 46 The tower of Weatherbury Church was a square erection of fourteenth-century date, having two stone gargoyles on each of the four faces of its parapet. Of these eight carved protrusions, only two at this time continued to serve the purpose of their erection, that of spouting water from the lead-roof within. One mouth in each front had been closed by bygone churchwardens at Superfluous, and two others were broken away and choked, a matter not of much consequence to the well-being of the tower, for the two mouths which still remained open and active were gaping enough to do all the work. It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art period than the power of the master spirits of that time in Grotesque, and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is no disputing the proposition. Weatherbury Tower was a somewhat early instance of the use of an ornamental parapet in parish as distinct from cathedral churches, and the gargoyles which are the necessary corollatives of a parapet were exceptionally prominent, of the boldest cut that the hand could shape, and of the most original design that a human brain could conceive. There was, so to speak, that symmetry in the distortion which is less the characteristic of British than continental grotesques of the period. All the eight were different from each other. A beholder was convinced that nothing on earth could be more hideous than those he saw on the north side, until he went around to the south. Of the two on this latter face, only that at the southeastern corner concerned the story. It was too human to be called like a dragon, too impish to be like a man, too animal to be like a fiend, and not enough like a bird to be called a griffin. This horrible stone entity was fashioned as if covered with a wrinkled hide. It had short, direct ears, eyes starting from their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the corners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pull open to give free passage to the water it vomited. The lower row of teeth was quite washed away, though the upper still remained. Here and thus jutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested as a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the surrounding landscape, uselessly in dry weather, and in wet with a gurgling and snorting sound. Troy slept on in the porch, and the rain increased outside, presently the gargoyle spat. In due time a small stream began to trickle through the seventy feet of aerial space between its mouth and the ground, with the water drop smote like duck-shot in their accelerated velocity. The stream thickened in substance, and increased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from the side of the tower. When the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless torrent, the stream dashed downwards in volumes. We follow its course to the ground at this point of time. The end of the liquid parabola has come forward from the wall, has advanced over the plinth moldings, over a heap of stones, over the marble border into the midst of Fanny Robbins Grave. The force of the stream had, until very lately, been received upon some loose stone spread thereabout, which had acted as a shield to the soil under the onset. These during the summer months had been cleared from the ground, and there was now nothing to resist the downfall but the bare earth. For several years the stream had not spouted so far from the tower as it was doing on this night, and such a contingency had been overlooked. Sometimes this obscure corner received no inhabitant for the space of two or three years, and then it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or some sinner of undignified sins. The persistent torrent from the gargoyle's jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed, spread into the night, as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the delugian rain. The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny's repentant lover began to move and ride in their bed. The winter violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud. Soon the snow-drops and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass, like ingredients in a cauldron. Plants of the tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface, and floated off. Troy did not awake from his comfortless sleep till it was broad day. Without having been in bed for two nights, his shoulders felt stiff, his feet tender, and his head heavy. He remembered his position, arose, shivered, took the spade, and again went out. The rain had quite ceased, and the sun was shining through the green, brown, and yellow leaves, now sparkling and varnished by the raindrops to the brightness of similar effects in the landscapes of Rysdale and Hobelma, and full of all those infinite beauties that arise from the union of water and colour with highlights. The air was rendered so transparent by the heavy fall of rain that the autumn hues of the middle distance were as rich as those near at hand, and the remote fields, intercepted by the angle of the tower, appeared in the same plane as the tower itself. He entered the gravel path which had taken behind the tower. The path, instead of being stony as it had been the night before, was browned over with a thin coating of mud. At one place in the path he saw a tuft of stringy roots, washed white and clean as a bundle of tendons. He picked it up. Surely it could not be one of the primrose's he had planted. He saw a bulb, another, and another, as he advanced. Beyond doubt there were crocuses. With the face of perplexed dismay Troy turned the corner and then beheld the wreck the stream had made. The pool upon the grave had soaked away into the ground, and in its place was a hollow. The disturbed earth was washed over the grass and pathway in the guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and had spotted the marble tombstone with the same stains. Nearly all the flowers were washed clean out of the ground, and they lay roots upward on the spots whither they had been splashed by the stream. Troy's brow became heavily contracted. He set his teeth closely, and his compressed lips moved as those of one in great pain. This singular accident, by a strange confluence of emotions in him, was felt as the sharpest sting of all. Troy's face was very expressive, and any observer who had seen him now would hardly have believed him to be a man who had laughed and sung and poured love-trifles into a woman's ear. To curse his miserable lot was at first his impulse, but even that lowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whose absence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of the morbid misery which wrung him. The sight, coming as it did, superimposed upon the other dark scenery of the previous days, formed a sort of climax to the whole panorama, and it was more than he could endure. Sanguine by nature Troy had a power of a looting grief by simply adjourning it. He could put off the consideration of any particular spectre till the matter had become old and softened by time. The planting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species of illusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention had been known and circumvented. Almost for the first time in his life Troy, as he stood by this dismantled grave, wished himself another man. It is seldom that a person with much animal spirit does not feel that the fact of his life being his own is the one qualification which singles it out as a more hopeful life than that of others who may actually resemble him in every particular. Troy had felt, in his transient way, hundreds of times that he could not envy other people their condition, because the possession of that condition would have necessitated a different personality, when he desired no other than his own. He had not minded the peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his life, the meteor-like uncertainty of all that related to him. As these appertain to the hero of his story, without whom there would have been no story at all for him, and it seemed to be only in the nature of things that matters would write themselves at some proper date and wind up well. This very morning the illusion completed its disappearance, and, as it were, all of a sudden Troy hated himself. The suddenness was probably more apparent than real. A coral reef which just comes short of the ocean's surface is no more to the horizon than if it had never been begun, and the mere finishing stroke is what often appears to create an event which has long been potentially an accomplished thing. He stood and meditated, a miserable man. Where should he go? He that is accursed, let him be accursed still, was a pitiless anathema written in this spoileted effort of his newborn solicitude-ness. A man who has spent his primal strength in journeying in one