CHAPTER XXII

THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not

making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good

spirits when they are indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the first time

since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought

and vigorous in action to a marked extent—conditions which, powerless

without an opportunity as an opportunity without them is barren, would

have given him a sure lift upwards when the favourable conjunction

should have occurred. But this incurable loitering beside Bathsheba

Everdene stole his time ruinously. The spring tides were going by

without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not.

It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season culminated,

the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being all health and

colour. Every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was

swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present in the

country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy catkins

of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops’ croziers, the

square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint,—like an apoplectic saint

in a niche of malachite,—snow-white ladies’-smocks, the toothwort,

approximating to human flesh, the enchanter’s night-shade, and the

black-petaled doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the

vegetable world in and about Weatherbury at this teeming time; and of

the animal, the metamorphosed figures of Mr. Jan Coggan, the

master-shearer; the second and third shearers, who travelled in the

exercise of their calling, and do not require definition by name;

Henery Fray the fourth shearer, Susan Tall’s husband the fifth, Joseph

Poorgrass the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and Gabriel

Oak as general supervisor. None of these were clothed to any extent

worth mentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment

the decent mean between a high and low caste Hindoo. An angularity of

lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed that

serious work was the order of the day.

They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the Shearing-barn,

which on ground-plan resembled a church with transepts. It not only

emulated the form of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied

with it in antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one of a group

of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be aware; no trace of such

surroundings remained. The vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to

admit a waggon laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were

spanned by heavy-pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose

very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not apparent in erections

where more ornament has been attempted. The dusky, filmed, chestnut

roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was

far nobler in design, because more wealthy in material, than

nine-tenths of those in our modern churches. Along each side wall was a

range of striding buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces

between them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in

their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty and

ventilation.

One could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either the

church or the castle, akin to it in age and style, that the purpose

which had dictated its original erection was the same with that to

which it was still applied. Unlike and superior to either of those two

typical remnants of mediævalism, the old barn embodied practices which

had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the

spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern

beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its

present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied

sense of functional continuity throughout—a feeling almost of

gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had

heaped it up. The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be

founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given

rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple

grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too

curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and

military compeers. For once mediævalism and modernism had a common

stand-point. The lanceolate windows, the time-eaten archstones and

chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the

rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious

creed. The defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a

study, a religion, and a desire.

To-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit a

bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers’ operations,

which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick oak,

black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many

generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the

state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion. Here the shearers knelt,

the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the

polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a

thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath them a

captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving merged in

terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.

This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not

produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is

implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury

was immutable. The citizen’s _Then_ is the rustic’s _Now_. In London,

twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five;

in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere

present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or

tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery

of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. Ten generations failed to

alter the turn of a single phrase. In these Wessex nooks the busy

outsider’s ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his

present is futurity.

So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in

harmony with the barn.

The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave

and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being

all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle

a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were

continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time.

In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women,

Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the

fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round.

They were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when

the malting season from October to April had passed, made himself

useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.

Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that there

was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the animals

were shorn close. Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her bright

eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time being spent

in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for them. At the

present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of mild liquor,

supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of bread and

cheese.

Bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there, and lecturing

one of the younger operators who had allowed his last finished sheep to

go off among the flock without re-stamping it with her initials, came

again to Gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to drag a frightened ewe

to his shear-station, flinging it over upon its back with a dexterous

twist of the arm. He lopped off the tresses about its head, and opened

up the neck and collar, his mistress quietly looking on.

“She blushes at the insult,” murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink

flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe

where they were left bare by the clicking shears—a flush which was

enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have

been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world.

Poor Gabriel’s soul was fed with a luxury of content by having her over

him, her eyes critically regarding his skilful shears, which apparently

were going to gather up a piece of the flesh at every close, and yet

never did so. Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in that he was not over

happy. He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and

himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no

others in the world, was enough.

So the chatter was all on her side. There is a loquacity that tells

nothing, which was Bathsheba’s; and there is a silence which says much:

that was Gabriel’s. Full of this dim and temperate bliss, he went on to

fling the ewe over upon her other side, covering her head with his

knee, gradually running the shears line after line round her dewlap;

thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail.

“Well done, and done quickly!” said Bathsheba, looking at her watch as

the last snip resounded.

