sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.
Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank, grease
dropping from them upon the floor. Here, under the table, and leaning
against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except the
perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk, the hair
of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops and brooms.
In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure of Sergeant
Troy, leaning back in a chair. Coggan was on his back, with his mouth
open, buzzing forth snores, as were several others; the united
breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued roar like
London from a distance. Joseph Poorgrass was curled round in the
fashion of a hedgehog, apparently in attempts to present the least
possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him was dimly
visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury. The glasses and
cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being overturned, from
which a small rill, after tracing its course with marvellous precision
down the centre of the long table, fell into the neck of the
unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip, like the dripping
of a stalactite in a cave.
Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two
exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm. He saw at
once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the next
morning, he must save them with his own hands.
A faint “ting-ting” resounded from under Coggan’s waistcoat. It was
Coggan’s watch striking the hour of two.
Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook
the rough thatching of the homestead, and shook him. The shaking was
without effect.
Gabriel shouted in his ear, “Where’s your thatching-beetle and
rick-stick and spars?”
“Under the staddles,” said Moon mechanically, with the unconscious
promptness of a medium.
Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl. He
then went to Susan Tall’s husband.
“Where’s the key of the granary?”
No answer. The question was repeated, with the same result. To be
shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall’s
husband than to Matthew Moon. Oak flung down Tall’s head into the
corner again and turned away.
To be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and
demoralizing termination to the evening’s entertainment. Sergeant Troy
had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should be the
bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly liked to be
so unmannerly under the circumstances. Having from their youth up been
entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it
was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all with extraordinary
uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.
Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that wilful
and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt within him
as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.
He put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be endangered,
closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious sleep, and
went again into the lone night. A hot breeze, as if breathed from the
parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the globe, fanned him from
the south, while directly opposite in the north rose a grim misshapen
body of cloud, in the very teeth of the wind. So unnaturally did it
rise that one could fancy it to be lifted by machinery from below.
Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had flown back into the south-east corner
of the sky, as if in terror of the large cloud, like a young brood
gazed in upon by some monster.
Going on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window of
Laban Tall’s bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody stirred.
He went round to the back door, which had been left unfastened for
Laban’s entry, and passed in to the foot of the staircase.
“Mrs. Tall, I’ve come for the key of the granary, to get at the
rick-cloths,” said Oak, in a stentorian voice.
“Is that you?” said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.
“Yes,” said Gabriel.
“Come along to bed, do, you draw-latching rogue—keeping a body awake
like this!”
“It isn’t Laban—’tis Gabriel Oak. I want the key of the granary.”
“Gabriel! What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban for?”
“I didn’t. I thought you meant——”
“Yes you did! What do you want here?”
“The key of the granary.”
“Take it then. ’Tis on the nail. People coming disturbing women at this
time of night ought——”
Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the
tirade. Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen
dragging four large waterproof coverings across the yard, and soon two
of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug—two cloths to
each. Two hundred pounds were secured. Three wheat-stacks remained
open, and there were no more cloths. Oak looked under the staddles and
found a fork. He mounted the third pile of wealth and began operating,
adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one over the other; and,
in addition, filling the interstices with the material of some untied
sheaves.
So far all was well. By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba’s property
in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that
there was not much wind.
Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by
systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished not to
re-appear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. The
night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an
utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow
breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now nothing was
heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the
spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.
CHAPTER VII.
THE STORM—THE TWO TOGETHER
A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent
wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. It was the first
arrow from the approaching storm, and it fell wide.
The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning.
Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba’s bedroom, and soon a shadow
moved to and fro upon the blind.
Then there came a third flash. Manœuvres of a most extraordinary kind
were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning
now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed
army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could
see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every
hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock
in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these
were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the
wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into
the air, their heads to earth. A poplar in the immediate foreground was
like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving
the darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with
his hands.
He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poignard, as it was indifferently
called—a long iron lance, sharp at the extremity and polished by
handling—into the stack to support the sheaves. A blue light appeared
in the zenith, and in some indescribable manner flickered down near the
top of the rod. It was the fourth of the larger flashes. A moment later
and there was a smack—smart, clear, and short. Gabriel felt his
position to be anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend.
Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. He wiped his weary brow, and
looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. Was his life
so valuable to him after all? What were his prospects that he should be
so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour could not be
carried on without such risk? He resolved to stick to the stack.
However, he took a precaution. Under the staddles was a long tethering
chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. This he carried up
the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed
the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground. The spike attached
to it he drove in. Under the shadow of this extemporized
lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively safe.
Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the fifth
flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend. It was
green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. What was this
the light revealed to him? In the open ground before him, as he looked
over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently female form.
Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the parish—Bathsheba?
The form moved on a step: then he could see no more.
“Is that you, ma’am?” said Gabriel to the darkness.
“Who is there?” said the voice of Bathsheba.
“Gabriel. I am on the rick, thatching.”
“Oh, Gabriel!—and are you? I have come about them. The weather awoke
me, and I thought of the corn. I am so distressed about it—can we save
it anyhow? I cannot find my husband. Is he with you?”
“He is not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Asleep in the barn.”
“He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all
neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out.
Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something?”
“You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma’am; if you
are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark,” said Gabriel. “Every
moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. It is
not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit.”
“I’ll do anything!” she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf
upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind
the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick
suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica—every
knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him appeared
two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its sheen—the shapes
vanished. Gabriel turned his head. It had been the sixth flash which
had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope
had been the shadows of himself and Bathsheba.
Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly light
could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.
“How terrible!” she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve. Gabriel
turned, and steadied her on her aërial perch by holding her arm. At the
same moment, while he was still reversed in his attitude, there was
more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the tall poplar tree on
the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn. It was the shadow of
that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west.
The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering
another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching—thunder and
all—and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence
everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as
Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He
thought the crisis of the storm had passed. But there came a burst of
light.
“Hold on!” said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and
grasping her arm again.
Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its
inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could
only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east,
west, north, south. It was a perfect dance of death. The forms of
skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones—dancing,
leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in
unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes
of green. Behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously
came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout;
since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of
a shout than of anything else earthly. In the meantime one of the
grisly forms had alighted upon the point of Gabriel’s rod, to run
invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. Gabriel was
almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba’s warm arm tremble in his
hand—a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life, everything
human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an
infuriated universe.
Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and
to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light,
when the tall tree on the hill before-mentioned seemed on fire to a
white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the
last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and
pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without
that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant
thunder. By the lustre reflected from every part of the earth and from
the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down
the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a huge riband of bark
being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and
revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The
lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air; then
all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom.
“We had a narrow escape!” said Gabriel, hurriedly. “You had better go
down.”
Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical
pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response to
her frightened pulsations. She descended the ladder, and, on second
thoughts, he followed her. The darkness was now impenetrable by the
sharpest vision. They both stood still at the bottom, side by side.
Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather—Oak thought only of her
just then. At last he said,—
“The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate.”
“I think so too,” said Bathsheba. “Though there are multitudes of
gleams, look!”
The sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition
melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from the
successive strokes on a gong.
“Nothing serious,” said he. “I cannot understand no rain falling. But,
Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us. I am now going up
again.”
“Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve! I will stay and help you yet.
Oh, why are not some of the others here!”
