Far from the Madding Crowd , livre ebook

Original by Thomas Hardy Retold by Pauline Francis
First published in this edition 2017

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© copyright in the text Pauline Francis, 2017
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ISBN 978-1-78322-728-0

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Chapter One    The Woman in Scarlet
Chapter Two    A Terrible Accident
Chapter Three The Valentine
Chapter Four   Misunderstandings
Chapter Five    An Unexpected Meeting
Chapter Six     Bathsheba falls in Love
Chapter Seven Troy has the Upper Hand
Chapter Eight Fanny Robin and Child
Chapter Nine   Murder!
Chapter Ten    Together at Last
Introduction
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset, in 1840. His father was a stonemason. He did not have enough money to send his son to university, so Thomas was apprenticed as an architect.
In 1874, he married Eleanor Gifford and designed a house for them called Max Gate. The house was close to Dorchester in Dorset, where he lived all his life.
Hardy saw himself as a poet rather than a novelist. However, his poetry was not published until after many of his well-known novels.
These novels include Far from the Madding Crowd (1874); The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886); Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895). In Far from the Madding Crowd , Hardy gave his beloved Dorset the fictional name of Wessex. He used this name in many of his novels.
Far from the Madding Crowd tells the story of Miss Bathsheba Everdene, a young woman who becomes a farmer, and how three different men fall in love with her. This novel of romance and tragedy is thought by many people to be his first masterpiece.
Thomas Hardy died in 1928, at the age of 87. His heart is buried in a churchyard close to Max Gate, but his ashes are buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.
CHAPTER ONE
The Woman in Scarlet
One sunny December day, Farmer Gabriel Oak was walking his fields. He was a youngish man of twenty-eight who wore a wide-brimmed felt hat, leather boots and an old smock. Tucked inside his trouser waistband was his old silver watch.
Coming down the steep hill towards him was a yellow wagon drawn by two horses. It was laden with household goods and a young dark-haired woman, who wore a crimson jacket. It came to a halt. The waggoner had to go back up the hill to look for the tailgate of the wagon which had fallen off.
Now the wagon was silent, except for the canary singing in its cage and the purring of a cat in a wicker basket. The young woman looked around her to make sure that she was alone and opened a small oblong package next to her. It contained a mirror. She smiled at herself in it.
Gabriel Oak also smiled. ‘She has no reason to look in that mirror,’ he thought. ‘She is not adjusting her clothes or her hair or her hat. She is simply looking at what beauty nature has given her.’
The young woman wrapped up the looking-glass as the waggoner returned and they drove on to the toll gate in the distance. Gabriel Oak could hear an argument. The gatekeeper wanted two more pence, which the woman refused to pay.
Gabriel Oak paid the two pence. The woman glanced carelessly at him and told her man to drive on. She did not thank him.
‘That’s a handsome woman,’ the gatekeeper said.
‘Yes, but she has her faults,’ Gabriel replied. ‘Vanity.’

***


A few days later, on the shortest day of the year, Gabriel Oak sat in his shepherd’s hut, playing his flute. He had worked hard during the past year to lease a small sheep farm, and stock it with two hundred sheep. It was a giant step for Gabriel Oak. He still had to pay for some of the sheep, and it was important that the lambing of his ewes took place safely.
On his way to and from the ewes, Gabriel thought he saw a star in the sky. Then he realised it was a lantern light coming from an old shed on the side of the next hill. He made his way there and peeped inside to see a middle-aged woman tending a cow that had just calved.
A young woman, wrapped in a long, hooded cloak was helping her.
She yawned. ‘I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things,’ she said.
‘As we are not, you must help if you stay with me,’ the older woman said.
‘I lost my hat on the way here,’ the young woman said. ‘The wind blew it over the hedge.’
As she spoke, the girl dropped her cloak, revealing her dark hair tumbling over a scarlet jacket.
Gabriel Oak recognised her.
‘She owes me two pence,’ he said to himself.
The two women left the hut, their lantern light sinking down the hill – and Gabriel Oak went back to his flock.

***


Just as dawn was breaking, Gabriel saw the young woman again. This time, she was riding a horse.
He remembered that she had lost her hat. He found it in a ditch, covered with leaves, and waited for her to pass so that he could return it. As she approached, she had to pass under a low branch. She lay flat on her back, her head over the horse’s tail, her feet around its ears. Then she sat upright and rode on. Gabriel Oak saw that she had no side saddle and rode the pony like a man.
He approached her as she rode back from the mill with a bag of oats. He blushed as he held out her hat. She did not.
‘It flew away last night,’ she said.
‘Yes, at one o’clock in the morning,’ Gabriel Oak replied.
‘How did you know that?