direction has not much spirit left for reversing his course. Troy had since yesterday faintly reversed his, but the nearest opposition had disheartened him. To turn about would have been hard enough under the greatest providential encouragement, but to find that providence, far from helping him into a new course, or showing any wish that he might adopt one, actually jeered his first trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature could bear. Slowly withdrew from the grave. He did not attempt to fill up the hole, replace the flowers, or do anything at all. He simply threw up his cards, and force-swore his game for that time and always. Going out of the church-art silently and unobserved, none of the villagers having yet risen, he passed down some fields at the back, and emerged just as secretly upon the high road. Shortly afterwards he had gone from the village. Meanwhile Bathsheba remained a voluntary prisoner in the attic. The door was kept locked, except during the entries and exits of Liddy, for whom a bed had been arranged in a small adjoining room. The light of Troy's lantern in the church-art was noticed about ten o'clock by the maid's servant, who casually glanced from the window in that direction whilst taking her supper, and she called Bathsheba's attention to it. They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time until Liddy was sent to bed. Bathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night. When her attendant was unconscious and softly breathing in the next room, the mistress of the house was still looking out of the window at the faint gleam spreading from among the trees, not in a steady shine, but blinking like a revolving coast-light, though this appearance failed to suggest to her that a person was passing and repassing in front of it. Bathsheba sat here till it began to rain, and the light vanished, when she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed, and re-enacted in a worn mind the lurid scene of yesterday's night. Almost before the first faint sign of dawn appeared she arose again, and opened the window to obtain a full breathing of the new morning air. The pains being now wet with trembling tears left by the night rain, each one rounded with a pale luster caught from primrose-hued slashes through a cloud low down in the awakening sky. From the trees came the sound of a steady dripping upon the drifted leaves underneath them, and from the direction of the church she could hear another noise, peculiar and not intermittent like the rest, the pearl of water falling into a pool. Liddy knocked at eight o'clock, and Bathsheba unlocked the door. "'What a heavy rain we had in the night, ma'am,' said Liddy, when her inquiries about breakfast had been made. "'Yes, very heavy. Did you hear the strange noise from the churchyard?' I heard one strange noise. I've been thinking it must have been the water from the tower-spouts. "'Well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am. He's now gone on to sea.' "'Oh, Gaby has been here this morning.' "'Only just looked in in passing, quite in his old way, which I thought he had left off lately. But the tower-spouts used his spatter and the stones, and we were puzzled, for this was like the boiling of a pot.' Not being able to read, think, or work, Bathsheba asked Liddy to stay and breakfast with her. The tongue of the more childish woman still ran upon recent events. "'Are you going across to the church, ma'am?' She asked. "'Not that I know of,' said Bathsheba. "'I thought you might like to go and see where they have put fanny, the trees hide the place from your window.' Bathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting her husband. "'Has Mr. Troy been in to-night?' she said. "'No, ma'am. I think he's gone to Budmouth.' "'Budmouth, the sound of the word carried with it a much diminished perspective of him and his deeds. There were thirteen miles interval betwixt them now.' She hated questioning Liddy about her husband's movements, and indeed had hitherto seduously avoided doing so. But now all the house knew that there had been some dreadful disagreement between them, and it was futile to attempt disguise. Bathsheba had reached a stage at which people ceased to have any appreciative regard for public opinion. "'What makes you think he has gone there?' she said. "'Laven tall' saw him on the Budmouth Road this morning before breakfast.' Bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward heaviness of the past twenty-four hours which had quenched the vitality of you to her, without substituting the philosophy of mature years, and she resolved to go out and walk a little way. So when breakfast was over she put on her bonnet and took a direction towards the church. It was nine o'clock, and the men, having returned to work again from their first meal, she was not likely to meet any of them in the road. Knowing that Fanny had been laid in the reprobate's quarter of the graveyard, called in the parish behind church, which was invisible from the road, it was impossible to resist the impulse to enter and look upon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she had at the same time dreaded to see. She had been unable to overcome an impression that some connection existed between her rival and the light through the trees. Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole on the tomb. Its delicate vein surface splashed and stained just as Troy had seen it and left it two hours earlier. On the other side of the scene stood Gabriel. His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her arrival having been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted his attention. Bathsheba did not at once perceive that the grand tomb and the disturbed grave were Fanny's, and she looked on both sides and around for some humbler mound, earthed up and clotted in the usual way. Then her eye followed Oaks, and she read the words with which the inscription opened, erected by Francis Troy, in beloved memory of Fanny Robin. Oaks saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly and learn how she received this knowledge of the authorship of the work, which to himself had caused considerable astonishment. But such discoveries did not much affect her now. Emotional convulsions seemed to have become the common places of her history, and she bade him good morning, and asked him to fill in the hole with the spade which was standing by. While Oaks was doing as she desired, Bathsheba collected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic manipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman's gardening, and which flowers seemed to understand and thrive upon. She requested Oaks to get the church wardens to turn the leadwork at the mouth of the gargoyle that hung gaping down upon them, that by this means the stream might be directed sideways, and a repetition of the accident prevented. Finally, with the superfluous magnanimity of a woman whose narrower instincts have brought down bitterness upon her instead of love, she wiped the mud from the tomb, as if she rather liked its words than otherwise, and went again home. CHOI wandered along towards the south. A composite feeling, made up of disgust with it, to him humdrum tediousness of a farmer's life, gloomy images of her who lay in the churchyard, remorse, and a general averseness to his wife's society, impelled him to seek a home in any place on earth save weatherbury. The sad accessories of Fanny's End confronted him as vivid pictures which threatened to be indelible, and made life in Bathsheba's house intolerable. At three in the afternoon he found himself at the foot of a slope more than a mile in length, which ran to the ridge of a range of hills lying parallel with the shore, and forming a monotonous barrier between the basin of cultivated country inland and the wilder scenery of the coast. Up the hill stretched a road nearly straight and perfectly white, the two sides approaching each other in a gradual taper till they met the sky at the top about two miles off. Throughout the length of this narrow and irksome inclined plane, not a sign of life was visible on this garish afternoon. Troy toiled up the road with a languor and depression greater than any he had experienced for many a day and year before. The air was warm and muggy, and the top seemed to recede as he approached. At last he reached the summit, and a wide and novel prospect burst upon him with an effect almost like that of the Pacific upon Balboa's gaze. The broad steely sea, marked only by faint lines, which had a semblance of being etched thereon to a degree not deep enough to disturb its general evenness, stretched the whole width of its front and round to the right, where near the town and port of Budmouth the sun bristled down upon it, and banished all colour to substitute in its place a clear, oily polish. Nothing