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

snores.

He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned. It was

Bathsheba’s breath—she had followed him, and was looking into the same

chink.

He endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of their

thoughts by remarking gently, “If you’ll come back again, miss—ma’am,

and hand up a few more; it would save much time.”

Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder

for greater expedition, and went on thatching. She followed, but

without a sheaf.

“Gabriel,” she said, in a strange and impressive voice.

Oak looked up at her. She had not spoken since he left the barn. The

soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble face

high against the black sky of the opposite quarter. Bathsheba was

sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up beneath

her, and resting on the top round of the ladder.

“Yes, mistress,” he said.

“I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night it

was on purpose to be married?”

“I did at last—not at first,” he answered, somewhat surprised at the

abruptness with which this new subject was broached.

“And others thought so, too?”

“Yes.”

“And you blamed me for it?”

“Well—a little.”

“I thought so. Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and I want

to explain something—I have longed to do it ever since I returned, and

you looked so gravely at me. For if I were to die—and I may die soon—it

would be dreadful that you should always think mistakenly of me. Now,

listen.”

Gabriel ceased his rustling.

“I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my

engagement to Mr. Troy. It was owing to circumstances which occurred

after I got there that—that we were married. Now, do you see the matter

in a new light?”

“I do—somewhat.”

“I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun. And perhaps it’s

no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever loved you,

or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that object I have

mentioned. Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame.

And at last I didn’t know what to do. I saw, when it was too late, that

scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. But I

was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman

more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on

unless I at once became his.... And I was grieved and troubled—” She

cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. “And

then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!” she whispered

with desperate impetuosity.

Gabriel made no reply.

“He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about—about his seeing

somebody else,” she quickly added. “And now I don’t wish for a single

remark from you upon the subject—indeed, I forbid it. I only wanted you

to know that misunderstood bit of my history before a time comes when

you could never know it.—You want some more sheaves?”

She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded. Gabriel soon

perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and

he said to her, gently as a mother—

“I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired. I can finish the

rest alone. If the wind does not change the rain is likely to keep

off.”

“If I am useless I will go,” said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence.

“But O, if your life should be lost!”

“You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer. You have

done well.”

“And you better!” she said, gratefully. “Thank you for your devotion, a

thousand times, Gabriel! Goodnight—I know you are doing your very best

for me.”

She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch of

the gate fall as she passed through. He worked in a reverie now, musing

upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that feminine heart

which had caused her to speak more warmly to him to-night than she ever

had done whilst unmarried and free to speak as warmly as she chose.

He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the

coach-house. It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change

in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.