“They would have been here if they could,” said Oak, in a hesitating
way.
“Oh, I know it all—all,” she said, adding slowly: “They are all asleep
in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them. That’s it,
is it not? Don’t think I am a timid woman, and can’t endure things.”
“I am not certain,” said Gabriel. “I will go and see.”
He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone. He looked through the
chinks of the door. All was in total darkness, as he had left it, and
there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of many
snores.
He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned. It was
Bathsheba’s breath—she had followed him, and was looking into the same
chink.
He endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of their
thoughts by remarking gently, “If you’ll come back again, miss—ma’am,
and hand up a few more; it would save much time.”
Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder
for greater expedition, and went on thatching. She followed, but
without a sheaf
“Gabriel,” she said, in a strange and impressive voice.
Oak looked up at her. She had not spoken since he left the barn. The
soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble face
high against the black sky of the opposite quarter. Bathsheba was
sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up beneath
her, and resting on the top round of the ladder.
“Yes, mistress,” he said.
“I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night it
was on purpose to be married?”
“I did at last—not at first,” he answered, somewhat surprised at the
abruptness with which this new subject was broached.
“And others thought so, too?”
“Yes.”
“And you blamed me for it?”
“Well—a little.”
“I thought so. Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and I want
to explain something—I have longed to do it ever since I returned, and
you looked so gravely at me. For if I were to die—and I may die soon—it
would be dreadful that you should always think mistakingly of me. Now,
listen.”
Gabriel ceased his rustling.
“I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my
engagement to Mr. Troy. It was owing to circumstances which occurred
after I got there that—that we were married. Now, do you see the matter
in a new light?”
“I do—somewhat.”
“I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun. And perhaps it’s
no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever loved you,
or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that object I have
mentioned. Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame.
And at last I didn’t know what to do. I saw, when it was too late, that
scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. But I
was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman
more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on
unless I at once became his…. And I was grieved and troubled….” She
cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. “And
then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!” she whispered,
with desperate impetuosity.
Gabriel made no reply.
“He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about—about his seeing
somebody else,” she quickly added. “And now I don’t wish for a single
remark from you upon the subject—indeed, I forbid it. I only wanted you
to know that misunderstood bit of my history before a time comes when
you could never know it.—You want some more sheaves?”
She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded. Gabriel soon
perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and
he said to her, gently as a mother,—
“I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired. I can finish the
rest alone. If the wind does not change the rain is likely to keep
off.”
“If I am useless I will go,” said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence.
“But oh, if your life should be lost!”
“You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer. You have
done well.”
“And you better!” she said, gratefully. “Thank you for your devotion, a
thousand times, Gabriel! Good-night—I know you are doing your very best
for me.”
She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch of
the gate fall as she passed through. He worked in a reverie now, musing
upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that feminine heart
which had caused her to speak more warmly to him to-night than she ever
had done whilst unmarried and free to speak as warmly as she chose.
He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the
coach-house. It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change
in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.
CHAPTER VIII.
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 elastic 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 a decoction of his
person 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 came
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 apparently 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.”
“Those 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 dare say 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 IX.
COMING HOME—A CRY
On the turnpike road, between Casterbridge and Weatherbury, and about a
mile from the latter place, is one of those steep long ascents which
pervade the highways of this undulating district. In returning from
market it is usual for the farmers and other gig-gentry to alight at
the bottom and walk up.
One Saturday evening in the month of October Bathsheba’s vehicle was
duly creeping up this incline. She was sitting listlessly in the second
seat of the gig, whilst walking beside her in farmer’s marketing suit
of unusually fashionable cut was an erect, well-made young man. Though
on foot, he held the reins and whip, and occasionally aimed light cuts
at the horse’s ear with the end of the lash, as a recreation. This man
was her husband, formerly Sergeant Troy, who, having bought his
discharge with Bathsheba’s money, was gradually transforming himself
into a farmer of a spirited and very modern school. People of
unalterable ideas still insisted upon calling him “Sergeant” when they
met him, which was in some degree owing to his having still retained
the well-shaped moustache of his military days, and the soldierly
bearing inseparable from his form.
“Yes, if it hadn’t been for that wretched rain I should have cleared
two hundred as easy as looking, my love,” he was saying. “Don’t you
see, it altered all the chances? To speak like a book I once read, wet
weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our
country’s history; now, isn’t that true?”
“But the time of year is come for changeable weather.”
“Well, yes. The fact is, these autumn races are the ruin of everybody.
Never did I see such a day as ’twas! ’Tis a wild open place, not far
from the sands, and a drab sea rolled in towards us like liquid misery.
Wind and rain—good Lord! Dark? Why, ’twas as black as my hat before the
last race was run. ’Twas five o’clock, and you couldn’t see the horses
till they were almost in, leave alone colours. The ground was as heavy
as lead, and all judgment from a fellow’s experience went for nothing.
Horses, riders, people, were all blown about like ships at sea. Three
booths were blown over, and the wretched folk inside crawled out upon
their hands and knees; and in the next field were as many as a dozen
hats at one time. Aye, Pimpernel regularly stuck fast when about sixty
yards off, and when I saw Policy stepping on, it did knock my heart
against the lining of my ribs, I assure you, my love!”
“And you mean, Frank,” said Bathsheba, sadly—her voice was painfully
lowered from the fulness and vivacity of the previous summer—“that you
have lost more than a hundred pounds in a month by this dreadful
horse-racing? Oh, Frank, it is cruel; it is foolish of you to take away
my money so. We shall have to leave the farm; that will be the end of
it!”
“Humbug about cruel. Now, there ’tis again—turn on the waterworks;
that’s just like you.”
“But you’ll promise me not to go to Budmouth races next week, won’t
you?” she implored. Bathsheba was at the full depth for tears, but she
maintained a dry eye.
“I don’t see why I should; in fact, if it turns out to be a fine day, I
was thinking of taking you.”
“Never, never! I’ll go a hundred miles the other way first. I hate the
sound of the very word!”
“But the question of going to see the race or staying at home has very
little to do with the matter. Bets are all booked safely enough before
the race begins, you may depend. Whether it is a bad race for me or a
good one, will have very little to do with our going there next
Monday.”
“But you don’t mean to say that you have risked anything on this one
too!” she exclaimed, with an agonized look.
“There now, don’t you be a little fool. Wait till you are told. Why,
Bathsheba, you’ve lost all the pluck and sauciness you formerly had,
and upon my life if I had known what a chicken-hearted creature you
were under all your boldness, I’d never have—I know what.”
A flash of indignation might have been seen in Bathsheba’s dark eyes as
she looked resolutely ahead after this reply. They moved on without
further speech, some early-withered leaves from the beech trees which
hooded the road at this spot occasionally spinning downward across
their path to the earth.
A woman appeared on the brow of the hill. The ridge was so abrupt that
she was very near the husband and wife before she became visible. Troy
had turned towards the gig to remount, and whilst putting his foot on
the step the woman passed behind him.
Though the overshadowing trees and the approach of eventide enveloped
them in gloom, Bathsheba could see plainly enough to discern the
extreme poverty of the woman’s garb, and the sadness of her face.
“Please, sir, do you know at what time Casterbridge Union-house closes
at night?”
The woman said these words to Troy over his shoulder.
Troy started visibly at the sound of the voice; yet he seemed to
recover presence of mind sufficient to prevent himself from giving way
to his impulse to suddenly turn and face her. He said, slowly—
“I don’t know.”