moved in sky, land, or sea, except a frill of milk-white foam along the nearer angles of the shore, shreds of which licked the contiguous stones like tongs. He descended and came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs. Troy's nature freshened within him. He thought he would rest and bathe here before going further. He undressed and plunged in. Inside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being smooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean's swell Troy presently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock, which formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean. Unfortunately for Troy a current unknown to him existed outside, which, unimportant to craft of any burden, was awkward for a swimmer who might be taken in it unawares. Troy found himself carried to the left and then round in a swoop out to sea. He now recollected the place and its sinister character. He bathers had there prayed for a dry death from time to time, and like Gonzalo also had been unanswered, and Troy began to deem it possible that he might be added to their number. Not a boat of any kind was at present within sight, but far in the distance Budmouth lay upon the sea, as it were quietly regarding his efforts, and beside the town the harbor showed its position by a dim meshwork of ropes and spars. After well-nigh exhausting himself in attempts to get back to the mouth of the cove, in his weakness swimming several inches deeper than was his want, keeping up his breathing entirely by his nostrils, turning upon his back a dozen times over, swimming on papillon, and so on, Troy resolved as a last resort to tread water at a slight incline, and so endeavour to reach the shore at any point merely giving himself a gentle impetus inwards whilst carried on in the general direction of the tide. This necessarily a slow process, he found to be not altogether so difficult, and though there was no choice of a landing-place, the objects on shore passing by him in a sad and slow procession, he perceptively approached the extremity of a spit of land, yet further to the right, now well-defined against the sunny portion of the horizon. While the swimmer's eyes were fixed upon the spit, as his only means of salvation on this side of the unknown, a moving object broke the outline of the extremity, and immediately a ship's boat appeared manned with several sailor-lads, her bows towards the sea. All Troy's vigour spasmodically revived, to prolong the struggle yet a little further. Swimming with his right arm, he held up his left to hail them, splashing upon the waves and shouting with all his might. From the position of the setting sun, his white form was distinctly visible upon the now deep-hewed bosom of the sea to the east of the boat, and the men saw him at once. Backing their oars and putting the boat about, they pulled towards them with a will, and in five or six minutes from the time of his first hallow, two of the sailors hauled them over the stern. They formed part of a brig's crew, and had come ashore for sand, lending him what little clothing they could spare among them as a slight protection against the rapidly cooling air, they agreed to land them in the morning, and without further delay, for it was growing late, they made again towards the road's dead where their vessel lay. At now night drooped slowly upon the wide watery levels in front, and at no great distance from them where their shoreline curved round, and formed a long ribbon of shade upon the horizon. A series of points of yellow light began to start into existence, holding the spot to be the site of Budmouth, where the lamps were being lighted along the parade. The cluck of their oars was the only sound of any distinctness upon the sea, and as they laboured amid the tickening shades, the lamp-lights grew larger, each appearing to send a flaming sword deep down into the waves before it, until there arose, among other dim shapes of the kind, the form of the vessel for which they were bound. CHAPTER 48 Doubts arise, doubts linger. Bathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband's absence from hours to days, with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling of relief, yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the level commonly designated as indifference. She belonged to him. The certainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable probabilities of its issue so bounded that she could not speculate on contingencies. Taking no further interest in herself as a splendid woman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in contemplating her probable fate as a singular wretch, for Bathsheba drew herself and her future in colours that no reality could exceed for darkness. Her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened, and with it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since anxiety recognised it a better and a worse alternative, and Bathsheba had made up her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had ceased for her. Soon, or later, and that not very late, her husband would be home again, and then the days of their tenancy of the upper farm would be numbered. There had originally been shown by the agent to the estate some distrust of Bathsheba's tenure as James Everdeen's successor, on the score of her sex, and her youth, and her beauty, but the peculiar nature of her uncle's will, his own frequent testimony before his death to her cleverness in such a pursuit, and her vigorous marshalling of the numerous flocks and herds, which came suddenly into her hands before negotiations were concluded, had won confidence in her powers, and no further objections had been raised. She had latterly been in great doubt as to what the legal effects of her marriage would be upon her position, but no notice had been taken as yet of her change of name, and only one point was clear, that in the event of her own or her husband's inability to meet the agent at the forthcoming January rent-day, very little consideration would be shown, and for that matter very little would be deserved. Once out of the farm the approach of poverty would be sure. Hence Bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken off. She was not a woman who could hope without good materials for the process, differing thus from the less farsighted and energetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes on as a sort of clockwork which the nearest food and shelter are sufficient to wind up, and perceiving clearly that her mistake had been a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for the end. The first Saturday after Troy's departure she went to Cassridge alone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage. On this Saturday Bathsheba was passing slowly on foot through the crowd of rural businessmen gathered as usual in front of the market-house, who were as usual gazed upon by the burgers with feelings that those healthy lives were dearly paid for, by exclusion from possible alderman-ship, when a man, who had apparently been following her, said some words to another on her left hand. Bathsheba's ears were keen as those of any wild animal, and she distinctly heard what the speaker said, though her back was towards them. I am looking for Mrs. Troy. Is that she there? Yes, that's the young lady, I believe," said the person addressed. They have some awkward news to break to her. Her husband is drowned. As if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, Bathsheba gasped out, No! It is not true. It cannot be true. Then she said and heard no more. The ice of self-command which had latterly gathered over her was broken, and the currents burst forth again and overwhelmed her. A darkness came into her eyes, and she fell. But not to the ground. A gloomy man, who had been observing her from under the portico of the old corn-exchange, when she passed through the group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her exclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down. What is it? said Bouldwood, looking up at the bringer of the bad news, as he supported her. Her husband was drowned this week, while bathing in Lullwind Cove. A coast-guardsman found his clothes and brought them into Budmouth yesterday. Thereupon a strange fire lighted up in Bouldwood's eye, and his face flushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought. Everybody's glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious Bathsheba. He lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down the folds of her dress, as a child might have taken a storm-beaten bird, and arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the pavement to the king's arms in. Here he passed with her under the archway into a private room, and by the time he had deposited, so lowly, the precious burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her