feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_6_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Far from the Madding Crowd.chapters 35-38
feat_summary_id: chapters 35-38
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 35 to 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210225000853/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/maddingcrowd/section7/", "summary": "Gabriel and Coggan learn of the secret marriage the next day, when Sergeant Troy appears, greeting them and throwing money at them patronizingly, to Gabriel's great distress. Gabriel's feelings are registered by Coggan's comment that his face is as white as a corpse's. Soon afterward, Gabriel runs into Boldwood and notices Boldwood's look of despair. He foresees much future misery resulting from the hasty wedding. The next scene occurs at night, when Gabriel begins to notice signs of bad weather. It is the night of the harvest supper and dance, and Bathsheba and Troy have invited all the workers to celebrate the harvest and their marriage. We see the festivities from Gabriel's perspective. Then, Troy announces that he wants the laborers to be served brandy and water. None of the laborers are used to hard liquor, and Bathsheba objects, but Troy overrules her. She leaves with the women and children, and Troy insists that the men drink brandy with him. Gabriel slips outside and sees yet more signs of a huge oncoming storm: The sheep are huddled together; toads and slugs are seeking shelter. He calculates that with the wheat ricks and barley ricks, Bathsheba has 750 pounds' worth of produce lying exposed to the rain, and he goes to the barn to get help in covering it. Every single one of the workers is lying passed out with Troy in the barn, inexperienced with hard liquor. Gabriel decides he will have to save the wheat and barley single-handedly before the storm arrives. He works heroically to cover the wheat and then heads for the barley. Chapter 37 gives a dramatic account of the powerful lightning storm that hits just as Gabriel works atop one of the ricks, thatching it to protect it from rain. As he struggles there in the dark, he sees a figure and realizes it is Bathsheba, coming to his aid. As they thatch side by side, in grave danger of being hit by lightning, she confesses that she did not go to Bath with the intention of marrying. This is yet another moment in the novel when Bathsheba and Gabriel engage in an intimate conversation in which she turns to him for guidance, and her confession provides us with our first insight into the motivation behind Bathsheba's mysterious acts. She explains that she had gone to Bath meaning to break off her engagement to Troy. However, upon arriving in Bath, Troy again fell to lavishing compliments on her and said that \"his constancy could not be counted on\" unless she at once married him. Bathsheba recounts that she was \"grieved and troubled,\" and married him in a state between \"jealousy and distraction.\" At seven in the morning, once he has sent Bathsheba home and covered the ricks in the rain, Gabriel finishes and heads home. He sees the farm workers just waking up from their excesses, unaware that the ricks were ever endangered, and then he runs across Boldwood. Gabriel asks after Boldwood's own ricks, only to find that he has left them all uncovered. Gabriel is intensely shocked at Boldwood's negligence: \"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.\" Boldwood ashamedly declares himself weak and foolish, unable to fend off his miserable grief.", "analysis": "Commentary Throughout this section, Gabriel acts as overseer and observer, the only truly sane man in a time of trouble. He is a stand-in for the reader, who also sees the folly of Bathsheba and Boldwood's actions but without being able to stop them. Through his sensibility, we are given a measure of the madness that has taken over the others, even the normally reliable, down-to-earth farm workers. The storm is one of the few catastrophes in the novel inflicted by the natural world. In this struggle with nature, we see how different people respond to forces beyond human control. Gabriel emerges as the person most attuned to the signals of nature and able to read what will happen and control it as well as he can. Chapter 36 gives an extraordinary account of a series of natural signs--a toad on the path, a slug crawling across the table, and sheep huddling together. Hardy first presents this information to us, though we don't know what it means, and then shows how Gabriel is able to interpret it correctly: Gabriel realizes that the sheep's position foretells a long and constant rain after the initial storm. The storm's destructive force symbolizes that of Troy upon the people around him, from Bathsheba and Boldwood to the laborers. Hardy depicts a world in which one must be constantly attentive and responsible in order to survive; that is the reality of farm life. Troy dismisses such attention to work and the natural world, but in this scene, we begin to realize why Gabriel's cautious, responsible qualities, while perhaps less beguiling than Troy's extravagantly romantic manner, are more valuable in the world of the novel. Bathsheba realizes this too. As he stands on the rick, saving it from the storm, Gabriel remembers the time eight months earlier when he saved a rick from the fire. By linking the two scenes, Hardy indicates how the characters and circumstances have changed since the first event. Similarly, Bathsheba's conversation with Gabriel is one of several she has with him alone, the first being the conversation in which Gabriel first proposes to her. In each of these talks, questions come up regarding marriage and the motivations for it. Gabriel is the one intelligent person in whom Bathsheba can confide. By isolating these conversations and studying their progression in series, a reader can see the transformations Bathsheba experiences over the course of the novel. Notice the suspense Hardy builds into this section as Gabriel wonders what has driven Bathsheba to marry. Just when a crucial event has occurred, Hardy removes the reader from Bathsheba's point of view, intentionally leaving us wondering."}
text: 
  
