CHAPTER XXXVIII
RAIN--ONE SOLITARY MEETS ANOTHER
It was now five o'clock, and the dawn was promising to break in huesof drab and ash.
The air changed its temperature and stirred itself more vigorously.Cool breezes coursed in transparent eddies round Oak's face. Thewind shifted yet a point or two and blew stronger. In ten minutesevery wind of heaven seemed to be roaming at large. Some of thethatching on the wheat-stacks was now whirled fantastically aloft,and had to be replaced and weighted with some rails that lay near athand. This done, Oak slaved away again at the barley. A huge dropof rain smote his face, the wind snarled round every corner, thetrees rocked to the bases of their trunks, and the twigs clashed instrife. Driving in spars at any point and on any system, inch byinch he covered more and more safely from ruin this distractingimpersonation of seven hundred pounds. The rain came on in earnest,and Oak soon felt the water to be tracking cold and clammy routesdown his back. Ultimately he was reduced well-nigh to a homogeneoussop, and the dyes of his clothes trickled down and stood in a poolat the foot of the ladder. The rain stretched obliquely through thedull atmosphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity betweentheir beginnings in the clouds and their points in him.
Oak suddenly remembered that eight months before this time he hadbeen fighting against fire in the same spot as desperately as hewas fighting against water now--and for a futile love of the samewoman. As for her--But Oak was generous and true, and dismissedhis reflections.
It was about seven o'clock in the dark leaden morning when Gabrielcame down from the last stack, and thankfully exclaimed, "It isdone!" He was drenched, weary, and sad, and yet not so sad asdrenched and weary, for he was cheered by a sense of success in agood cause.
Faint sounds came from the barn, and he looked that way. Figuresstepped singly and in pairs through the doors--all walking awkwardly,and abashed, save the foremost, who wore a red jacket, and advancedwith his hands in his pockets, whistling. The others shambled afterwith a conscience-stricken air: the whole procession was not unlikeFlaxman's group of the suitors tottering on towards the infernalregions under the conduct of Mercury. The gnarled shapes passedinto the village, Troy, their leader, entering the farmhouse. Not asingle one of them had turned his face to the ricks, or apparentlybestowed one thought upon their condition.
Soon Oak too went homeward, by a different route from theirs. Infront of him against the wet glazed surface of the lane he saw aperson walking yet more slowly than himself under an umbrella. Theman 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; quitewell."
"I am glad to hear it, sir."
Boldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees. "You look tiredand 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 yourhead?"
"I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to, that wasall."
"Indeed, then you are mistaken," said Boldwood, shortly. "Nothinghurts me. My constitution is an iron one."
"I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was barely intime. Never had such a struggle in my life.... Yours of course aresafe, sir."
"Oh yes," Boldwood added, after an interval of silence: "What did youask, 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 isdifficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcementhad upon Oak at such a moment. All the night he had been feelingthat the neglect he was labouring to repair was abnormal andisolated--the only instance of the kind within the circuit of thecounty. Yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greaterwaste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded. A fewmonths earlier Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been aspreposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship. Oakwas just thinking that whatever he himself might have suffered fromBathsheba's marriage, here was a man who had suffered more, whenBoldwood spoke in a changed voice--that of one who yearned to makea confidence and relieve his heart by an outpouring.
"Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with melately. I may as well own it. I was going to get a little settledin life; but in some way my plan has come to nothing."
"I thought my mistress would have married you," said Gabriel, notknowing enough of the full depths of Boldwood's love to keep silenceon the farmer's account, and determined not to evade discipline bydoing so on his own. "However, it is so sometimes, and nothinghappens that we expect," he added, with the repose of a man whommisfortune had inured rather than subdued.
"I daresay I am a joke about the parish," said Boldwood, as ifthe subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserablelightness 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 somefancy, any jilting on--her part. No engagement ever existed betweenme and Miss Everdene. People say so, but it is untrue: she neverpromised me!" Boldwood stood still now and turned his wild face toOak. "Oh, Gabriel," he continued, "I am weak and foolish, and Idon't know what, and I can't fend off my miserable grief! ... I hadsome 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 Himand was glad. But the next day He prepared a worm to smite the gourdand wither it; and I feel it is better to die than to live!"
A silence followed. Boldwood aroused himself from the momentarymood of confidence into which he had drifted, and walked on again,resuming his usual reserve.
"No, Gabriel," he resumed, with a carelessness which was likethe smile on the countenance of a skull: "it was made more of byother people than ever it was by us. I do feel a little regretoccasionally, but no woman ever had power over me for any length oftime. Well, good morning; I can trust you not to mention to otherswhat has passed between us two here."