eyes. Remembering all that had occurred, she murmured, I want to go home. Bouldwood left the room. He stood for a moment in the passage to recover his senses. The experience had been too much for his consciousness to keep up with, and now that he had grasped it, it had gone again. For those few heavenly golden moments she had been in his arms, what it had mattered about her not knowing it, she had been close to his breast, and he had been close to hers. He started onward again, and sending a woman to her who went out to ascertain all the facts of the case. These appeared to be limited to what he had already heard. He then ordered her horse to be put into the gig, and when all was ready we turned to inform her. He found that, though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for the budmouth man who had brought the tidings, and learned from him all there was to know. Being hardly in a condition to drive home, as she had driven to town, Bouldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get her a driver, or to give her a seat in his baiten, which was more comfortable than her own conveyance. These proposals Bathsheba gently declined, and the farmer at once departed. About half an hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and took her seat and the reins as usual, in external appearance much as if nothing had happened. She went out of the town by a tortuous back-street, and drove slowly along unconscious of the road and the scene. The first shades of evening were showing themselves when Bathsheba reached home, where silently alighting and leaving the horse in the hands of the boy, she proceeded at once upstairs. Liddy met her on the landing. The news had preceded Bathsheba to Wetherbury by half an hour, and Liddy looked inquiringly into her mistress's face. Bathsheba had nothing to say. She entered her bedroom and sat by the window, and thought and thought till night enveloped her, and the extreme lines only of her shape were visible. She came to the door, knocked and opened it. "'Well, what is it, Liddy?' she said. "'I was thinking there must be something God for you to wear,' said Liddy, with hesitation. "'What do you mean?' "'Morning.' "'No, no, no,' said Bathsheba hurriedly. "'But I suppose there must be something done for poor. Not at present, I think. It is not necessary.' "'Why not, ma'am?' "'Because he is still alive.' "'How do you know that?' said Liddy, amazed. "'I don't know it. But wouldn't it have been different, or shouldn't I have heard more? Or wouldn't I have found him, Liddy? Or I don't know how it is, but death would have been different from how it this is. I am perfectly convinced that he is still alive.' Bathsheba remained firm in this opinion till Monday, when two circumstances conjoined to shake it. The first was a short paragraph in the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodising pen formidable presumptive evidence of Troy's death by drowning, contained the important testimony of a young Mr. Barker, M.D., of Budmouth, who spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident in a letter to the editor. In this he stated that he was passing over the cliff on the remote side of the cove just as the sun was setting. At that time he saw a bather carried along in the current outside the mouth of the cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a poor chance for him, unless he should be possessed of unusual muscular powers. He drifted behind a projection of the coast, and Mr. Barker followed along the shore in the same direction. But by the time that he could reach an elevation sufficiently great to command a view of the sea beyond, dusk had set in, and nothing further was to be seen. The other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became necessary for her to examine and identify them, though this had virtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in his pockets. It was so evident to her, in the midst of agitation, that Troy had undressed in the full conviction of dressing again almost immediately, that the notion that anything but death could have prevented him was a perverse one to entertain. Then Bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their opinion, strange that she should not be. A strange reflection occurred to her, causing her face to flush. Suppose that Troy had followed Fanny into another world. Had he done this intentionally, yet contrived to make his death appear like an accident? Nevertheless this thought of how the apparent might differ from the real, made vivid by her bygone jealousy of Fanny, and the remorse he had shown that night, did not blind her to the perception of a likelier difference. This tragic, but to herself, far more disastrous. When alone, late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed down, Bathsheba took Troy's watch into her hand which had been restored to her with the rest of the articles belonging to him. She opened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago. There was a little coil of pale hair, which had been as the fuse to this great explosion. He was hers, and she was his, and they should be gone together. She said, I am nothing to either of them, and why should I keep her hair? She took it in her hand, and held it over the fire. No, I'll not burn it. I'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing. She added, snatching back her hand. End of CHAPTER XLVIII The later autumn and the winter drew on a pace, and the leaves lay thick upon the turf of the glades, and the mosses of the woods. Bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended feeling, which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude, which was not precisely peacefulness. While she had known him to be alive, she could have thought of his death with equanimity, but now that it might be she had lost him, she regretted that he was not still hers. She kept the farm going, raked in her profits without caring keenly about him, and expended money on ventures because she had done so in bygone days, which, though not long gone by, seemed infinitely removed from her present. She looked back upon that past over a great gulf, as if she were now a dead person, having the faculty of meditation still left in her, by means of which, like the mouldering gentlefolk of the poet's story, she could sit and ponder what a gift life used to be. However, one excellent result of her general apathy was the long-delayed insulation of oak as bailiff, and but he, having virtually exercised that function for a long time already, the change, beyond the substantial increase of wages it brought, was little more than a nominal one addressed to the outside world. Bouldwood lived secluded and inactive. Much of his wheat, and all of his barley of that season, had been spoilt by the rain. It sprouted, grew into intricate mats, and was ultimately thrown to the pigs and anfils. The strange neglect which had produced this ruin and waste became the subject of whisper talk among all the people round, and it was elicited from one of Bouldwood's men that forgetfulness had nothing to do with it, for he had been reminded of the danger to his corn as many times, and as persistently as inferiors dared to do. The sight of the pigs turning in disgust from the rotten ears seemed to arouse Bouldwood, and he, one evening, sent for oak. After it was suggested by Bathsheba's recent act of promotion or not, the farmer proposed at the interview that Gabriel should undertake the superintendence of the lower farm as well as of Bathsheba's, because of the necessity Bouldwood felt for such aid, and the impossibility of discovering a more trustworthy man. Gabriel's malignant star was assuredly setting fast. Bathsheba, when she learned of this proposal, for oak was obliged to consult her, at first languidly objected. She considered that the two farms together were too extensive for the observation of one man. Bouldwood, who was apparently determined by personal rather than commercial reasons, suggested that oak should be furnished with a horse for his sole use, when the plan would present no difficulty, the two farms lying side by side. Bouldwood did not directly communicate with her during these negotiations, only speaking to oak, who was the go-between throughout. All was harmoniously arranged at last, and we now see oak mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting the length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit of surveillance, as if the crops all belong to him, the actual misters of the one half and the master of the other, sitting in their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion. Out of this there arose, during the spring succeeding, a talk in the parish that Gabriel Oak was feathering his nest fast. "'Whatever do you think?' said Susan Tall. "'Gabriel Oak is coming quite a dand. You know where