  AT AN UPPER WINDOW
  
  
  It was very early the next morning--a time of sun and dew.  The
  confused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air,
  and the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin
  webs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day.
  All the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the
  shadows were attenuated as to form.  The creeping plants about the
  old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which
  had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high
  magnifying power.
  
  Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the
  village cross, and went on together to the fields.  They were yet
  barely in view of their mistress's house, when Oak fancied he saw the
  opening of a casement in one of the upper windows.  The two men were
  at this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning
  to be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before
  emerging from its shade.
  
  A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice.  He looked east and then
  west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey.  The
  man was Sergeant Troy.  His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but
  not buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier
  taking his ease.
  
  Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window.
  
  "She has married him!" he said.
  
  Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his
  back turned, making no reply.
  
  "I fancied we should know something to-day," continued Coggan.  "I
  heard wheels pass my door just after dark--you were out somewhere."
  He glanced round upon Gabriel.  "Good heavens above us, Oak, how
  white your face is; you look like a corpse!"
  
  "Do I?" said Oak, with a faint smile.
  
  "Lean on the gate: I'll wait a bit."
  
  "All right, all right."
  
  They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the
  ground.  His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in
  years of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this
  work of haste.  That they were married he had instantly decided.  Why
  had it been so mysteriously managed?  It had become known that she
  had had a fearful journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the
  distance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more
  than two days getting there.  It was not Bathsheba's way to do things
  furtively.  With all her faults, she was candour itself.  Could she
  have been entrapped?  The union was not only an unutterable grief to
  him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding
  week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting
  her away from home.  Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent
  dispersed the dread.  Just as that imperceptible motion which appears
  like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness
  itself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from
  despair indeed.
  
  In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house.  The sergeant
  still looked from the window.
  
  "Morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came
  up.
  
  Coggan replied to the greeting.  "Bain't ye going to answer the man?"
  he then said to Gabriel.  "I'd say good morning--you needn't spend a
  hapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil."
  
  Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the
  best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he
  loved.
  
  "Good morning, Sergeant Troy," he returned, in a ghastly voice.
  
  "A rambling, gloomy house this," said Troy, smiling.
  
  "Why--they MAY not be married!" suggested Coggan.  "Perhaps she's not
  there."
  
  Gabriel shook his head.  The soldier turned a little towards the
  east, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow.
  
  "But it is a nice old house," responded Gabriel.
  
  "Yes--I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here.
  My notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these
  old wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite
  away, and the walls papered."
  
  "It would be a pity, I think."
  
  "Well, no.  A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old
  builders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect
  for the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and
  altered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we?  'Creation and
  preservation don't do well together,' says he, 'and a million of
  antiquarians can't invent a style.' My mind exactly.  I am for making
  this place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can."
  
  The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to
  assist his ideas of improvement in this direction.  Gabriel and
  Coggan began to move on.
  
  "Oh, Coggan," said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection "do you
  know if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood's family?"
  
  Jan reflected for a moment.
  
  "I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don't
  know the rights o't," he said.
  
