Far from the Madding Crowd
the south, while directly opposite in the north rose a grim misshapen
body of cloud, in the very teeth of the wind. So unnaturally did it
rise that one could fancy it to be lifted by machinery from below.
Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had flown back into the south-east corner
of the sky, as if in terror of the large cloud, like a young brood
gazed in upon by some monster.
Going on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window of
Laban Tall’s bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody stirred.
He went round to the back door, which had been left unfastened for
Laban’s entry, and passed in to the foot of the staircase.
“Mrs. Tall, I’ve come for the key of the granary, to get at the
rick-cloths,” said Oak, in a stentorian voice.
“Is that you?” said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.
“Yes,” said Gabriel.
“Come along to bed, do, you drawlatching rogue—keeping a body awake
like this!”
“It isn’t Laban—’tis Gabriel Oak. I want the key of the granary.”
“Gabriel! What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban for?”
“I didn’t. I thought you meant—”
“Yes you did! What do you want here?”
“The key of the granary.”
“Take it then. ’Tis on the nail. People coming disturbing women at this
time of night ought—”
Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the
tirade. Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen
dragging four large water-proof coverings across the yard, and soon two
of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug—two cloths to
each. Two hundred pounds were secured. Three wheat-stacks remained
open, and there were no more cloths. Oak looked under the staddles and
found a fork. He mounted the third pile of wealth and began operating,
adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one over the other; and,
in addition, filling the interstices with the material of some untied
sheaves.
So far all was well. By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba’s property
in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that
there was not much wind.
Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by
systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished not to
reappear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. The
night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an
utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow
breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now nothing was
heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the
spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE STORM—THE TWO TOGETHER
A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent
wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. It was the first
move of the approaching storm.
The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning.
Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba’s bedroom, and soon a shadow
swept to and fro upon the blind.
Then there came a third flash. Manœuvres of a most extraordinary kind
were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning
now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed
army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could
see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every
hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock
in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these
were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the
wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into
the air, their heads to earth. A poplar in the immediate foreground was
like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving
the darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with
his hands.
He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently
called—a long iron lance, polished by handling—into the stack, used to
support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom used on
houses. A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some indescribable
manner flickered down near the top of the rod. It was the fourth of the
larger flashes. A moment later and there was a smack—smart, clear, and
short. Gabriel felt his position to be anything but a safe one, and he
resolved to descend.
Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. He wiped his weary brow, and
looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. Was his life
so valuable to him after all? What were his prospects that he should be
so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour could not be
carried on without such risk? He resolved to stick to the stack.
However, he took a precaution. Under the staddles was a long tethering
chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. This he carried up
the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed
the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground. The spike attached
to it he drove in. Under the shadow of this extemporized
lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively safe.
Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the fifth
flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend. It was
green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. What was this
the light revealed to him? In the open ground before him, as he looked
over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently female form.
Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the parish—Bathsheba?
The form moved on a step: then he could see no more.
“Is that you, ma’am?” said Gabriel to the darkness.
“Who is there?” said the voice of Bathsheba.
“Gabriel. I am on the rick, thatching.”
“Oh, Gabriel!—and are you? I have come about them. The weather awoke
me, and I thought of the corn. I am so distressed about it—can we save
it anyhow? I cannot find my husband. Is he with you?”
“He is not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Asleep in the barn.”
“He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all
neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out.
Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something?”
“You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma’am; if you
are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark,” said Gabriel. “Every
moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. It is
not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit.”
“I’ll do anything!” she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf
upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind
the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick
suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica—every
knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him appeared
two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its sheen—the shapes
vanished. Gabriel turned his head. It had been the sixth flash which
had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope
had been the shadows of himself and Bathsheba.
Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly light
could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.
“How terrible!” she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve. Gabriel
turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding her arm. At the
same moment, while he was still reversed in his attitude, there was
more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the tall poplar tree on
the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn. It was the shadow of
that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west.
The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering
another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching—thunder and
all—and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence
everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as
Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He
thought the crisis of the storm had passed. But there came a burst of
light.
“Hold on!” said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and
grasping her arm again.
Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its
inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could
only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east,
west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of
skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones—dancing,
leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in
unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes
of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light.
Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be
called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more
of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. In the meantime
one of the grisly forms had alighted upon the point of Gabriel’s rod,
to run invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. Gabriel
was almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba’s warm arm tremble in
his hand—a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life,
everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition
with an infuriated universe.
Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and
to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light,
when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire to a
white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the
last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and
pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without
that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant
thunder. By the lustre reflected from every part of the earth and from
the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down
the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a huge riband of bark
being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and
revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The
lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air; then
all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom.
“We had a narrow escape!” said Gabriel, hurriedly. “You had better go
down.”
Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical
pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response to
her frightened pulsations. She descended the ladder, and, on second
thoughts, he followed her. The darkness was now impenetrable by the
sharpest vision. They both stood still at the bottom, side by side.
Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather—Oak thought only of her
just then. At last he said—
“The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate.”
“I think so too,” said Bathsheba. “Though there are multitudes of
gleams, look!”
The sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition
melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from the
successive strokes on a gong.
“Nothing serious,” said he. “I cannot understand no rain falling. But
Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us. I am now going up
again.”
“Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve! I will stay and help you yet.
Oh, why are not some of the others here!”
“They would have been here if they could,” said Oak, in a hesitating
way.
“O, I know it all—all,” she said, adding slowly: “They are all asleep
in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them. That’s it,
is it not? Don’t think I am a timid woman and can’t endure things.”
“I am not certain,” said Gabriel. “I will go and see.”
He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone. He looked through the
chinks of the door. All was in total darkness, as he had left it, and
there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of many