shining boots are hardly a-harbing them, two or three times a week, and a tall hat of Sundays, and I hardly know the name of a smock-frock. When I see people strut enough to be cut open to a bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more.' It was eventually known that Gabriel, though paid a fixed wage by Bathsheba, independent of the fluctuations of agricultural profits, had made an engagement with Bouldwood by which Oak was to receive a share of the receipts. A small share, certainly, yet it was money of a higher quality than mere wages, and capable of expansion in a way that wages were not. Some were becoming to consider Oak a near man, for though his condition had thus far improved, he lived in no better style than before, occupying the same cottage, repairing his own potatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed with his own hands. But as Oak was not only provokingly indifferent to public opinion, but a man who clung persistently through old habits and usages, simply because they were old, there was room for doubt as to his motives. A great hope had latterly germinated in Bouldwood, whose unreasoning devotion to Bathsheba could only be characterised as a fond madness, which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could weaken nor destroy. This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard seed, during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture that Troy was drowned. He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the wildness of his dream. Bouldwood, having at last been persuaded to wear mourning, her appearance as she entered the church in that guise, was in itself a weekly addition to his faith, that a time was coming, very far off perhaps, yet surely nearing when his waiting on events should have its reward. How long he might have to wait, he had not yet closely considered. What he would try to recognise was that the severe schooling she had been subjected to had made Bathsheba much more considerate than she had formerly been of the feelings of others, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the future to marry any man at all, that that man would be himself. There was a substratum of good feeling in her. Her self-reproach for the injury she had thoughtlessy done him might be depended upon now to a much greater extent than before her infatuation and disappointment. It would be possible to approach her by the channel of her good nature, and to suggest a friendly business like compact between them for fulfilment at some future day, keeping the passionate side of his desire entirely out of her sight. Such was Bouldwood's hope. To the eyes of the middle-aged, Bathsheba was perhaps additionally charming just now. Her exuberance of spirit was pruned down. The original phantom of delight had shown herself to be not too bright for human nature's daily food, and she had been able to enter this second poetical phase without losing much of the first in the process. Bathsheba's return from a two-month visit to her old aunt at Norcombe afforded the impassioned and yearning farmer a pretext for inquiring directly after her, now possibly in the ninth month of her widowhood, and endeavouring to get an ocean-hover state of mind regarding him. This occurred in the middle of the hay-making, and Bouldwood contrived to be near Liddy, who was assisting in the fields. "'I am glad to see you out of doors, Liddyah,' he said pleasantly. She simpered, and wondered in her heart why he should speak so frankly to her. "'I hope Mrs. Troy is quite well after her long absence.' He continued, in a manner expressing that the coldest hearted neighbour could scarcely say less about her. "'She is quite well, sir.' "'And cheerful, I suppose.' "'Yes, cheerful?' "'Fearful, did you say?' "'Oh, no, I merely said she was cheerful.' "'Tell you all her affairs.' "'No, sir.' "'Some of them.' "'Yes, sir.' "'Mrs. Troy puts much confidence in you, Liddyah, and very wisely, perhaps.' "'She do, sir. I have been with her all through her troubles, and was with her at the time of Mr. Troy's going and all. And if she were to marry again, I expect I should bide with her.' "'She promises that you shall, and quite natural,' said the strategic lover, throbbing throughout him at the presumption which Liddyah's words appear to warrant that his darling had thought of remarriage.' "'No, she doesn't promise it exactly. I merely judge on my own account.' "'Yes, yes, I understand. When she alludes to the possibility of marrying again, you conclude, and she never do allude to it, sir,' said Liddy, thinking how very stupid Mr. Bould would be getting. "'Of course not.' He returned hastily, his hope falling again. You needn't quite take such long reaches with your rake, Liddyah. Short and quick ones are best. Well, perhaps that she is absolute mistress again now. It is wise of her to resolve never to give up her freedom. My mistress did certainly once say, and though not seriously, that she suppose she might marry again at the end of seven years from last year, if she cared to risk Mr. Troy's coming back and claiming her. Ah! Six years from the present time. Said that she might. She might marry at once, in every reasonable person's opinion, whatever the lawyers may say to the contrary. "'Have you been to ask them?' said Liddy innocently. "'Not I,' said Bouldwood, growing red. "'Liddy, you needn't stay here a minute longer than you wish. So Mr. Oak says. I'm now going on a little further. Good afternoon.' He went away vexed with himself, and ashamed for having this one time in his life done anything which could be called under hand. Poor Bouldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he was uneasy with the sense of having made himself to appear stupid, and what was worse, mean. But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact by way of repayment. It was a singularly fresh and fascinating fact, and, though not without its sadness, it was pertinent and real. In little more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly marry him. There was something definite in that hope, for admitting that there might have been no deep thought in her words to Liddy about marriage, they showed at least her creed on the matter. This pleasant notion was now continually in his mind. Six years were a long time, but how much shorter than never. The idea he had for so long been obliged to endure. Jacob had served twice seven years for Rachel. What were six for such a woman as this? He tried to light the notion of waiting for her better than that of winning her at once. Bald would felt his love to be so deep and strong and eternal that it was possible she had never yet known its full volume, and this patience in delay would afford him an opportunity of giving sweet proof to the point. He would annihilate the six years of his life as if there were minutes, so little did he value his time on earth beside her love. He would let her see, all those six years of intangible ethereal courtship, how little care he had for anything but as it bore upon the consummation. Meanwhile the early and late summer brought round the week in which Greenhill Fair was held. This fair was frequently attended by the folk of Wetherbury. CHAPTER 50 THE SHEEPFARE Troy touches his wife's hand. Greenhill was the nigny Novgorod of south Wessex, and the busiest, merriest, noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of the sheep fair. This yearly gathering was upon the summit of a hill which retained in good preservation the remains of an ancient earthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment of an oval form encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat broken down here and there. To each of the two chief openings on opposite sides a winding road ascended, and the level green space of ten or fifteen acres enclosed by the bank was the site of the fair. A few permanent erections dotted the spot, but the majority of visitors patronised canvas alone for resting and feeding under during the time of their soldier in here. Shepherds who attended with their flocks from long distances started from home two or three days, or even a week, before the fair, driving their charges a few miles each day, not more than ten or twelve, and resting them at night in hired fields by the wayside at previously chosen points, where they fed, having fasted since morning. The shepherd of each flock marched behind a bundle containing his kit for the week strapped upon his shoulders, and in his hand his crook, which he used as the staff of his pilgrimage. Several of the sheep would get worn and lame, and occasionally a lambing occurred on the road. To meet these contingencies there was frequently provided to accompany the flocks from the remote points, a pony and wagon, into which the weekly ones were taken for the remainder of the journey. The weathery farms, however, were