CHAPTER V
DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA--A PASTORAL TRAGEDY
The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdenehad left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which mighthave surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic therenunciation the less absolute its character.
It may have been observed that there is no regular path for gettingout of love as there is for getting in. Some people look uponmarriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.Separation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak byBathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certainhumours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others--notablythose whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deepand long. Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, andfelt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with afiner flame now that she was gone--that was all.
His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by thefailure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba'smovements was done indirectly. It appeared that she had gone toa place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but inwhat capacity--whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could notdiscover.
Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tippednose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat markedin random splotches approximating in colour to white and slatygrey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorchedand washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of areddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, likethe indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures. Insubstance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheepseemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality andstaple.
This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior moralsand dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exactdegrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of alldescriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood.Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the differencebetween such exclamations as "Come in!" and "D---- ye, come in!" thathe knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes'tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crookwas to be escaped. Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still.
The young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the imageof his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him andGeorge. He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to followon at the flock when the other should die, but had got no furtherthan the rudiments as yet--still finding an insuperable difficultyin distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it toowell. So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he hadno name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to anypleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help themon, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across thewhole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or remindedwhen to stop by the example of old George.
Thus much for the dogs. On the further side of Norcombe Hill wasa chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, andspread over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the formof a V, but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, whichwas immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a roughrailing.
One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing therewould be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, hecalled as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in theouthouse till next morning. Only one responded--old George; theother could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden.Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hilleating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, exceptwhen other food ran short), and concluding that the young one hadnot finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, whichlatterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays.
It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted inwaking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To theshepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clockto other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed byceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idletwinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, thatall is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening mornthat note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence andrapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways--bythe rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flockbreaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity,or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regularpalpitation. The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heardto be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity.
He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggydawn, and ascended the hill. The forward ewes were kept apart fromthose among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being twohundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock. These two hundredseemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were thefifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had leftthem, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere.Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call:
"Ovey, ovey, ovey!"
Not a single bleat. He went to the hedge; a gap had been brokenthrough it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rathersurprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting itdown instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, ofwhich a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through thehedge. They were not in the plantation. He called again: thevalleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked thelost Hylas on the Mysian shore; but no sheep. He passed through thetrees and along the ridge of the hill. On the extreme summit, wherethe ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken werestopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw theyounger dog standing against the sky--dark and motionless as Napoleonat St. Helena.
A horrible conviction darted through Oak. With a sensation of bodilyfaintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through,and there he saw the footprints of his ewes. The dog came up, lickedhis hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great rewardfor signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. Theewes lay dead and dying at its foot--a heap of two hundred mangledcarcasses, representing in their condition just now at least twohundred more.
Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore inpieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, andcarried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had alwaysbeen that his flock ended in mutton--that a day came and found everyshepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep. His firstfeeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentleewes and their unborn lambs.
It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. Thesheep were not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had beendispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer werelaid low--possibly for ever. Gabriel's energies, patience, andindustry had been so severely taxed during the years of his lifebetween eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage ofprogress that no more seemed to be left in him. He leant down upon arail, and covered his face with his hands.
Stupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered fromhis. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the onesentence he uttered was in thankfulness:--
"Thank God I am not married: what would SHE have done in the povertynow coming upon me!"
Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlesslysurveyed the scene. By the outer margin of the Pit was an oval pond,and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moonwhich had only a few days to last--the morning star dogging her onthe left hand. The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as theworld awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection ofthe moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to aphosphoric st
reak upon the water. All this Oak saw and remembered.
As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, stillunder the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep,the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his mealoff the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy andspirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timidcreatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by mainforce of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down aportion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge.
George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was consideredtoo good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragicallyshot at twelve o'clock that same day--another instance of theuntoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosopherswho follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, andattempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largelyof compromise.
Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer--on the strength of Oak'spromising look and character--who was receiving a percentage from thefarmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak foundthat the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really hisown would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself afree man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more.