The woman, on hearing him speak, quickly looked up, examined the side
of his face, and recognized the soldier under the yeoman’s garb. Her
face was drawn into an expression which had gladness and agony both
among its elements. She uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down.
“Oh, poor thing!” exclaimed Bathsheba, instantly preparing to alight.
“Stay where you are, and attend to the horse!” said Troy, peremptorily
throwing her the reins and the whip. “Walk the horse to the top: I’ll
see to the woman.”
“But I—”
“Do you hear? Clk—Poppet!”
The horse, gig, and Bathsheba moved on.
“How on earth did you come here? I thought you were miles away, or
dead! Why didn’t you write to me?” said Troy to the woman, in a
strangely gentle, yet hurried voice, as he lifted her up.
“I feared to.”
“Have you any money?”
“None.”
“Good Heaven—I wish I had more to give you! Here’s—wretched—the merest
trifle. It is every farthing I have left. I have none but what my wife
gives me, you know, and I can’t ask her now.”
The woman made no answer.
“I have only another moment,” continued Troy; “and now listen. Where
are you going to-night? Casterbridge Union?”
“Yes; I thought to go there.”
“You shan’t go there; yet, wait. Yes, perhaps for to-night; I can do
nothing better—worse luck. Sleep there to-night, and stay there
to-morrow. Monday is the first free day I have; and on Monday morning,
at ten exactly, meet me on Casterbridge Bridge. I’ll bring all the
money I can muster. You shan’t want—I’ll see that, Fanny; then I’ll get
you a lodging somewhere. Good-bye till then. I am a brute—but
good-bye!”
After advancing the distance which completed the ascent of the hill,
Bathsheba turned her head. The woman was upon her feet, and Bathsheba
saw her withdrawing from Troy, and going feebly down the hill. Troy
then came on towards his wife, stepped into the gig, took the reins
from her hand, and without making any observation whipped the horse
into a trot. He was rather pale.
“Do you know who that woman was?” said Bathsheba, looking searchingly
into his face.
“I do,” he said, looking boldly back into hers.
“I thought you did,” said she, with angry hauteur, and still regarding
him. “Who is she?”
He suddenly seemed to think that frankness would benefit neither of the
women.
“Nothing to either of us,” he said. “I know her by sight.”
“What is her name?”
“How should I know her name?”
“I think you do.”
“Think if you will, and be——.” The sentence was completed by a smart
cut of the whip round Poppet’s flank, which caused the animal to start
forward at a wild pace. No more was said.
CHAPTER X.
ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY
For a considerable time the woman walked on. Her steps became feebler,
and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now
indistinct amid the penumbræ of night. At length her onward walk
dwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gate within which was a
haystack. Underneath this she sat down and presently slept.
[Illustration: SHE OPENED A GATE WITHIN WHICH WAS A HAYSTACK. UNDER
THIS SHE SAT DOWN.]
When the woman awoke it was to find herself in the depths of a moonless
and starless night. A heavy unbroken crust of cloud stretched across
the sky, shutting out every speck of heaven; and a distant halo which
hung over the town of Casterbridge was visible against the black
concave, the luminosity appearing the brighter by its great contrast
with the circumscribing darkness. Towards this weak, soft glow the
woman turned her eyes.
“If I could only get there!” she said. “Meet him the day after
to-morrow: God help me! Perhaps I shall be in my grave before then.”
A clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small,
attenuated tone. After midnight the voice of a clock seems to lose in
breadth as much as in length, and to diminish its sonorousness to a
thin falsetto.
Afterwards a light—two lights—arose from the remote shade, and grew
larger. A carriage rolled along the road, and passed the gate. It
probably contained some late diners-out. The beams from one lamp shone
for a moment upon the crouching woman, and threw her face into vivid
relief. The face was young in the groundwork, old in the finish; the
general contours were flexuous and childlike, but the finer lineaments
had begun to be sharp and thin.
The pedestrian stood up, apparently with revived determination, and
looked around. The road appeared to be familiar to her, and she
carefully scanned the fence as she slowly walked along. Presently there
became visible a dim white shape; it was another milestone. She drew
her fingers across its face to feel the marks.
“Three!” she said.
She leant against the stone as a means of rest for a short interval,
then bestirred herself, and again pursued her way. For a lengthy
distance she bore up bravely, afterwards flagging as before. This was
beside a lone hazel copse, wherein heaps of white chips strewn upon the
leafy ground showed that woodmen had been faggoting and making hurdles
during the day. Now there was not a rustle, not a breeze, not the
faintest clash of twigs to keep her company. The woman looked over the
gate, opened it, and went in. Close to the entrance stood a row of
faggots, bound and unbound, together with stakes of all sizes.
For a few seconds the wayfarer stood with that tense stillness which
signifies itself to be not the end but merely the suspension, of a
previous motion. Her attitude was that of a person who listens, either
to the external world of sound, or to the imagined discourse of
thought. A close criticism might have detected signs proving that she
was intent on the latter alternative. Moreover, as was shown by what
followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty of invention upon the
speciality of the clever Jacquet Droz, the designer of automatic
substitutes for human limbs.
By the aid of the Casterbridge aurora, and by feeling with her hands,
the woman selected two sticks from the heaps. These sticks were nearly
straight to the height of three or four feet, where each branched into
a fork like the letter Y. She sat down, snapped off the small upper
twigs, and carried the remainder with her into the road. She placed one
of these forks under each arm as a crutch, tested them, timidly threw
her whole weight upon them—so little that it was—and swung herself
forward. The girl had made for herself a material aid.
The crutches answered well. The pat of her feet, and the tap of her
sticks upon the highway, were all the sounds that came from the
traveller now. She had passed a second milestone by a good long
distance, and began to look wistfully towards the bank as if
calculating upon another milestone soon. The crutches, though so very
useful, had their limits of power. Mechanism only transmutes labour,
being powerless to abstract it, and the original quantum of exertion
was not cleared away; it was thrown into the body and arms. She was
exhausted, and each swing forward became fainter. At last she swayed
sideways, and fell.
Here she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes and more. The morning
wind began to boom dully over the flats, and to move afresh dead leaves
which had lain still since yesterday. The woman desperately turned
round upon her knees, and next rose to her feet. Steadying herself by
the help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then another, then a third,
using the crutches now as walking sticks only. Thus she progressed till
the beginning of a long railed fence came into view. She staggered
across to the first post, clung to it, and looked around. Another
milestone was on the opposite side of the road.
The Casterbridge lights were now individually visible. It was getting
towards morning, and vehicles might be hoped for if not expected soon.
She listened. There was not a sound of life save that acme and
sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three hollow
notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a
funeral bell.
“One mile more,” the woman murmured. “No; less,” she added, after a
pause. “The mile is to the Town Hall, and my resting-place is on this
side Casterbridge. Three-quarters of a mile, and there I am!” After an
interval she again spoke. “Five or six steps to a yard—six perhaps. I
have to go seventeen hundred yards. A hundred times six, six hundred.
Twelve times that. Oh, pity me, Lord!”
Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon the
rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her feet
on beneath.
This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling lessens
the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the strong. She
said again in the same tone, “I’ll believe that the end lies five posts
forward, and no further, and so get strength to pass them.”
This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned
and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.
She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.
“I’ll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next
fifth. I can do it.”
