Far From The Madding Crowd
by
Thomas Hardy
Part 7 out of 10
theirs. In front of him against the wet glazed surface of
the lane he saw a person walking yet more slowly than
himself under an umbrella. The man turned and plainly
started; he was Boldwood.
"How are you this morning, sir?" said Oak.
"Yes, it is a wet day. -- Oh, I am well, very well, I thank
you; quite well."
"I am glad to hear it, sir."
Boldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees. "You
look tired and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily
regarding his companion.
"I am tired. You look strangely altered, sir."
"I? Not a bit of it: I am well enough. What put that into
your head?"
"I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to,
that was all."
"Indeed, then you are mistaken," said Boldwood, shortly.
"Nothing hurts me. My constitution is an iron one."
"I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was
barely in time. Never had such a struggle in my life....
Yours of course are safe, sir."
"Oh yes," Boldwood added, after an interval of silence:
"What did you ask, Oak?"
"Your ricks are all covered before this time?"
"No."
"At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?"
"They are not."
"Them under the hedge?"
"No. I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it."
"Nor the little one by the stile?"
"Nor the little one by the stile. I overlooked the ricks
this year."
"Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir."
"Possibly not."
"Overlooked them," repeated Gabriel slowly to himself. It
is difficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that
announcement had upon Oak at such a moment. All the night
he had been feeling that the neglect he was labouring to
repair was abnormal and isolated -- the only instance of the
kind within the circuit of the county. Yet at this very
time, within the same parish, a greater waste had been going
on, uncomplained of and disregarded. A few months earlier
Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as
preposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a
ship. Oak was just thinking that whatever he himself might
have suffered from Bathsheba's marriage, here was a man who
had suffered more, when Boldwood spoke in a changed voice --
that of one who yearned to make a confidence and relieve his
heart by an outpouring.
"Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with
me lately. I may as well own it. I was going to get a
little settled in life; but in some way my plan has come to
nothing."
"I thought my mistress would have married you," said
Gabriel, not knowing enough of the full depths of Boldwood's
love to keep silence on the farmer's account, and determined
not to evade discipline by doing so on his own. "However,
it is so sometimes, and nothing happens that we expect," he
added, with the repose of a man whom misfortune had inured
rather than subdued.
"I daresay I am a joke about the parish," said Boldwood, as
if the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a
miserable lightness meant to express his indifference.
"Oh no -- I don't think that."
"-- But the real truth of the matter is that there was not,
as some fancy, any jilting on -- her part. No engagement
ever existed between me and Miss Everdene. People say so,
but it is untrue: she never promised me!" Boldwood stood
still now and turned his wild face to Oak. "Oh, Gabriel,"
he continued, "I am weak and foolish, and I don't know what,
and I can't fend off my miserable grief! ... I had some
faint belief in the mercy of God till I lost that woman.
Yes, He prepared a gourd to shade me, and like the prophet I
thanked Him and was glad. But the next day He prepared a
worm to smite the gourd and wither it; and I feel it is
better to die than to live!"
A silence followed. Boldwood aroused himself from the
momentary mood of confidence into which he had drifted, and
walked on again, resuming his usual reserve.
"No, Gabriel," he resumed, with a carelessness which was
like the smile on the countenance of a skull: "it was made
more of by other people than ever it was by us. I do feel a
little regret occasionally, but no woman ever had power over
me for any length of time. Well, good morning; I can trust
you not to mention to others what has passed between us two
here."
CHAPTER XXXIX
COMING HOME -- A CRY
ON the turnpike road, between Casterbridge and Weatherbury,
and about three miles from the former place, is Yalbury
Hill, one of those steep long ascents which pervade the
highways of this undulating part of South Wessex. 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 and
training.
"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, just out of Budmouth, 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. Ay, 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? O, 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 second meeting,
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 have 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 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 in
a cutting, so 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
Grey's Bridge just out of the town. 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 by the third milestone from
Casterbridge. 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 agitated.
"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 XL
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 penumbrae 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.
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 manor-house 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 toad,
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.
"Two more!" 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 slight distance she bore up bravely, afterwards
flagging as before. This was beside a lone copsewood,
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 un-bound,
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 the last
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 transfers labour,
being powerless to supersede it, and the original amount 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 descending Mellstock Hill another
milestone appeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed
fence came into view. She staggered across to the first
post, clung to it, and looked around.
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.
"Less than a mile!" the woman murmured. "No; more," she
added, after a pause. "The mile is to the county hall, and
my resting-place is on the other side Casterbridge. A
little over 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. Seventeen times that. O 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.
"That stone bridge is the end of my journey," she said, when
the bridge over the Froom was in view.
She crawled to the bridge. 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 over half 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 Durnover Moor, open to the road on
either side. She surveyed the wide space, the lights,
herself, sighed, and lay down against a guard-stone of the
bridge.
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 bridge
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 eye's, and the
substance touched her face. A dog was licking her cheek.
He was a 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
bottom of the town, and the Casterbridge lamps lay before
them like fallen Pleiads as they turned to the left into the
dense shade of a deserted avenue of chestnuts, and so
skirted the borough. Thus the town 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 stone 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 bellpull 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 house and disappeared.
CHAPTER XLI
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. O! 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
goodlooking 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 road 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 a footpath across 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 evening. She belongs by law to
our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at
three 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 hunches 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 first went to live in a garrison-town t'other side
o' Wessex, and since then 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 hint 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 'ee!" 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 XLII
JOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN
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 sphere. 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 over the South-street Alms-house pointed to
five minutes to three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with
red, and containing boughs and flowers, passed the end of
the street, and up towards 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 tailboard 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 down the hill, and
along the road to Weatherbury.
The afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the right
towards the sea as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw
strange clouds and scrolls of mist rolling over the long
ridges 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 moor 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,
this being 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, but 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 spectrelike 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.
At the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond this
wood, was the old inn 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 formulae: 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
signboard 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, within the pale of respectability, were now
sitting face to face over a threelegged 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-A-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 four 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 parish 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 least thimbleful ye can dream
of 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 wet, and
since we be 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 schoolpeople 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 offhand."
"I believe ye to be a chapelmember, Joseph. That I do."
"Oh, no, no! I don't go 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
shipwrecks 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 gaffer like the Lord than babes
unborn."
"Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we,"
said Joseph, thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Coggan. "We know very well that if anybody do
go to heaven, they will. They've worked hard for it, and
they deserve to have it, such as 'tis. I bain't 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. Pa'son
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! Pa'son 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 shady life; but he's never been the man to cry out
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 repeater 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 bad 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 be willing to take as much disgrace as there
is in that holy act. Hah, yes! ... But not a man of
spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted
against my hinder parts without groaning manfully that I
question the right to do so? I inquire that query boldly?"
"We can't say that you have, Hero Poorgrass," admitted Jan.
"Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned!
Yet the shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony
that I be 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 through Melchester and onwards. 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 manoeuvring 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 coffinlid. The
scrawl was this simple one, "FANNY ROBIN AND CHILD." Gabriel
took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two
latter words, leaving visible the inscription "FANNY ROBIN"
only. He then left the room, and went out quietly by the
front door.
CHAPTER XLIII
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 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 there's
only one name 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. Her
simple contrary nature, fed on old-fashioned principles, was
troubled by that which would have troubled a woman of the
world very little, both Fanny and her child, if she had one
being dead.
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 to Fanny; 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 lurking 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 about Fanny 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 on the cause
of Fanny's death. 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 that
there are two of you! ... 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. She went
to the lumber-closet for a screw-driver. 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!"
She was conscious of having brought about this situation by
a series of actions done as by one in an extravagant dream;
of following that idea as to method, which had burst upon
her in the hall with glaring obviousness, by gliding to the
top of the stairs, assuring herself by listening to the
heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep, gliding
down again, turning the handle of the door within which the
young girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what,
if she had anticipated any such undertaking at night and
alone, would have horrified her, but which, when done, was
not so dreadful as was the conclusive proof of her husband's
conduct which came with knowing beyond doubt the last
chapter of Fanny's story.
Bathsheba's head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which
had been bated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was
exhaled now in the form of a whispered wail: "Oh-h-h!" she
said, and the silent room added length to her moan.
Her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the
coffin: tears of a complicated origin, of a nature
indescribable, almost indefinable except as other than those
of simple sorrow. Assuredly their wonted fires must have
lived in Fanny's ashes when events were so shaped as to
chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet
effectual manner. The one feat alone -- that of dying -- by
which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one,
Fanny had achieved. And to that had destiny subjoined this
rencounter to-night, which had, in Bathsheba's wild
imagining, turned her companion's failure to success, her
humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendency; it
had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set
upon all things about her an ironical smile.
Fanny's face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and
there was no longer much room for doubt as to the origin of
the curl owned by Troy. In Bathsheba's heated fancy the
innocent white countenance expressed a dim triumphant
consciousness of the pain she was retaliating for her pain
with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic law: "Burning
for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife."
Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her
position by immediate death, which, thought she, though it
was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its
inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed;
whilst the shames of life were measureless. Yet even this
scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying her
rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in
her rival's case. She glided rapidly up and down the room,
as was mostly her habit when excited, her hands hanging
clasped in front of her, as she thought and in part
expressed in broken words: "O, I hate her, yet I don't mean
that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and yet I
hate her a little! yes, my flesh insists upon hating her,
whether my spirit is willing or no!... If she had only
lived, I could have been angry and cruel towards her with
some justification; but to be vindictive towards a poor dead
woman recoils upon myself. O God, have mercy! I am
miserable at all this!"
Bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own
state of mind that she looked around for some sort of refuge
from herself. The vision of Oak kneeling down that night
recurred to her, and with the imitative instinct which
animates women she seized upon the idea, resolved to kneel,
and, if possible, pray. Gabriel had prayed; so would she.
She knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her
hands, and for a time the room was silent as a tomb.
Whether from a purely mechanical, or from any other cause,
when Bathsheba arose it was with a quieted spirit, and a
regret for the antagonistic instincts which had seized upon
her just before.
In her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase
by the window, and began laying them around the dead girl's
head. Bathsheba knew no other way of showing kindness to
persons departed than by giving them flowers. She knew not
how long she remained engaged thus. She forgot time, life,
where she was, what she was doing. A slamming together of
the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to her-self
again. An instant after, the front door opened and closed,
steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the
entrance to the room, looking in upon her.
He beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the
scene, as if he thought it an illusion raised by some
fiendish incantation. Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end,
gazed back at him in the same wild way.
So little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate
induction, that at this moment, as he stood with the door in
his hand, Troy never once thought of Fanny in connection
with what he saw. His first confused idea was that somebody
in the house had died.
"Well -- what?" said Troy, blankly.
"I must go! I must go!" said Bathsheba, to herself more than
to him. She came with a dilated eye towards the door, to
push past him.
"What's the matter, in God's name? who's dead?" said Troy.
"I cannot say; let me go out. I want air!" she continued.
"But no; stay, I insist!" He seized her hand, and then
volition seemed to leave her, and she went off into a state
of passivity. He, still holding her, came up the room, and
thus, hand in hand, Troy and Bathsheba approached the
coffin's side.
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