no such long distance from the hill, and those arrangements were not necessary in their case. But the large united flocks of Bathsheba and Farmer Baldwood formed a valuable and imposing multitude which demanded much attention, and on this account Gabriel, in addition to Baldwood's shepherd and cane-ball, accompanied them along the way, through the decayed old town of Kingsbeer, and upward to the plateau, old George the dog, of course, behind them. When the autumn sun slanted over Greenhill this morning and lighted a dewy flat upon its crest, nebulous clouds of dust were to be seen, floating between the pairs of hedges which streaked the wide prospect around in all directions. These gradually converged upon the base of the hill, and the flocks became individually visible, climbing the serpentine ways which led to the top. Thus, in a slow procession they entered the opening to which the roads tended, multitude after multitude, horned and hornless, blue flocks and red flocks, buff flocks and brown flocks, even green and salmon-tinted flocks, according to the fancy of the colorist and custom of the farm. Men were shouting, dogs were barking, with greatest animation, but a thronging travellers in so long a journey had grown nearly indifferent to such terrors, though they still bleated piteously at the unwantedness of their experiences. A tall shepherd rising here and there in the midst of them, like a gigantic idol, amid a crowd of prostrate devotees. The great mass of sheep in the fair consisted of south-downs, and the old Wessex horned breeds, to the latter class, Bathsheba's, and farmer-boldwoods mainly belonged. These filed in about nine o'clock, their vermiculated horns lopping gracefully on either side of their cheeks in geometrically perfect spirals, a small pink-and-white ear nestling under each horn. Before and behind came other varieties, perfect leopards as to the full rich substance of their coats, and only lacking the spots. There were also a few of the Oxfordshire breeds, whose wool was beginning to curl like a child's flaxen hair, though surpassed in disrespect by the effeminate lesters, which were, in turn, less curly than the Cotswolds. But the most picturesque by far was the small flock of ex-mores, which chanced to be there this year. Their pied faces and legs, dark and heavy horns, tresses of wool hanging round their swarthy foreheads, quite relieved the monotony of the flocks in that quarter. All these bleeding, panting, and weary thousands had entered, and were penned before the morning had far advanced, the dog belonging to each flock being tied to the corner of the pen containing it. Allies for pedestrians intersected the pens, which soon became crowded with buyers and sellers, from far and near. In another part of the hill, an altogether different scene began to force itself upon the eye towards mid-day. A circular tent of exceptional newness and size was in course of erection here. As the day drew on, the flocks began to change hands, lightening the shepherd's responsibilities, and they turned their attention to this tent and inquired of a man at work there, whose soul seemed concentrated on tying a bothering knot in no time. What was going on? The royal hippodrome performance of Tornpike's ride to York and the death of Blackbess replied the man promptly, without turning his eyes or leaving off tying. As soon as the tent was completed, the band struck up highly stimulating harmonies, and the announcement was publicly made. Blackbess, standing in a conspicuous position on the outside, as a living proof, this proof were wanted, of the truth of the ocular utterances from the stage over which the people were to enter. These were so convinced by such genuine appeals to heart and understanding both, that they soon began to crowd in abundantly, among the foremost being visible Jan Coggins and Joseph Porgrass, who are holiday-keeping here today. "'That's the great roughen, push in me!' screamed a woman in front of Jan over her shoulder-atom when the rush was at its fiercest. "'How could I help push in ye when folk behind push me?' said Coggins in a deprecating tone, turning his head towards the aforesaid folk as far as he could, without turning his body, which was jammed as in a vice. There was a silence, then the drums and trumpets again set forth their echoing notes. The crowd was again exorcised, and gave another lurch in which Coggins and Porgrass were again thrust by those behind upon the women in front. "'Oh, the helpless female should be at the mercy of such loathens!' exclaimed one of the ladies again, as she swayed like a reed shaken by the wind. "'Now,' said Coggins, appealing in an earnest voice to the public at large, as it stood clustered about his shoulder-blades, "'did ye ever hear such an unreasonable woman as that, upon my carcass-neighbours, if I could only get out of this cheese-ring the damn women we eat the show for me?' "'Oh, don't lose your temper, Jan!' implored Joseph Porgrass in a whisper. "'They might get their men to murder us, for I think but it is shining in their eyes that they be a sinful form of a woman kind.' Jan held his tongue, as if he had no objection to be pacified, to please a friend, and they gradually reached the foot of the ladder, Porgrass being flattened like a jumping-jack, and the sixpence, for admission, which he had got ready half an hour earlier, having become so reeking hot in the tight squeeze of his excited hand that the woman in spangles, brazen ring set with glass diamonds, and with chalked face and shoulders, who took the money of him, hastily dropped it again from the fear that some trick had been played to burn her fingers. So they all entered, and the cloth of the tent, to the eyes of an observer on the outside, became bulged into innumerable pimples, such as we observe on a sack of potatoes, caused by the various human heads, backs, and elbows at high pressure within. At the rear of the large tent there were two small dressing tents. One of these, allotted to the male performers, was partitioned into halves by a cloth, and in one of the divisions there was sitting on the grass pulling on a pair of jack-boots, a young man whom we instantly recognise as Sergeant Troy. Troy's appearance in this position may be briefly accounted for. The brigger-board which he was taken to Budmouth roads was about to start on a voyage, though so much short of hands. Troy read the articles and joined. But before they sailed, a boat was dispatched across the bay to Lullwind Cove. As he had half suspected his clothes were gone. He ultimately worked his passage to the United States, where he made a precarious living in various towns as professor of gymnastics, sword exercise, fencing, and pugilism. A few months were sufficient to give him a distaste for this kind of life. There was a certain animal form of refinement in his nature, and however pleasant a strange condition might be whilst privations were easily warded off, it was disadvantageously coarse when money was short. There was ever present, too, the idea that he could claim a home and its comforts did he but choose to return to England and Weatherbury Farm. Whether Bathsheba taught him dead was a frequent subject of curious conjecture. To England he did return at last, but the fact of drawing nearer to Weatherbury abstracted its fascinations, and his intention to enter his old groove at the place became modified. It was with gloom he considered unlanding at Liverpool that if he were to go home his reception would be of a kind very unpleasant to contemplate. For what Troy had in the way of emotion was an occasional fitful sentiment which sometimes caused him as much inconvenience as a motion of a strong and healthy kind. Bathsheba was not a woman to be made a fool of, or a woman to suffer in silence, and how could he endure existence with a spirited wife, to whom at first entering he would be beholden for food and lodging. Moreover it was not at all unlikely that his wife would fail at her farming if she had not already done so, and he would then become liable for her maintenance, and what a life such a future of poverty with her would be, the specter of fanny constantly between them, harrowing his temper and embittering her words. Thus, for reasons touching on distaste's regret and shame co-mingled, he put off his return from day to day, and would have decided to put it off altogether if he could have found anywhere else the ready-made establishment which existed for him there. At this time, the July preceding the September in which we find him at Greenhill Fair, he fell in with a travelling circus which was performing in the outskirts of a northern town. Troy introduced himself to the manager by taming a restive horse of the troop, hitting a suspended apple with a pistol bullet fired from the animal's back when in full gallop and other feats. For his merits in