She passed five more.
“It lies only five further.”
She passed five more.
“But it is five further.”
She passed them.
“The end of these railings is the end of my journey,” she said, when
the end was in view.
She crawled to the end. During the effort each breath of the woman went
into the air as if never to return again.
“Now for the truth of the matter,” she said, sitting down. “The truth
is, that I have less than half a mile.” Self-beguilement with what she
had known all the time to be false had given her strength to come a
quarter of a mile that she would have been powerless to face in the
lump. The artifice showed that the woman, by some mysterious intuition,
had grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may operate more
vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted effect more than the
far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness, is needed for
striking a blow.
The half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like a stolid
Juggernaut. It was an impassive King of her world. The road here ran
across a level plateau with only a bank on either side. She surveyed
the wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay down on the bank.
Never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller here exercised
hers. Every conceivable aid, method, stratagem, mechanism, by which
these last desperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed by a human
being unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain, and dismissed as
impracticable. She thought of sticks, wheels, crawling—she even thought
of rolling. But the exertion demanded by either of these latter two was
greater than to walk erect. The faculty of contrivance was worn out.
Hopelessness had come at last.
“No further!” she whispered, and closed her eyes.
From the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the way a portion of
shade seemed to detach itself and move into isolation upon the pale
white of the road. It glided noiselessly towards the recumbent woman.
She became conscious of something touching her hand; it was softness
and it was warmth. She opened her eyes, and the substance touched her
face. A dog was licking her cheek.
He was huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standing darkly against the low
horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position of her
eyes. Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was
impossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a
nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature.
Being thus assignable to no breed he was the ideal embodiment of canine
greatness—a generalization from what was common to all. Night, in its
sad, solemn, and benevolent aspect, apart from its stealthy and cruel
side, was personified in this form. Darkness endows the small and
ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power, and even the suffering
woman threw her idea into figure.
In her reclining position she looked up to him just as in earlier times
she had, when standing, looked up to a man. The animal, who was as
homeless as she, respectfully withdrew a step or two when the woman
moved, and, seeing that she did not repulse him, he licked her hand
again.
A thought moved within her like lightning. “Perhaps I can make use of
him—I might do it then!”
She pointed in the direction of Casterbridge, and the dog seemed to
misunderstand: he trotted on. Then, finding she could not follow, he
came back and whined.
The ultimate and saddest singularity of woman’s effort and invention
was reached when, with a quickened breathing, she rose to a stooping
posture, and, resting her two little arms upon the shoulders of the
dog, leant firmly thereon, and murmured stimulating words. Whilst she
sorrowed in her heart she cheered with her voice, and what was stranger
than that the strong should need encouragement from the weak was that
cheerfulness should be so well stimulated by such utter dejection. Her
friend moved forward slowly, and she with small mincing steps moved
forward beside him, half her weight being thrown upon the animal.
Sometimes she sank as she had sunk from walking erect, from the
crutches, from the rails. The dog, who now thoroughly understood her
desire and her incapacity, was frantic in his distress on these
occasions; he would tug at her dress and run forward. She always called
him back, and it was now to be observed that the woman listened for
human sounds only to avoid them. It was evident that she had an object
in keeping her presence on the road and her forlorn state unknown.
Their progress was necessarily very slow. They reached the brow of the
hill, and the Casterbridge lamps lay beneath them like fallen Pleiads
as they walked down the incline. Thus the distance was passed, and the
goal was reached. On this much desired spot outside the town rose a
picturesque building. Originally it had been a mere case to hold
people. The shell had been so thin, so devoid of excrescence, and so
closely drawn over the accommodation granted, that the grim character
of what was beneath showed through it, as the shape of a body is
visible under a winding sheet.
Then Nature, as if offended, lent a hand. Masses of ivy grew up,
completely covering the walls, till the place looked like an abbey; and
it was discovered that the view from the front, over the Casterbridge
chimneys, was one of the most magnificent in the county. A neighbouring
earl once said that he would give up a year’s rental to have at his own
door the view enjoyed by the inmates from theirs—and very probably the
inmates would have given up the view for his year’s rental.
This green edifice consisted of a central mass and two wings, whereon
stood as sentinels a few slim chimneys, now gurgling sorrowfully to the
slow wind. In the wall was a gate, and by the gate a bell-pull formed
of a hanging wire. The woman raised herself as high as possible upon
her knees, and could just reach the handle. She moved it and fell
forwards in a bowed attitude, her face upon her bosom.
It was getting on towards six o’clock, and sounds of movement were to
be heard inside the building which was the haven of rest to this
wearied soul. A little door by the large one was opened, and a man
appeared inside. He discerned the panting heap of clothes, went back
for a light, and came again. He entered a second time, and returned
with two women.
These lifted the prostrate figure and assisted her in through the
doorway. The man then closed the door.
“How did she get here?” said one of the women.
“The Lord knows,” said the other.
“There is a dog outside,” murmured the overcome traveller. “Where is he
gone? He helped me.”
“I stoned him away,” said the man.
The little procession then moved forward—the man in front bearing the
light, the two bony women next, supporting between them the small and
supple one. Thus they entered the door and disappeared.
CHAPTER XI.
SUSPICION—FANNY IS SENT FOR
Bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their
return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her. He
exhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a
silent tongue. The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the
same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church
both morning and afternoon. This was the day before the Budmouth races.
In the evening Troy said suddenly,—
“Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?”
Her countenance instantly sank. “Twenty pounds?” she said.
“The fact is, I want it badly.” The anxiety upon Troy’s face was
unusual and very marked. It was a culmination of the mood he had been
in all the day.
“Ah! for those races to-morrow.”
Troy for the moment made no reply. Her mistake had its advantages to a
man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now. “Well,
suppose I do want it for races?” he said, at last.
“Oh, Frank!” Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of entreaty
in the words. “Only such a few weeks ago you said that I was far
sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that you would
give them all up for me; and now, won’t you give up this one, which is
more a worry than a pleasure? Do, Frank. Come, let me fascinate you by
all I can do—by pretty words and pretty looks, and everything I can
think of—to stay at home. Say yes to your wife—say yes!”
The tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba’s nature were prominent
now—advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the
disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she was
cool too frequently threw over them. Few men could have resisted the
arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a little back
and sideways in the well-known attitude that expresses more than the
words it accompanies, and which seems to have been designed for these
special occasions. Had the woman not been his wife, Troy would have
succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he would not deceive her
longer.
“The money is not wanted for racing debts at all,” he said.
“What is it for?” she asked. “You worry me a great deal by these
mysterious responsibilities, Frank.”
Troy hesitated. He did not now love her enough to allow himself to be
carried too far by her ways. Yet it was necessary to be civil. “You
wrong me by such a suspicious manner,” he said. “Such
strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so
early a date.”
“I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay,” she said,
with features between a smile and a pout.
“Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the latter.
Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don’t go too far, or you may have
cause to regret something.”
She reddened. “I do that already,” she said, quickly.
“What do you regret?”
“That my romance has come to an end.”
“All romances end at marriage.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You grieve me to my soul by being
smart at my expense.”
“You are dull enough at mine. I believe you hate me.”
“Not you—only your faults. I do hate them.”
“’Twould be much more becoming if you set yourself to cure them. Come,
let’s strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends.”
She gave a sigh of resignation. “I have about that sum here for
household expenses. If you must have it, take it.”