  "It is of no importance," said Troy, lightly.  "Well, I shall be down
  in the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters
  to attend to first.  So good-day to you.  We shall, of course, keep
  on just as friendly terms as usual.  I'm not a proud man: nobody is
  ever able to say that of Sergeant Troy.  However, what is must be,
  and here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men."
  
  Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the
  fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning
  to an angry red.  Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught
  the money in its ricochet upon the road.
  
  "Very well--you keep it, Coggan," said Gabriel with disdain and
  almost fiercely.  "As for me, I'll do without gifts from him!"
  
  "Don't show it too much," said Coggan, musingly.  "For if he's
  married to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our
  master here.  Therefore 'tis well to say 'Friend' outwardly, though
  you say 'Troublehouse' within."
  
  "Well--perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can't go further than
  that.  I can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by
  smoothing him down, my place must be lost."
  
  A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now
  appeared close beside them.
  
  "There's Mr. Boldwood," said Oak.  "I wonder what Troy meant by his
  question."
  
  Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their
  paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not
  stood back to let him pass on.
  
  The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating
  through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour
  in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in
  his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth.
  The horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed
  significant of dogged despair.  Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his
  own grief in noticing Boldwood's.  He saw the square figure sitting
  erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows
  steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in
  its onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood's shape sank by
  degrees over the hill.  To one who knew the man and his story there
  was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse.
  The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced
  painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more
  dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of
  this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.
  
  
  
  
  
  WEALTH IN JEOPARDY--THE REVEL
  
  
  One night, at the end of August, when Bathsheba's experiences as a
  married woman were still new, and when the weather was yet dry and
  sultry, a man stood motionless in the stockyard of Weatherbury Upper
  Farm, looking at the moon and sky.
  
  The night had a sinister aspect.  A heated breeze from the south
  slowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes
  of buoyant cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that
  of another stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze
  below.  The moon, as seen through these films, had a lurid metallic
  look.  The fields were sallow with the impure light, and all were
  tinged in monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass.  The same
  evening the sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the behaviour of
  the rooks had been confused, and the horses had moved with timidity
  and caution.
  
  Thunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appearances into
  consideration, it was likely to be followed by one of the lengthened
  rains which mark the close of dry weather for the season.  Before
  twelve hours had passed a harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing.
  
  Oak gazed with misgiving at eight naked and unprotected ricks,
  massive and heavy with the rich produce of one-half the farm for
  that year.  He went on to the barn.
  
  This was the night which had been selected by Sergeant Troy--ruling
  now in the room of his wife--for giving the harvest supper and dance.
  As Oak approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine,
  and the regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct.  He came
  close to the large doors, one of which stood slightly ajar, and
  looked in.
  
  The central space, together with the recess at one end, was emptied
  of all incumbrances, and this area, covering about two-thirds of
  the whole, was appropriated for the gathering, the remaining end,
  which was piled to the ceiling with oats, being screened off with
  sail-cloth.  Tufts and garlands of green foliage decorated the walls,
  beams, and extemporized chandeliers, and immediately opposite to Oak
  a rostrum had been erected, bearing a table and chairs.  Here sat
  three fiddlers, and beside them stood a frantic man with his hair
  on end, perspiration streaming down his cheeks, and a tambourine
  quivering in his hand.
  
  The dance ended, and on the black oak floor in the midst a new row of
  couples formed for another.
  
  "Now, ma'am, and no offence I hope, I ask what dance you would like
  next?" said the first violin.
  
  "Really, it makes no difference," said the clear voice of Bathsheba,
  who stood at the inner end of the building, observing the scene from
  behind a table covered with cups and viands.  Troy was lolling beside
  her.
  
  "Then," said the fiddler, "I'll venture to name that the right and
  proper thing is 'The Soldier's Joy'--there being a gallant soldier
  married into the farm--hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?"
  
  "It shall be 'The Soldier's Joy,'" exclaimed a chorus.
  
