A Secret Wedding and New Beginning — Far from the Madding Crowd

Bathsheba asks Gabriel for the most private, secret, plainest wedding possible; he meditates an hour, obtains a licence on a dark night from the Casterbridge surrogate, enlists Coggan to deceive Mrs. Tall, and arranges Laban the new clerk and the parson for ten o'clock without parish spectators or banns. She wakes at four on a foggy morning, insists Liddy brush her hair as on Norcombe Hill, and walks arm-in-arm with Oak through mist to the church in cloak and greatcoat, looking a girl again rather than the worn mistress of crises. Tall, Liddy, and the parson witness; the deed is done in a remarkably short space with no organ, no crowd, and no public triumph at all. At tea in the parlour the Weatherbury band fires a cannon and clangs worm-eaten Marlborough instruments in salute; Gabriel sends drink to Warren's while Coggan marvels at his natural my wife and Joseph Poorgrass quotes Hosea with mixed thanks. Hardy ends with quiet domestic union after storm: no grandeur, only competence, forgiveness, and Oak's plan to live at the farm as husband rather than hired man while old friends cheer from the gravel as the novel closes where courtship first stirred on Norcombe Hill.