“Very good. Thank you. I expect I shall have gone away before you are
in to breakfast to-morrow.”
“And must you go? Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have taken
a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me. You used
to call me darling, then. But it doesn’t matter to you how my days are
passed now.”
“I must go, in spite of sentiment.” Troy, as he spoke, looked at his
watch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened the
case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small coil of
hair.
Bathsheba’s eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she
saw the action, and saw the hair. She flushed in pain and surprise, and
some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it was
wise to utter them. “A woman’s curl of hair!” she said. “Oh, Frank,
whose is that?”
Troy had instantly closed his watch. He carelessly replied, as one who
cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred. “Why, yours, of
course. Whose should it be? I had quite forgotten that I had it.”
“What a dreadful fib, Frank!”
“I tell you I had forgotten it!” he said, loudly.
“I don’t mean that—it was yellow hair.”
“Nonsense.”
“That’s insulting me. I know it was yellow. Now whose was it? I want to
know.”
“Very well—I’ll tell you, so make no more ado. It is the hair of a
young woman I was going to marry before I knew you.”
“You ought to tell me her name, then.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Is she married yet?”
“No.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Yes.”
“It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful
affliction!”
“Affliction—what affliction?” he inquired, quickly.
“Having hair of that dreadful colour.”
“Oh—ho—I like that!” said Troy, recovering himself. “Why, her hair has
been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it loose,
which has not been long. It is beautiful hair. People used to turn
their heads to look at it, poor girl!”
“Pooh! that’s nothing—that’s nothing!” she exclaimed, in incipient
accents of pique. “If I cared for your love as much as I used to I
could say people had turned to look at mine.”
“Bathsheba, don’t be so fitful and jealous. You knew what married life
would be like, and shouldn’t have entered it if you feared these
contingencies.”
Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in
her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full. Ashamed as
she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:—
“This is all I get for loving you so well! Ah! when I married you your
life was dearer to me than my own. I would have died for you—how truly
I can say that I would have died for you! And now you sneer at my
foolishness in marrying you. Oh! is it kind to me to throw my mistake
in my face? Whatever opinion you may have of my wisdom, you should not
tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am in your power.”
“I can’t help how things fall out,” said Troy; “upon my heart, women
will be the death of me!”
“Well you shouldn’t keep people’s hair. You’ll burn it, won’t you,
Frank?”
Frank went on as if he had not heard her. “There are considerations
even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made—ties you
know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I.”
Trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled tones
of wretchedness and coaxing, “I only repent it if you don’t love me
better than any woman in the world. I don’t otherwise, Frank. You don’t
repent because you already love somebody better than you love me, do
you?”
“I don’t know. Why do you say that?”
“You won’t burn that curl. You like the woman who owns that pretty
hair—yes; it is pretty—more beautiful than my miserable black mane!
Well, it is no use; I can’t help being ugly. You must like her best, if
you will!”
“Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon
that bit of hair for several months—that I am ready to swear.”
“But just now you said ‘ties;’ and then—that woman we met?”
“’Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair.”
“Is it hers, then?”
“Yes. There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are
content.”
“And what are the ties?”
“Oh! that meant nothing—a mere jest.”
“A mere jest!” she said, in mournful astonishment. “Can you jest when I
am so wretchedly in earnest? Tell me the truth, Frank. I am not a fool,
you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman’s moments. Come!
treat me fairly,” she said, looking honestly and fearlessly into his
face. “I don’t want much; bare justice—that’s all! Ah! once I felt I
could be content with nothing less than the highest homage from the
husband I should choose. Now, anything short of cruelty will content
me. Yes! the independent and spirited Bathsheba is come to this!”
“For Heaven’s sake don’t be so desperate!” Troy said, snappishly,
rising as he did so, and leaving the room.
Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs—dry-eyed sobs,
which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. But she
determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but
she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed
brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage
with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in
rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and
the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had been
proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know
that her lips had been touched by no man’s on earth—that her waist had
never been encircled by a lover’s arm. She hated herself now. In those
earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who
were the slaves of the first good-looking young fellow who should
choose to salute them. She had never taken kindly to the idea of
marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about
her. In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to
marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours
on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and
honour. Although she scarcely knew the divinity’s name, Diana was the
goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored. That she had never, by
look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her—that she had felt
herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her
girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the
simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an
indifferent matrimonial whole—were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh,
if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was,
and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe,
and dare Troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his
interference!
The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled
for her ride round the farm in the customary way. When she came in at
half-past eight—their usual hour for breakfasting—she was informed that
her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to
Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.
After breakfast she was cool and collected—quite herself, in fact—and
she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the
farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in
the house would permit, continually, however, finding herself preceded
in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the
genuine friendship of a sister. Of course, she sometimes thought of him
in the light of an old lover, and had momentary imaginings of what life
with him as a husband would have been like; also of life with Boldwood
under the same conditions. But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was
not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were
short and entirely confined to the times when Troy’s neglect was more
than ordinarily evident.
She saw coming up the hill a man like Mr. Boldwood. It was Mr.
Boldwood. Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched. The farmer stopped
when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel Oak, who was
in another part of the field. The two men then approached each other
and seemed to engage in earnest conversation.
Thus they continued for a long time. Joseph Poorgrass now passed near
them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba’s residence.
Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a few minutes, and
then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming up the hill with his
barrow.
Bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise, experienced
great relief when Boldwood turned back again. “Well, what’s the
message, Joseph?” she said.
He set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect
that a conversation with a lady required, spoke to Bathsheba over the
gate.
“You’ll never see Fanny Robin no more—use nor principal—ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s dead in the Union.”
“Fanny dead—never!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did she die from?”
“I don’t know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was
from general neshness of constitution. She was such a limber maid that
’a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and ’a went like a
candle-snoff, so ’tis said. She was took bad in the morning, and, being
quite feeble and worn out, she died in the afternoon. She belongs by
law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon this
afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her.”
“Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing—I shall do it.
Fanny was my uncle’s servant, and, although I only knew her for a
couple of days, she belongs to me. How very, very sad this is!—the idea
of Fanny being in a workhouse.” Bathsheba had begun to know what
suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling…. “Send across to Mr.
Boldwood’s, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon herself the duty of
fetching an old servant of the family…. We ought not to put her in a
waggon; we’ll get a hearse.”
“There will hardly be time, ma’am, will there?”
“Perhaps not,” she said, musingly. “When did you say we must be at the
door—three o’clock?”
“Three o’clock this afternoon, ma’am, so to speak it.”
“Very well—you go with it. A pretty waggon is better than an ugly
hearse, after all. Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue
body and red wheels, and wash it very clean. And, Joseph.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her
coffin—indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them.
Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and
boy’s-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum. And let old Pleasant
draw her, because she knew him so well.”
“I will, ma’am. I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of
four labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate,
and take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of
Guardians, as by law ordained.”
“Dear me—Casterbridge Union—and is Fanny come to this!” said Bathsheba,
musing. “I wish I had known of it sooner. I thought she was far away.
How long has she lived there?”
“On’y been there a day or two.”
“Oh!—then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?”
“No. She’s been picking up a living at seampstering in Melchester for
several months, at the house of a very respectable widow-woman who
takes in work of that sort. She only got handy the Union-house on
Sunday morning ’a b’lieve, and ’tis supposed here and there that she
had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester. Why she left her
place, I can’t say, for I don’t know; and as to a lie, why, I wouldn’t
tell it. That’s the short of the story, ma’am.”