these, all more or less based upon his experiences as a dragoon-guardsman, Troy was taken into the company, and the play of torpen was prepared with a view to his personation of the chief character. Troy was not greatly elated by the appreciative spirit in which he was undoubtedly treated, but he thought the engagement might afford him a few weeks for consideration. It was thus carelessly and without having formed any definite plan for the future that Troy found himself at Greenhill Fair with the rest of the company on this day. And now the mild autumn sun got lower, and in front of the pavilion the following incident had taken place. Bathsheba, who was driven to the fair that day by her odd man, poor grass, had, like everyone else read or heard the announcement that Mr. Francis, the great cosmopolitan equestrian and rough-rider, would enact the part of torpen, and she was not yet too old and care-worn to be without a little curiosity to see him. This particular show was by far the largest and grandest in the fair, a horde of little shows grouping themselves under its shade like chickens round a hen. The crowd had passed in, and Bollard, who had been watching all the day for an opportunity of speaking to her, seeing her comparatively isolated, came up to her side. "'I hope the sheep have done well to-day, Mrs. Troy,' he said, nervously. "'Oh, yes, thank you,' said Bathsheba, colour springing up in the centre of her cheeks. "'I was fortunate enough to sell them all just as we got upon the hill, so we hadn't to pen them at all.' "'And now you are entirely at leisure?' "'Yes, except that I have to see one more dealer in two hours time. Otherwise I should be going home.' She was looking at this large tent and the announcement. Have you ever seen the play of Turpin's ride to York? Turpin was a real man, was he not? "'Oh, yes, imperfectly true, all of it. And indeed, I think I've heard Jan Coggin say that a relation of his knew Tom King, Turpin's friend, quite well. Coggin is rather given to strange stories connected with his relations, we must remember, and I hope they can all be believed.' "'Yes, yes, we know Coggin. But Turpin is true enough. You have never seen it played, I suppose?' "'Never. I was not allowed to go into these places when I was young. Hark! What's that prancing? How they shout?' "'Black best just started off, I suppose.' "'Am I right in supposing you would like to see the performance, Mrs. Troy? Please excuse my mistake, if it is one. But if you would like to, I'll get a seat for you with pleasure.' Perceiving that she hesitated, he added, "'I myself shall not stay to see it. I've seen it before.' Now Bathsheba did care a little to see the show, and had only withheld her feet from the ladder because she feared to go in alone. She had been hoping that Oak might appear, whose assistance in such cases was always accepted as an inalienable right, but Oak was nowhere to be seen, and hence it was that she said, "'Then if you will just look in first to see if there's room, I think I will go in for a minute or two.' And so a short time after this Bathsheba appeared in the tent, with bold-water at her elbow, who, taking her to a reserved seat, again withdrew. This feature consisted of one raised bench in a very conspicuous part of the circle, covered with red cloth, and floored with a piece of carpet, and Bathsheba immediately found, to her confusion, that she was a single reserved individual in the tent. The rest of the crowded spectators, one and all, standing on their legs on the border of the arena, where they got twice as good a view of the performance for half some money. Hence as many eyes were turned upon her, and thrown alone in this place of honour, against the scarlet background, as upon the ponies and clowns who were engaged in preliminary exploits in the centre, turpent not having yet appeared. Once there Bathsheba was forced to make the best of it and remain. She sat down, spreading her skirts with some dignity over the unoccupied space on each side of her, and giving a new and feminine aspect to the pavilion. In a few minutes she noticed a fat red nape of Coggan's neck among those standing just below her, and Joseph Porgrass's saintly profile a little further on. The interior was shadowy with a peculiar shade. The strange luminous semi-opacities of fine autumn afternoons and eaves intensified into rembrant effects the few yellow sunbeams which came through holes and divisions in the canvas, and spurt it like jets of gold dust across the dusky blue atmosphere of haze pervading the tent, until they alighted on inner surfaces of cloth opposite, and shone like little lamps suspended there. Troy unpeeping from his dressing-tent through a slit for reconnoiter before entering, saw his unconscious wife on high before him as described, sitting as queen of the tournament. He started back another confusion, for although his disguise effectually concealed his personality, he instantly felt that she would be sure to recognize his voice. He had several times during the day thought of the possibility of some weather-breed person or other appearing and recognizing him, but he had taken the risk carelessly. If they see me, let them, he had said. But here was Bathsheba in her own person, and the reality of the scene was so much intenser than any of his prefiguring that he felt he had not half enough considered a point. She looked so charming and fair that his cool mood about weathery people was changed. He had not expected her to exercise this power over him in the twinkling of an eye. Should he go on, and care nothing? He could not bring himself to do that. Beyond a politic wish to remain unknown, there suddenly arose in him now a sense of shame at the possibility that his attractive young wife, who already despised him, should despise him more by discovering him in so mean a condition after so long a time. He actually blushed at the thought, and was vexed beyond a measure that his sentiments of dislike towards weather-breed should have led him to dally about the country in this way. But Troy was never more clever than when absolutely at his wit's end. He hastily thrust aside the curtain dividing his own little dressing-space from that of the manager and proprietor, who now appeared as the individual called Tom King, as far down as his waist, and as the aforesaid respectable manager, thence to his toes. "'There's a devil to pay,' said Troy. "'How's that?' "'Why, there's a black-eyed creditor in the tent I don't want to see. He'll discover me, and nab me assured as Satan if I open my mouth. What's to be done?' "'You must appear now, I think.' "'I can't.' "'But the play must proceed.' "'Do you give that turpin has got a bad cold, and can't speak his part? But that he'll perform it just the same without speaking.' The proprietor shook his head. "'Anyhow, play or no play I won't open my mouth,' said Troy, firmly. "'Very well. Let me see.' "'I'll tell you how we'll manage,' said the other, who perhaps felt it would be extremely awkward to offend his leading man just at this time. "'I won't tell them anything about just keeping silence. Go on with the peace, and say nothing, in doing what you can by your judicious wink now and then, and a few indomitable nods in the heroic places, you know. They'll never find out that the speeches are omitted.' This seemed feasible enough, for turpin's speeches were not many or long. The fascination of the peace lying entirely in the action, and accordingly the play began, and at the appointed time Black Bess leapt into the grassy circle amid the plaudits of the spectators. At the turnpike scene where Bess and Turpin were hotly pursued at midnight by the officers, and the half-awake gatekeeper in his tassled nightcap denies that any horseman has passed, Coggan uttered a broad-chested, "'Well done!' which could be heard all over the fair above the bleeding, and poor grass smiled delightedly with a nice sense of dramatic contrast between our hero, who coolly leaps the gate, and halting justice in the form of his enemies, who must needs pull up cumbersomely and wait to be let through. At the death of Tom King he could not refrain from seizing Coggan by the hand, and whispering, with tears in his eyes, "'Of course! He's not really sure, Jan, only seemingly!' And when the last sad scene came on, and the body of the gallant and fateful Bess had to be carried out on a shutter by twelve volunteers from among the spectators, nothing could restrain poor grass from lending a hand, exclaiming as he asked Jan to join him, "'Twill be something to tell of at Warren's in future years, Jan, and hand down to our children!' For many a year in weathery Joseph told, with the air of a man who had had experiences in his time, that he touched with his own hand the huff of Bess as she lay upon the board upon his shoulder. If, as some thinkers hold, immortality