  "Thanks for the compliment," said the sergeant gaily, taking
  Bathsheba by the hand and leading her to the top of the dance.  "For
  though I have purchased my discharge from Her Most Gracious Majesty's
  regiment of cavalry the 11th Dragoon Guards, to attend to the new
  duties awaiting me here, I shall continue a soldier in spirit and
  feeling as long as I live."
  
  So the dance began.  As to the merits of "The Soldier's Joy," there
  cannot be, and never were, two opinions.  It has been observed in the
  musical circles of Weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at
  the end of three-quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still
  possesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the
  majority of other dances at their first opening.  "The Soldier's Joy"
  has, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the
  tambourine aforesaid--no mean instrument in the hands of a performer
  who understands the proper convulsions, spasms, St. Vitus's dances,
  and fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their
  highest perfection.
  
  The immortal tune ended, a fine DD rolling forth from the bass-viol
  with the sonorousness of a cannonade, and Gabriel delayed his entry
  no longer.  He avoided Bathsheba, and got as near as possible
  to the platform, where Sergeant Troy was now seated, drinking
  brandy-and-water, though the others drank without exception cider and
  ale. Gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance
  of the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a
  moment.  The sergeant said he could not attend.
  
  "Will you tell him, then," said Gabriel, "that I only stepped ath'art
  to say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something
  should be done to protect the ricks?"
  
  "Mr. Troy says it will not rain," returned the messenger, "and he
  cannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets."
  
  In juxtaposition with Troy, Oak had a melancholy tendency to look
  like a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again,
  thinking he would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no
  heart for the scene in the barn.  At the door he paused for a moment:
  Troy was speaking.
  
  "Friends, it is not only the harvest home that we are celebrating
  to-night; but this is also a Wedding Feast.  A short time ago I had
  the happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not
  until now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event
  in Weatherbury.  That it may be thoroughly well done, and that every
  man may go happy to bed, I have ordered to be brought here some
  bottles of brandy and kettles of hot water.  A treble-strong goblet
  will be handed round to each guest."
  
  Bathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face,
  said imploringly, "No--don't give it to them--pray don't, Frank!  It
  will only do them harm: they have had enough of everything."
  
  "True--we don't wish for no more, thank ye," said one or two.
  
  "Pooh!" said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as
  if lighted up by a new idea.  "Friends," he said, "we'll send the
  women-folk home!  'Tis time they were in bed.  Then we cockbirds will
  have a jolly carouse to ourselves!  If any of the men show the white
  feather, let them look elsewhere for a winter's work."
  
  Bathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and
  children.  The musicians, not looking upon themselves as "company,"
  slipped quietly away to their spring waggon and put in the horse.
  Thus Troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the
  place.  Oak, not to appear unnecessarily disagreeable, stayed a
  little while; then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure,
  followed by a friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a
  second round of grog.
  
  Gabriel proceeded towards his home.  In approaching the door, his
  toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and
  distended, like a boxing-glove.  It was a large toad humbly
  travelling across the path.  Oak took it up, thinking it might be
  better to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it
  uninjured, he placed it again among the grass.  He knew what this
  direct message from the Great Mother meant.  And soon came another.
  
  When he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin
  glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged
  across it.  Oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other
  side, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come
  indoors to-night for reasons of its own.  It was Nature's second way
  of hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather.
  
  Oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour.  During this time two
  black spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the
  ceiling, ultimately dropping to the floor.  This reminded him that
  if there was one class of manifestation on this matter that he
  thoroughly understood, it was the instincts of sheep.  He left the
  room, ran across two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a
  hedge, and looked over among them.
  
  They were crowded close together on the other side around some furze
  bushes, and the first peculiarity observable was that, on the sudden
  appearance of Oak's head over the fence, they did not stir or run
  away.  They had now a terror of something greater than their terror
  of man.  But this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all
  grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception,
  were towards that half of the horizon from which the storm
  threatened.  There was an inner circle closely huddled, and outside
  these they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a
  whole not being unlike a vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of
  furze-bushes stood in the position of a wearer's neck.
  