“How long, miss?” said Gabriel, wiping his brow.

“Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the first lock from

its forehead. It is the first time that I have ever seen one done in

less than half an hour.”

The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece—how perfectly like

Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be

realized—looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay

on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion visible

being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed, was white as

snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind.

“Cain Ball!”

“Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!”

Cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot. “B. E.” is newly stamped upon

the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps, panting, over the board

into the shirtless flock outside. Then up comes Maryann; throws the

loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it

into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated warmth

for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and far away, who will,

however, never experience the superlative comfort derivable from the

wool as it here exists, new and pure—before the unctuousness of its

nature whilst in a living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed

out—rendering it just now as superior to anything _woollen_ as cream is

superior to milk-and-water.

But heartless circumstance could not leave entire Gabriel’s happiness

of this morning. The rams, old ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly

undergone their stripping, and the men were proceeding with the

shearlings and hogs, when Oak’s belief that she was going to stand

pleasantly by and time him through another performance was painfully

interrupted by Farmer Boldwood’s appearance in the extremest corner of

the barn. Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there he

certainly was. Boldwood always carried with him a social atmosphere of

his own, which everybody felt who came near him; and the talk, which

Bathsheba’s presence had somewhat suppressed, was now totally

suspended.

He crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him with a

carriage of perfect ease. He spoke to her in low tones, and she

instinctively modulated her own to the same pitch, and her voice

ultimately even caught the inflection of his. She was far from having a

wish to appear mysteriously connected with him; but woman at the

impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in her choice

of words, which is apparent every day, but even in her shades of tone

and humour, when the influence is great.

What they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who was too

independent to get near, though too concerned to disregard. The issue

of their dialogue was the taking of her hand by the courteous farmer to

help her over the spreading-board into the bright June sunlight

outside. Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went on talking

again. Concerning the flock? Apparently not. Gabriel theorized, not

without truth, that in quiet discussion of any matter within reach of

the speakers’ eyes, these are usually fixed upon it. Bathsheba demurely

regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the ground, in a way which

suggested less ovine criticism than womanly embarrassment. She became

more or less red in the cheek, the blood wavering in uncertain flux and

reflux over the sensitive space between ebb and flood. Gabriel sheared

on, constrained and sad.

She left Boldwood’s side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly a

quarter of an hour. Then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of

myrtle green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit;

and young Bob Coggan led on her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse

from the tree under which it had been tied.

Oak’s eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to continue his

shearing at the same time that he watched Boldwood’s manner, he snipped

the sheep in the groin. The animal plunged; Bathsheba instantly gazed

towards it, and saw the blood.

“Oh, Gabriel!” she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, “you who are so

strict with the other men—see what you are doing yourself!”

To an outsider there was not much to complain of in this remark; but to

Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that she herself was the cause

of the poor ewe’s wound, because she had wounded the ewe’s shearer in a

still more vital part, it had a sting which the abiding sense of his

inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not calculated to heal.

But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he had no longer a lover’s

interest in her, helped him occasionally to conceal a feeling.

“Bottle!” he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine. Cainy Ball ran

up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing continued.

Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before they

turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same dominative and

tantalizing graciousness.

“I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood’s Leicesters. Take my place in the

barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to their work.”

The horses’ heads were put about, and they trotted away.

Boldwood’s deep attachment was a matter of great interest among all

around him; but, after having been pointed out for so many years as the

perfect exemplar of thriving bachelorship, his lapse was an anticlimax

somewhat resembling that of St. John Long’s death by consumption in the

midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal disease.

“That means matrimony,” said Temperance Miller, following them out of

sight with her eyes.

“I reckon that’s the size o’t,” said Coggan, working along without

looking up.

“Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor,” said Laban Tall,

turning his sheep.

Henery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same time: “I don’t

see why a maid should take a husband when she’s bold enough to fight

her own battles, and don’t want a home; for ’tis keeping another woman

out. But let it be, for ’tis a pity he and she should trouble two

houses.”

As usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably provoked the

criticism of individuals like Henery Fray. Her emblazoned fault was to

be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her

likings. We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but

those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by;

and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and

antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at

all.

Henery continued in a more complaisant mood: “I once hinted my mind to

her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to

such a froward piece. You all know, neighbours, what a man I be, and

how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling wi’

scarn?”

“We do, we do, Henery.”