“Ah-h!”
No gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than
changed the young wife’s countenance whilst this word came from her in
a long drawn breath. “Did she walk along our turnpike-road?” she said,
in a suddenly restless and eager voice.
“I believe she did…. Ma’am, shall I call Liddy? You bain’t well, ma’am,
surely? You look like a lily—so pale and fainty!”
“No; don’t call her; it is nothing. When did she pass Weatherbury?”
“Last Saturday night.”
“That will do, Joseph; now you may go.”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
“Joseph, come hither a moment. What was the colour of Fanny Robin’s
hair?”
“Really, mistress, now that ’tis put to me so judge-and-jury-like, I
can’t call to mind, if ye’ll believe me!”
“Never mind; go on and do what I told you. Stop—well no, go on.”
She turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the
mood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors with
a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow. About an hour
after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still with a
painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look. Joseph,
dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse to start.
The shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as she had
directed. Bathsheba hardly saw them now.
“Whose sweetheart did you say, Joseph?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Yes, ma’am, quite sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“I’m sure that all I know is that she arrived in the morning and died
in the evening without further parley. What Oak and Mr. Boldwood told
me was only these few words. ‘Little Fanny Robin is dead, Joseph,’
Gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way. I was very
sorry, and I said, ‘Ah!—and how did she come to die?’ ‘Well, she’s dead
in Casterbridge Union,’ he said, ‘and perhaps ’tisn’t much matter about
how she came to die. She reached the Union early Sunday morning, and
died in the afternoon—that’s clear enough.’ Then I asked what she’d
been doing lately, and Mr. Boldwood turned round to me then, and left
off spitting a thistle with the end of his stick. He told me about her
having lived by seampstering in Melchester, as I mentioned to you, and
that she walked therefrom at the end of last week, passing near here
Saturday night in the dusk. They then said I had better just name a
hent of her death to you, and away they went. Her death might have been
brought on by biding in the night wind, you know, ma’am; for people
used to say she’d go off in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in
winter time. However, ’tisn’t much odds to us about that now, for ’tis
all over.”
“Have you heard a different story at all?” She looked at him so
intently that Joseph’s eyes quailed.
“Not a word, mistress, I assure you,” he said. “Hardly anybody in the
parish knows the news yet.”
“I wonder why Gabriel didn’t bring the message to me himself. He mostly
makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand.” These words
were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the ground.
“Perhaps he was busy, ma’am.” Joseph suggested. “And sometimes he seems
to suffer from things upon his mind connected with the time when he was
better off than ’a is now. ’A’s rather a curious item, but a very
understanding shepherd, and learned in books.”
“Did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about
this?”
“I cannot but say that there did, ma’am. He was terrible down, and so
was Farmer Boldwood.”
“Thank you, Joseph. That will do. Go on now, or you’ll be late.”
Bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again. In the course of the
afternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence,
“What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin’s hair? Do you know? I cannot
recollect—I only saw her for a day or two.”
“It was light, ma’am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away
under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it. But I have seen her
let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful then.
Real golden hair.”
“Her young man was a soldier, was he not?”
“Yes. In the same regiment as Mr. Troy. He says he knew him very well.”
“What, Mr. Troy says so? How came he to say that?”
“One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny’s young
man. He said, ‘Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he knew
himself, and that there wasn’t a man in the regiment he liked better.’”
“Ah! Said that, did he?”
“Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the
other young man, so that sometimes people mistook them——”
“Liddy, for Heaven’s sake stop your talking!” said Bathsheba, with the
nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.
CHAPTER XII.
JOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN—BUCK’S HEAD
A wall bounded the site of Casterbridge Union-house, except along a
portion of the end. Here a high gable stood prominent, and it was
covered like the front with a mat of ivy. In this gable was no window,
chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind. The single feature
appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves, was a
small door.
The situation of the door was peculiar. The sill was three or four feet
above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an explanation
of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately beneath suggested
that the door was used solely for the passage of articles and persons
to and from the level of a vehicle standing on the outside. Upon the
whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as a species of Traitor’s
Gate translated to another element. That entry and exit hereby was only
at rare intervals became apparent on noting that tufts of grass were
allowed to flourish undisturbed in the chinks of the sill.
As the clock from the tower of St. George’s Church pointed to three
minutes to three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with red, and
containing boughs and flowers, turned from the high road and halted on
this side of the building. Whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a
shattered form of “Malbrook,” Joseph Poorgrass rang the bell, and
received directions to back his waggon against the high door under the
gable. The door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly thrust
forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the vehicle.
One of the men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump
of chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in a
large scrawling hand. (We believe that they do these things more
tenderly now, and provide a plate.) He covered the whole with a black
cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tail-board of the waggon was
returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of registry
to Poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind them. Their
connection with her, short as it had been, was over for ever.
Joseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens around
the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the waggon contained;
he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car crept up the
hill, and along the road to Weatherbury.
The afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the left towards the sea
as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw strange clouds and scrolls
of mist rolling over the high hills which girt the landscape in that
quarter. They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently crept across
the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery flags of the
sloughs and river brinks. Then their dank spongy forms closed in upon
the sky. It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had
their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man,
and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an
invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped. It
was the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the first fog of the
series.
The air was as an eye suddenly struck blind. The waggon and its load
rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and
opacity. They were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor
throughout. There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible
drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs
composing the wood on either side. The trees stood in an attitude of
intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock
them. A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things—so completely,
that the crunching of the waggon-wheels was as a great noise, and small
rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were
distinctly individualized.
Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly
through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid
the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like
in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished
he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he
listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the
dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree
through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin
of poor Fanny. The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this
was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The
hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim
Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three.
Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the
dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were
beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red
leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on
auburn hair.
Situated by roadside in the midst of this wood was the old inn, called
Buck’s Head. It was about a mile and a half from Weatherbury, and in
the meridian times of stage-coach travelling had been the place where
many coaches changed and kept their relays of horses. All the old
stabling was now pulled down, and little remained besides the habitable
inn itself, which, standing a little way back from the road, signified
its existence to people far up and down the highway by a sign hanging
from the horizontal bough of an elm on the opposite side of the way.
Travellers—for the variety _tourist_ had hardly developed into a
distinct species at this date—sometimes said in passing, when they cast
their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond of
representing the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves had
never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working order. It
was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which Gabriel Oak
crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness,
the sign and the inn had been unobserved.
The manners of the inn were of the old-established type. Indeed, in the
minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulæ: _e.g._—
Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor.
For tobacco, shout.
In calling for the girl in waiting, say, “Maid!”
Ditto for the landlady, “Old Soul!” etc., etc.
It was a relief to Joseph’s heart when the friendly sign-board came in
view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to
fulfil an intention made a long time before. His spirits were oozing
out of him quite. He turned the horse’s head to the green bank, and
entered the hostel for a mug of ale.
Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step
below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside,
what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-coloured
discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark
Clark. These owners of the two most appreciative throats in the
neighbourhood, on this side of respectability, were now sitting face to
face over a three-legged circular table, having an iron rim to keep
cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been
said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining _vis-à-vis_
across the globe.