  This was enough to re-establish him in his original opinion.  He knew
  now that he was right, and that Troy was wrong. Every voice in nature
  was unanimous in bespeaking change.  But two distinct translations
  attached to these dumb expressions.  Apparently there was to be a
  thunder-storm, and afterwards a cold continuous rain.  The creeping
  things seemed to know all about the later rain, but little of the
  interpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the
  thunder-storm and nothing of the later rain.
  
  This complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be
  feared.  Oak returned to the stack-yard.  All was silent here, and
  the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky.  There were
  five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley.  The wheat
  when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the
  barley, at least forty.  Their value to Bathsheba, and indeed to
  anybody, Oak mentally estimated by the following simple
  calculation:--
  
  
        5 x 30 = 150 quarters = 500 L.
        3 x 40 = 120 quarters = 250 L.
                              -------
                      Total . . 750 L.
  
  
  Seven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can
  wear--that of necessary food for man and beast: should the risk be
  run of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value,
  because of the instability of a woman?  "Never, if I can prevent it!"
  said Gabriel.
  
  Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him.  But man,
  even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and
  another beneath the lines.  It is possible that there was this golden
  legend under the utilitarian one: "I will help to my last effort the
  woman I have loved so dearly."
  
  He went back to the barn to endeavour to obtain assistance for
  covering the ricks that very night.  All was silent within, and he
  would have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had
  not a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish
  whiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors.
  
  Gabriel looked in.  An unusual picture met his eye.
  
  The candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their
  sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.
  Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank,
  grease dropping from them upon the floor.  Here, under the table, and
  leaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except
  the perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk,
  the hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops
  and brooms.  In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure
  of Sergeant Troy, leaning back in a chair.  Coggan was on his back,
  with his mouth open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others;
  the united breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued
  roar like London from a distance.  Joseph Poorgrass was curled round
  in the fashion of a hedge-hog, apparently in attempts to present the
  least possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him
  was dimly visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury.
  The glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being
  overturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with
  marvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the
  neck of the unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip,
  like the dripping of a stalactite in a cave.
  
  Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two
  exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm.  He saw
  at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the
  next morning, he must save them with his own hands.
  
  A faint "ting-ting" resounded from under Coggan's waistcoat.  It was
  Coggan's watch striking the hour of two.
  
  Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook
  the rough thatching of the home-stead, and shook him.  The shaking
  was without effect.
  
  Gabriel shouted in his ear, "where's your thatching-beetle and
  rick-stick and spars?"
  
  "Under the staddles," said Moon, mechanically, with the unconscious
  promptness of a medium.
  
  Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl.
  He then went to Susan Tall's husband.
  
  "Where's the key of the granary?"
  
  No answer.  The question was repeated, with the same result.  To be
  shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall's
  husband than to Matthew Moon.  Oak flung down Tall's head into the
  corner again and turned away.
  
  To be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and
  demoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment.  Sergeant
  Troy had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should
  be the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly
  liked to be so unmannerly under the circumstances.  Having from their
  youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider
  or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all,
  with extraordinary uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.
  
  Gabriel was greatly depressed.  This debauch boded ill for that
  wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt
  within him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and
  hopeless.
  
  He put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be
  endangered, closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious
  sleep, and went again into the lone night.  A hot breeze, as if
  breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the
  globe, fanned him from 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.
  
  
  
  
  
  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.  Manoeuvres 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.
  
  
  
  
  
