourd and wither it; and 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 on again, resuming his usual reserve.
"No, Gabriel," he resumed, with a carelessness 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 two
here."
Content of CHAPTER XXXVIII - RAIN -- ONE SOLITARY MEETS ANOTHER [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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Read next: CHAPTER XXXIX - COMING HOME -- A CRY
Read previous: CHAPTER XXXVII - THE STORM -- THE TWO TOGETHER
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