finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_37_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 38
chapter 38
{"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-38", "summary": "It's nearly daybreak, but Oak has managed to save most of the hay and barley from the rain. Toward the end of his work, he remembers how his first visit to this part of the world plunged him into the middle of a fire. Water and fire, man. He also remembers how much he'd loved Bathsheba, even though he knew they'd never be together. When he's finished with his work, he glances toward the barn and sees some men stumbling out of it, all of them drunk or hungover. All except for Sergeant Troy, that is, who walks out whistling. It seems like the guy has a much higher tolerance for alcohol than the rest of the men. All of them walk past without thinking once about how the hay and barley got covered up during the night. Gabriel runs into Farmer Boldwood, and each of them tells the other he doesn't look so great. Gabriel mentions that he's spent all night covering the hay and barley, and adds that of course Farmer Boldwood must have had this done, too. Boldwood, though, didn't protect any of his crops from the rain and doesn't care how much money he loses. This guy is deeply depressed. Boldwood and Gabriel talk briefly about how disappointed Boldwood has been by Bathsheba's marriage to Troy. After that, Boldwood just turns and walks away.", "analysis": ""}


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."




Chapter 38
It's nearly daybreak, but Oak has managed to save most of the hay and barley from the rain. Toward the end of his work, he remembers how his first visit to this part of the world plunged him into the middle of a fire. Water and fire, man. He also remembers how much he'd loved Bathsheba, even though he knew they'd never be together. When he's finished with his work, he glances toward the barn and sees some men stumbling out of it, all of them drunk or hungover. All except for Sergeant Troy, that is, who walks out whistling. It seems like the guy has a much higher tolerance for alcohol than the rest of the men. All of them walk past without thinking once about how the hay and barley got covered up during the night. Gabriel runs into Farmer Boldwood, and each of them tells the other he doesn't look so great. Gabriel mentions that he's spent all night covering the hay and barley, and adds that of course Farmer Boldwood must have had this done, too. Boldwood, though, didn't protect any of his crops from the rain and doesn't care how much money he loses. This guy is deeply depressed. Boldwood and Gabriel talk briefly about how disappointed Boldwood has been by Bathsheba's marriage to Troy. After that, Boldwood just turns and walks away.