“Why, ’tis neighbour Poorgrass!” said Mark Clark. “I’m sure your face
don’t praise your mistress’s table, Joseph.”
“I’ve had a very pale companion for the last five miles,” said Joseph,
indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation. “And to speak the
truth, ’twas beginning to tell upon me. I assure ye, I ha’n’t seed the
colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that
was no more than a dew-bit afield.”
“Then drink, Joseph, and don’t restrain yourself!” said Coggan, handing
him a hooped mug three-quarters full.
Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time,
saying, as he lowered the jug, “’Tis pretty drinking—very pretty
drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to
speak it.”
“True, drink is a pleasant delight,” said Jan, as one who repeated a
truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over
his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually
backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be
diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings.
“Well, I must be on again,” said Poorgrass. “Not but that I should like
another nip with ye; but the country might lose confidence in me if I
was seed here.”
“Where be ye trading o’t to to-day, then, Joseph?”
“Back to Weatherbury. I’ve got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon
outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five
with her.”
“Ay—I’ve heard of it. And so she’s nailed up in parish boards after
all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown.”
“The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling,
because the bell’s a luxery: but ’a can hardly do without the grave,
poor body. However, I expect our mistress will pay all.”
“A pretty maid as ever I see! But what’s yer hurry, Joseph? The pore
woman’s dead, and you can’t bring her to life, and you may as well sit
down comfortable and finish another with us.”
“I don’t mind taking just the merest thimbleful of imagination more
with ye, sonnies. But only a few minutes, because ’tis as ’tis.”
“Of course, you’ll have another drop. A man’s twice the man afterwards.
You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work
without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking. Too
much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house;
but, after all, many people haven’t the gift of enjoying a soak, and
since we are highly favoured with a power that way, we should make the
most o’t.”
“True,” said Mark Clark. “’Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully
bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the
parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the merry
old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my carcase, they
have!”
“Well, really, I must be onward again now,” said Joseph.
“Now, now, Joseph; nonsense! The poor woman is dead, isn’t she, and
what’s your hurry?”
“Well, I hope Providence won’t be in a way with me for my doings,” said
Joseph, again sitting down. “I’ve been troubled with weak moments
lately, ’tis true. I’ve been drinky once this month already, and I did
not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two yesterday; so I
don’t want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next
world, and not to be squandered lightly.”
“I believe ye to be a chapel-member, Joseph. That I do.”
“Oh, no, no! I don’ got so far as that.”
“For my part,” said Coggan, “I’m staunch Church of England.”
“Ay, and faith, so be I,” said Mark Clark.
“I won’t say much for myself; I don’t wish to,” Coggan continued, with
that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the
barley-corn. “But I’ve never changed a single doctrine: I’ve stuck like
a plaster to the old faith I was born in. Yes; there’s this to be said
for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful
old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all.
But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers,
and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapel-members be
clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers
out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwracks in the
newspaper.”
“They can—they can,” said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; “but
we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it
all, we should no more know what to say to a great person like
Providence than babes unborn.”
“Chapel-folk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we,” said
Joseph, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Coggan. “We know very well that if anybody goes to heaven,
they will. They’ve worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it,
such as ’tis. I’m not such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to
the Church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not.
But I hate a feller who’ll change his old ancient doctrines for the
sake of getting to heaven. I’d as soon turn king’s-evidence for the few
pounds you get. Why, neighbours, when every one of my taties were
frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man who gave me a sack for seed,
though he hardly had one for his own use, and no money to buy ’em. If
it hadn’t been for him, I shouldn’t hae had a tatie to put in my
garden. D’ye think I’d turn after that? No, I’ll stick to my side; and
if we be in the wrong, so be it: I’ll fall with the fallen!”
“Well said—very well said,” observed Joseph.—“However, folks, I must be
moving now: upon my life I must. Parson Thirdly will be waiting at the
church gates, and there’s the woman a-biding outside in the waggon.”
“Joseph Poorgrass, don’t be so miserable! Parson Thirdly won’t mind.
He’s a generous man; he’s found me in tracts for years, and I’ve
consumed a good many in the course of a long and rather shady life; but
he’s never been the man to complain at the expense. Sit down.”
The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was troubled
by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes
glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to
deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the
surface of darkness. Coggan’s watch struck six from his pocket in the
usual still small tones.
At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened
to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn
bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round
faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a
fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and
shrank several inches into the background.
“Upon my soul, I’m ashamed of you; ’tis disgraceful, Joseph,
disgraceful!” said Gabriel, indignantly. “Coggan, you call yourself a
man, and don’t know better than this.”
Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes
occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not a
member but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.
“Don’t take on so, shepherd!” said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully at
the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for
his eyes.
“Nobody can hurt a dead woman,” at length said Coggan, with the
precision of a machine. “All that could be done for her is done—she’s
beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for
lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don’t know what you do
with her at all? If she’d been alive, I would have been the first to
help her. If she now wanted victuals and drink, I’d pay for it, money
down. But she’s dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. The
woman’s past us—time spent upon her is throwed away: why should we
hurry to do what’s not required? Drink, shepherd, and be friends, for
to-morrow we may be like her.”
“We may,” added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself, to
run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to, Jan
meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a song:—
“To-mor-row, to-mor-row!
And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board,
With a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row,
With my friends will I share what to-day may af-ford,
And let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row.
To-mor-row, to-mor—”
“Do hold thy horning, Jan!” said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, “as
for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy
ways, you are as drunk as you can stand.”
“No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that’s the
matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that’s
how it is I look double to you—I mean, you look double to me.”
“A multiplying eye is a very distressing thing,” said Mark Clark.
“It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little time,”
said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly. “Yes; I see two of every sort, as if I
were some holy man living in the times of King Noah and entering into
the ark…. Y-y-y-yes,” he added, becoming much affected by the picture
of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears; “I feel too
good for England: I ought to have lived in Genesis by rights, like the
other men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn’t have b-b-been called a
d-d-drunkard in such a way!”
“I wish you’d show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining
there!”
“Show myself a man of spirit?… Ah, well! let me take the name of
drunkard humbly—let me be a man of contrite knees—let it be! I know
that I always do say ‘Please God’ afore I do anything, from my getting
up to my going down of the same, and I am willing to take as much
disgrace as belongs to that holy act. Hah, yes!… But not a man of
spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my
person without shouting manfully that I question the right to do so? I
inquire that query boldly?”
“We can’t say that you have, Joseph Poorgrass,” said Jan, emphatically.
“Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned! Yet the
shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I am not a man of
spirit! Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!”
Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take
charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply,
but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle
stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy
time. He pulled the horse’s head from the large patch of turf it had
eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along
through the unwholesome night.
It had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be
brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate
Fanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge to
Melchester. But, thanks to Boldwood’s reticence and Oak’s generosity,
the lover she had followed had never been individualized as Troy.
Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be published
till at any rate the girl had been in her grave for a few days, when
the interposing barriers of earth and time, and a sense that the events
had been somewhat shut into oblivion, would deaden the sting that
revelation and invidious remark would have for Bathsheba just now.
By the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence,
which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark. A man came from
the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown
flour,—
“Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?”
Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson.
“The corpse is here, sir,” said Gabriel.
“I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the
reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to
be performed with proper decency. Have you the registrar’s
certificate?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “I expect Poorgrass has that; and he’s at the
Buck’s Head. I forgot to ask him for it.”
“Then that settles the matter. We’ll put off the funeral till to-morrow
morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left
here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited
more than an hour, and have now gone home.”
Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable
plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house
for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba’s uncle. Visions of
several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay flitted
before him. But his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of
his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. He found her in an
unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were suspicious and
perplexed as with some antecedent thought. Troy had not yet returned.
At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of indifference to his
proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their
burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she
swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny’s account, and
desired that the girl might be brought into the house. Oak argued upon
the convenience of leaving her in the waggon, just as she lay now, with
her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle
into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose, “It is unkind
and unchristian,” she said, “to leave the poor thing in a coach-house
all night.”
“Very well, then,” said the parson. “And I will arrange that the
funeral shall take place early to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Troy is right in
feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully We
must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving her
home, she is still our sister; and it is to be believed that God’s
uncovenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member
of the flock of Christ.”
The parson’s words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed
cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr.
Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three
other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors,
placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little
sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.
Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively
lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly
ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to
Troy’s wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite
of his careful manœuvring all this day, the very worst event that could
in any way have happened in connection with the burial had happened
now. Oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this afternoon’s
work that might cast over Bathsheba’s life a shade which the
interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently lighten,
and which nothing at all might altogether remove.
Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate,
immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the
chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one,
“_Fanny Robin and child._” Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully
rubbed out the two latter words. He then left the room, and went out
quietly by the front door.
CHAPTER XIII.
FANNY’S REVENGE
“Do you want me any longer, ma’am?” inquired Liddy, at a later hour the
same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her
hand, and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the
large parlour beside the first fire of the season.
“No more to-night, Liddy.”
“I’ll sit up for master if you like, ma’am. I am not at all afraid of
Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle. She was such a
childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn’t appear to anybody
if it tried, I’m quite sure.”
“Oh no, no! You go to bed. I’ll sit up for him myself till twelve
o’clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up
and go to bed too.”
“It is half-past ten now.”
“Oh! is it?”
“Why don’t you sit upstairs, ma’am?”
“Why don’t I?” said Bathsheba, desultorily. “It isn’t worth
while—there’s a fire here, Liddy,” she suddenly exclaimed in an
impulsive and excited whisper, “have you heard anything strange said of
Fanny?” The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of
unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears.
“No—not a word!” said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with
astonishment. “What is it makes you cry so, ma’am; has anything hurt
you?” She came to Bathsheba’s side with a face full of sympathy.
“No, Liddy—I don’t want you any more. I can hardly say why I have taken
so to crying lately: I never used to cry. Good-night.”
Liddy then left the parlour and closed the door.
Bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than she
had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of
the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a
cave. And within the last day or two had come these disquieting
thoughts about her husband’s past. Her wayward sentiment that evening
concerning Fanny’s temporary resting-place had been the result of a
strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba’s bosom. Perhaps it would
be more accurately described as a determined rebellion against her
prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct of uncharitableness,
which would have withheld all sympathy from the dead woman, because in
life she had preceded Bathsheba in the attentions of a man whom
Bathsheba had by no means ceased from loving, though her love was sick
to death just now with the gravity of a further misgiving.
In five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door. Liddy
reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at
length she said, “Maryann has just heard something very strange, but I
know it isn’t true. And we shall be sure to know the rights of it in a
day or two.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma’am. It is about Fanny. That
same thing you have heard.”
“I have heard nothing.”
“I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last
hour—that——” Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the
remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as
she spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay.
Bathsheba trembled from head to foot.
“I don’t believe it!” she said, excitedly. “And it is not written on
the coffin-cover.”
“Nor I, ma’am. And a good many others don’t; for we should surely have
been told more about it if it had been true—don’t you think so, ma’am?”
“We might or we might not.”
Bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see her
face. Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy glided
out, closed the door softly, and went to bed.
Bathsheba’s face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening,
might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who
loved her least. The sadness of Fanny Robin’s fate did not make
Bathsheba’s glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor Vashti,
and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects as
contrasts to each other. When Liddy came into the room a second time
the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary look. When
she went out after telling the story they had expressed wretchedness in
full activity. This also sank to apathy after a time. But her thoughts,
sluggish and confused at first, acquired more life as the minutes
passed, and the dull misgiving in her brow and eyes suddenly gave way
to the stillness of concentration.
Bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own
history and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny’s end which Oak and
Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing. The meeting
with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been
unwitnessed and unspoken of. Oak may have had the best of intentions in
withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had
happened; but had he known that Bathsheba’s perceptions had already
been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to lengthen
the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the certainty
which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected after all.
She suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than
herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with
dignity and her carking doubts with stoicism. Where could she find such
a friend? nowhere in the house. She was by far the coolest of the women
under her roof. Patience and suspension of judgement for a few hours
were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to teach her. Might
she but go to Gabriel Oak!—but that could not be. What a way Oak had,
she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper
and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt,
any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery
of by every turn and look he gave—that among the multitude of interests
by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal
well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak
meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any
special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she
would wish to be. But then Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the
inmost matter of his bosom as she was at this moment. Oak knew all that
he wished to know—she felt convinced of that. If she were to go to him
now at once and say no more than these few words, “What is the truth of
the story?” he would feel bound in honour to tell her. It would be an
inexpressible relief. No further speech would need to be uttered. He
knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in her would alarm
him.
She flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it. Every
blade, every twig was still. The air was yet thick with moisture,
though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady
smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost
musical in its soothing regularity. It seemed better to be out of the
house than within it, and Bathsheba closed the door, and walked slowly
down the lane till she came opposite to Gabriel’s cottage, where he now
lived alone, having left Coggan’s house through being pinched for room.
There was a light in one window only, and that was downstairs. The
shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or curtain drawn over the
window, neither robbery nor observation being a contingency which could
do much injury to the occupant of the domicile. Yes, it was Gabriel
himself who was sitting up: he was reading. From her standing-place in
the road she could see him plainly, sitting quite still, his light
curly head upon his hand, and only occasionally looking up to snuff the
candle which stood beside him. At length he looked at the clock, seemed
surprised at the lateness of the hour, closed his book, and arose. He
was going to bed, she knew, and if she tapped it must be done at once.
Alas for her resolve! She felt she could not do it. Not for worlds now
could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him
plainly for information. She must suspect, and guess, and chafe, and
bear it all alone.
Like a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and
fascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from
that little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own. Gabriel
appeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench, and
then—knelt down to pray. The contrast of the picture with her
rebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for
her to bear to look upon longer. It was not for her to make a truce
with trouble by any such means. She must tread her giddy distracting
measure to its last note, as she had begun it. With a swollen heart she
went again up the lane, and entered her own door.
More fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which Oak’s
example had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the door
of the room wherein Fanny lay. She locked her fingers, threw back her
head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her forehead, saying,
with a hysterical sob, “Would to God you would speak and tell me your
secret, Fanny!… Oh, I hope, hope it is not true!… If I could only look
in upon you for one little minute, I should know all!”
A few moments passed, and she added, slowly, “_And I will_.”
Bathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried her
through the actions following this murmured resolution on this
memorable evening of her life. At the end of a short though undefined
time she found herself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a
mist before her eyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain,
standing beside the uncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end
had so entirely engrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice
as she gazed within—
“It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!”