“So I said, ‘Mistress Everdene, there’s places empty, and there’s

gifted men willing; but the spite’—no, not the spite—I didn’t say

spite—‘but the villainy of the contrarikind,’ I said (meaning

womankind), ‘keeps ’em out.’ That wasn’t too strong for her, say?”

“Passably well put.”

“Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation overtook me for

it. Such is my spirit when I have a mind.”

“A true man, and proud as a lucifer.”

“You see the artfulness? Why, ’twas about being baily really; but I

didn’t put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so I could

lay it on all the stronger. That was my depth!... However, let her

marry an she will. Perhaps ’tis high time. I believe Farmer Boldwood

kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t’other day—that I

do.”

“What a lie!” said Gabriel.

“Ah, neighbour Oak—how’st know?” said, Henery, mildly.

“Because she told me all that passed,” said Oak, with a pharisaical

sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter.

“Ye have a right to believe it,” said Henery, with dudgeon; “a very

true right. But I mid see a little distance into things! To be

long-headed enough for a baily’s place is a poor mere trifle—yet a

trifle more than nothing. However, I look round upon life quite cool.

Do you heed me, neighbours? My words, though made as simple as I can,

mid be rather deep for some heads.”

“O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye.”

“A strange old piece, goodmen—whirled about from here to yonder, as if

I were nothing! A little warped, too. But I have my depths; ha, and

even my great depths! I might gird at a certain shepherd, brain to

brain. But no—O no!”

“A strange old piece, ye say!” interposed the maltster, in a querulous

voice. “At the same time ye be no old man worth naming—no old man at

all. Yer teeth bain’t half gone yet; and what’s a old man’s standing if

so be his teeth bain’t gone? Weren’t I stale in wedlock afore ye were

out of arms? ’Tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there’s people far

past four-score—a boast weak as water.”

It was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences

when the maltster had to be pacified.

“Weak as water! yes,” said Jan Coggan. “Malter, we feel ye to be a

wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it.”

“Nobody,” said Joseph Poorgrass. “Ye be a very rare old spectacle,

malter, and we all admire ye for that gift.”

“Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, I was

likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me,” said the maltster.

“’Ithout doubt you was—’ithout doubt.”

The bent and hoary man was satisfied, and so apparently was Henery

Fray. That matters should continue pleasant Maryann spoke, who, what

with her brown complexion, and the working wrapper of rusty linsey, had

at present the mellow hue of an old sketch in oils—notably some of

Nicholas Poussin’s:—

“Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-hand fellow

at all that would do for poor me?” said Maryann. “A perfect one I don’t

expect to get at my time of life. If I could hear of such a thing

’twould do me more good than toast and ale.”

Coggan furnished a suitable reply. Oak went on with his shearing, and

said not another word. Pestilent moods had come, and teased away his

quiet. Bathsheba had shown indications of anointing him above his

fellows by installing him as the bailiff that the farm imperatively

required. He did not covet the post relatively to the farm: in relation

to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to another, he had coveted

it. His readings of her seemed now to be vapoury and indistinct. His

lecture to her was, he thought, one of the absurdest mistakes. Far from

coquetting with Boldwood, she had trifled with himself in thus feigning

that she had trifled with another. He was inwardly convinced that, in

accordance with the anticipations of his easy-going and worse-educated

comrades, that day would see Boldwood the accepted husband of Miss

Everdene. Gabriel at this time of his life had out-grown the

instinctive dislike which every Christian boy has for reading the

Bible, perusing it now quite frequently, and he inwardly said, “‘I find

more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!’” This

was mere exclamation—the froth of the storm. He adored Bathsheba just

the same.

“We workfolk shall have some lordly junketing to-night,” said Cainy

Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction. “This morning I

see ’em making the great puddens in the milking-pails—lumps of fat as

big as yer thumb, Mister Oak! I’ve never seed such splendid large knobs

of fat before in the days of my life—they never used to be bigger then

a horse-bean. And there was a great black crock upon the brandish with

his legs a-sticking out, but I don’t know what was in within.”

“And there’s two bushels of biffins for apple-pies,” said Maryann.

“Well, I hope to do my duty by it all,” said Joseph Poorgrass, in a

pleasant, masticating manner of anticipation. “Yes; victuals and drink

is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of

words may be used. ’Tis the gospel of the body, without which we

perish, so to speak it.”