  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."
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 35 to 38
target: Gabriel and Coggan learn of the secret marriage the next day, when Sergeant Troy appears, greeting them and throwing money at them patronizingly, to Gabriel's great distress. Gabriel's feelings are registered by Coggan's comment that his face is as white as a corpse's. Soon afterward, Gabriel runs into Boldwood and notices Boldwood's look of despair. He foresees much future misery resulting from the hasty wedding. The next scene occurs at night, when Gabriel begins to notice signs of bad weather. It is the night of the harvest supper and dance, and Bathsheba and Troy have invited all the workers to celebrate the harvest and their marriage. We see the festivities from Gabriel's perspective. Then, Troy announces that he wants the laborers to be served brandy and water. None of the laborers are used to hard liquor, and Bathsheba objects, but Troy overrules her. She leaves with the women and children, and Troy insists that the men drink brandy with him. Gabriel slips outside and sees yet more signs of a huge oncoming storm: The sheep are huddled together; toads and slugs are seeking shelter. He calculates that with the wheat ricks and barley ricks, Bathsheba has 750 pounds' worth of produce lying exposed to the rain, and he goes to the barn to get help in covering it. Every single one of the workers is lying passed out with Troy in the barn, inexperienced with hard liquor. Gabriel decides he will have to save the wheat and barley single-handedly before the storm arrives. He works heroically to cover the wheat and then heads for the barley. Chapter 37 gives a dramatic account of the powerful lightning storm that hits just as Gabriel works atop one of the ricks, thatching it to protect it from rain. As he struggles there in the dark, he sees a figure and realizes it is Bathsheba, coming to his aid. As they thatch side by side, in grave danger of being hit by lightning, she confesses that she did not go to Bath with the intention of marrying. This is yet another moment in the novel when Bathsheba and Gabriel engage in an intimate conversation in which she turns to him for guidance, and her confession provides us with our first insight into the motivation behind Bathsheba's mysterious acts. She explains that she had gone to Bath meaning to break off her engagement to Troy. However, upon arriving in Bath, Troy again fell to lavishing compliments on her and said that "his constancy could not be counted on" unless she at once married him. Bathsheba recounts that she was "grieved and troubled," and married him in a state between "jealousy and distraction." At seven in the morning, once he has sent Bathsheba home and covered the ricks in the rain, Gabriel finishes and heads home. He sees the farm workers just waking up from their excesses, unaware that the ricks were ever endangered, and then he runs across Boldwood. Gabriel asks after Boldwood's own ricks, only to find that he has left them all uncovered. Gabriel is intensely shocked at Boldwood's negligence: "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." Boldwood ashamedly declares himself weak and foolish, unable to fend off his miserable grief.
feat_summary_analysis: Commentary Throughout this section, Gabriel acts as overseer and observer, the only truly sane man in a time of trouble. He is a stand-in for the reader, who also sees the folly of Bathsheba and Boldwood's actions but without being able to stop them. Through his sensibility, we are given a measure of the madness that has taken over the others, even the normally reliable, down-to-earth farm workers. The storm is one of the few catastrophes in the novel inflicted by the natural world. In this struggle with nature, we see how different people respond to forces beyond human control. Gabriel emerges as the person most attuned to the signals of nature and able to read what will happen and control it as well as he can. Chapter 36 gives an extraordinary account of a series of natural signs--a toad on the path, a slug crawling across the table, and sheep huddling together. Hardy first presents this information to us, though we don't know what it means, and then shows how Gabriel is able to interpret it correctly: Gabriel realizes that the sheep's position foretells a long and constant rain after the initial storm. The storm's destructive force symbolizes that of Troy upon the people around him, from Bathsheba and Boldwood to the laborers. Hardy depicts a world in which one must be constantly attentive and responsible in order to survive; that is the reality of farm life. Troy dismisses such attention to work and the natural world, but in this scene, we begin to realize why Gabriel's cautious, responsible qualities, while perhaps less beguiling than Troy's extravagantly romantic manner, are more valuable in the world of the novel. Bathsheba realizes this too. As he stands on the rick, saving it from the storm, Gabriel remembers the time eight months earlier when he saved a rick from the fire. By linking the two scenes, Hardy indicates how the characters and circumstances have changed since the first event. Similarly, Bathsheba's conversation with Gabriel is one of several she has with him alone, the first being the conversation in which Gabriel first proposes to her. In each of these talks, questions come up regarding marriage and the motivations for it. Gabriel is the one intelligent person in whom Bathsheba can confide. By isolating these conversations and studying their progression in series, a reader can see the transformations Bathsheba experiences over the course of the novel. Notice the suspense Hardy builds into this section as Gabriel wonders what has driven Bathsheba to marry. Just when a crucial event has occurred, Hardy removes the reader from Bathsheba's point of view, intentionally leaving us wondering.