Far from the Madding Crowd: Chapters 14–22

The pert injunction was like those crystal substances which, colourless themselves, assume the tone of objects about them.

The substance of the epistle had occupied him but little in comparison with the fact of its arrival.

In other directions, the fields and sky were so much of one colour by the snow, that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts the horizon occurred; and in general there was here, too, that before-mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which attends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky is found on the earth, and the shades of earth are in the sky.

"Neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?"
"Ay, sure, shepherd," said the conclave.

"Now—the first man in the parish that I hear prophesying bad of our mistress, why" (here the fist was raised and let fall as Thor might have done with his hammer in assaying it)—"he'll smell and taste that—or I'm a Dutchman."

"Now, don't ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down!" said Henery, with a deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of the kind in Christianity.

On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church called All Saints', in the distant barrack-town before-mentioned, at the end of a service without a sermon.

The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice, perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space.

The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice, perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space.

At present, however, the door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on the bell, and the mannikin's retreat into the nook again, were visible to many, and audible throughout the church.

Thus a mild sort of apotheosis took place in his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed within his own horizon, a troubled creature like himself.

The river slid along noiselessly as a shade, the swelling reeds and sedge forming a flexible palisade upon its moist brink.

"I—I didn't—I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine—forgive me, sir—it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done. If you will only pardon my thoughtlessness, I promise never to—"

He was close to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory.

Had she felt, which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him, being a woman who frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from her whims.

Boldwood as a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she esteemed and liked him, yet she did not want him.

An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion.

Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts.

Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.

But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the reticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more noticeable.

Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes—there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife.

Moreover, she had hardly recovered her equanimity since the disturbance which she had suffered from Oak's remarks.

Many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being quick and short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully distended.

All then stalked off in consternation, to get somebody as directed, without any idea of who it was to be.

Gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms.

Gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms.

They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with transepts.

The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers.

The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time.

Then up comes Maryann; throws the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists...

...before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out—rendering it just now as superior to anything woollen as cream is superior to milk-and-water.

Henery continued in a more complaisant mood: "I once hinted my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. You all know, neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling wi' scarn?"

"Because she told me all that passed," said Oak, with a pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter.

"A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster, in a querulous voice.

"We workfolk shall have some lordly junketing to-night," said Cainy Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction.