feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_35_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 36
feat_summary_id: chapter 36
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 36", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-36", "summary": "As night approaches, there are a few signs of approaching rain. Gabriel Oak looks out at a bunch of uncovered haystacks and thinks that they might be spoiled if they get rained on. Meanwhile, there's a celebration going on in the main barn for Bathsheba and Troy's wedding. Troy is having a great time and wants all the men in the barn to get drunk with him. Bathsheba is against this idea, but he insists. He's so insistent, in fact, that he eventually kicks all the women and children out of the barn and says it'll be a dudes-only party for the rest of the night. Gabriel tries to approach Troy to tell him about the need to cover the haystacks, since the farm would lose a lot of money if they were spoiled. But Troy just dismisses him by saying that it won't rain. Sure enough, it starts to rain. Gabriel runs outside into a thunderstorm to cover the haystacks. But first, he has to get the key to a building called the granary from one of the workmen's wives.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  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.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 36
target: As night approaches, there are a few signs of approaching rain. Gabriel Oak looks out at a bunch of uncovered haystacks and thinks that they might be spoiled if they get rained on. Meanwhile, there's a celebration going on in the main barn for Bathsheba and Troy's wedding. Troy is having a great time and wants all the men in the barn to get drunk with him. Bathsheba is against this idea, but he insists. He's so insistent, in fact, that he eventually kicks all the women and children out of the barn and says it'll be a dudes-only party for the rest of the night. Gabriel tries to approach Troy to tell him about the need to cover the haystacks, since the farm would lose a lot of money if they were spoiled. But Troy just dismisses him by saying that it won't rain. Sure enough, it starts to rain. Gabriel runs outside into a thunderstorm to cover the haystacks. But first, he has to get the key to a building called the granary from one of the workmen's wives.