consists in being enshrined in others' memories, then did Black Bess become immortal that day if she never had done so before. Meanwhile Troy had added a few touches to his ordinary makeup for the character, the more effectually to disguise himself, and though he had felt faint quams on first entering, the metamorphosis affected by judiciously lining his face with a wire rendered him safe from the eyes of Bathsheba and her men. Nevertheless he was relieved when it was got through. There was a second performance in the evening, and the tent was lighted up. Troy had taken his part very quietly this time, venturing to introduce a few speeches on occasion, and was just concluding it when, while standing at the edge of the circle, contiguous to the first row of spectators, he observed within a yard of him the eye of a man darted keenly into his side features. Troy hastily shifted his position, after having recognized in the scrutineer the navish bail of Pennyways, his wife's sworn enemy, who still hung about the outskirts of Wetherbury. At first Troy resolved to take no notice and abide by circumstances, that he had been recognized by this man was highly probable, yet there was room for a doubt. Then the great objection he had felt to allowing news of his proximity to proceed him to Wetherbury in the event of his return, based on a feeling that knowledge of his present occupation would discredit him still further in his wife's eyes, returned in full force. Moreover, should he resolve not to return at all, a tale of his being alive and being in the neighborhood would be awkward, and he was anxious to acquire a knowledge of his wife's temporal affairs before deciding which to do. In this dilemma Troy at once without a reconnoiter. It occurred to him that to find Pennyways and make a friend of him if possible would be a very wise act. He had put on a thick beard borrowed from the establishment, and in this he wandered about the Fairfield. It was now almost dark, and respectable people were getting their carts and gigs ready to go home. The largest refreshment booth in the fair was provided by an innkeeper from the neighboring town. This was considered an unexceptionable place for obtaining the necessary food and rest. Host Trencher, as he was gently called by the local newspaper, being a substantial man of high repute for catering through all the country round. The tent was divided into first and second-class compartments, and at the end of the first-class division was a yet further enclosure for the most exclusive, fenced off from the body of the tent by a luncheon-bar, behind which the host himself stood bustling about in a white apron and short sleeves, and looking as if he had never lived anywhere but under canvas all his life. In these penetralia were chairs and a table, which, on candles being lighted, made quite a cosy and luxurious show with an urn, plated tea and coffee-pots, china tea-cups, and plum cakes. Troy stood at the entrance to the booth, where a gypsy woman was frying pancakes over a little fire of sticks and selling them at a penny apiece, and looked over the heads of the people within. He could see nothing of Pennyways, but he soon discerned Bathsheba through an opening in the reserved space at the further end. Troy, thereupon retreated, went round the tent into the darkness and listened. He could hear Bathsheba's voice immediately inside the canvas. She was conversing with the man. A warmth overspread his face. Surely she was not so unprincipled as to flirt in a fair. He wondered if, then, she reckoned upon his death as an absolute certainty. To get at the root of the matter Troy took a pen-eye from his pocket, and softly made two little cuts, cloth-wise in the cloth, which by folding back the corners, left a hole the size of a wafer. Close to this he placed his face, withdrawing it again in a moment of surprise, for his eye had been within twelve inches of the top of Bathsheba's head. It was too near to be convenient. He made another hole a little to one side and lower down, in a shaded place beside her chair, from which it was easy and safe to survey her by looking horizontally. Troy took in the scene completely now. She was leaning back, sipping a cup of tea that she held in her hand, and the owner of the male voice was Bouldwood, who had apparently just brought the cup to her. Bathsheba, being in an negligent mood, lent so idly against the canvas that it was pressed into the shape of her shoulder, and she was, in fact, as good as in Troy's arms, and he was obliged to keep his breast carefully backward, but she might not feel it's warmed through the cloth as he gazed in. Troy found unexpected chords of feeling to be stirred again within him, as they had been stirred earlier in the day. She was handsome as ever, and she was his. It was some minutes before he could counteract his sudden wish to go in and claim her. Then he taught how the proud girl who had always looked down upon him, even whilst it was to love him, would hate him on discovering him to be a strolling player. Were he to make himself known, that chapter of his life must at all risks be kept forever from her, and from the weathery people, or his name would be a byword throughout the parish. He would be nicknamed Turpin, as long as he lived. Assuredly, before he could claim her, these few past months of his existence must be entirely blotted out. Shall I get you another cup of tea before you start, ma'am? said Farmer Bollwood. Thank you, said Bathsheba, but I must be going at once. It was great neglect in that man to keep me waiting here till so late. I should have gone two hours ago, if it had not been for him. I had no idea of coming in here, but there's nothing so refreshing as a cup of tea, though I should never have got one if you hadn't helped me. Troy scrutinised her cheek as lit by the candles, and watched each varying shade thereon, and the white shell-like sinuosities of her little ear. She took out her purse, and was insisting to Bollwood on paying for the tea for herself, when at this moment Pennyways entered the tent. Troy trembled. Here was his scheme for respectability and danger at once. He was about to leave his whole of his spile, attempt to follow Pennyways, and find out if the ex-Bale of had recognised him, when he was arrested by the conversation, and found he was too late. Excuse me, ma'am," said Pennyways. I have some private information for your ear alone. I cannot hear it now," she said coldly. That Bathsheba could not endure this man was evident. In fact, he was continually coming to her with some tale or other, by which he might creep into favour at the expense of persons maligned. I'll write it down," said Pennyways confidently. He stooped over the table, pulled a leaf from a warped pocket-book, and wrote upon the paper in a round hand. Your husband is here. I've seen him. Who's the fool now? This he folded small and handed towards her. Bathsheba would not read it. She would not even put out her hand to take it. Pennyways then, with a laugh of the region, tossed it into her lap, and, turning away, left her. From the words and actions of Pennyways, Troy, though he had not been able to see what the ex bailiff wrote, had not a moment's doubt that the note referred to him. Nothing that he could think of could be done to check the exposure. Curse my luck! He whispered, and added implications which rustled in the gloom like a pestle and wind, meanwhile Bouldwood said, in taking up the note from her lap. Don't you wish to read it, Mrs. Troy? If not, I'll destroy it. Oh, well, said Bathsheba, carelessly. Perhaps it is unjust not to read it, but I can guess what it is about. He wants me to recommend him, or it is to tell me of some little scandal or other connected with my work-people. He's always doing that. Bathsheba held the note in her right hand, Bouldwood handled towards her a plate of cut bread and butter, when, in order to take a slice, she put the note into her left hand, where she was still holding the purse, and then allowed her hand to drop beside her, close to the canvas. The moment had come for saving his game, and Troy impulsively felt that he would play the card. For yet another time he looked at the fair hand, and saw the pink fingertips and the blue veins of the wrist encircled by a bracelet of coral chippings which he wore. How familiar it all was to him. Then, with a lightning action in which he was such an adept, he noisesly slipped his hand under the bottom of the tenth clot, which was far from being pinned tightly down, lifted it a little way, keeping his eye to the hole, snatched the note from her fingers, and dropped the canvas, and ran away in the gloom towards the bank and ditch, smiling at the scream of astonishment which burst from her. Troy then slid down on the outside of the rampart, hastened around in the bottom of the entrenchment, to a distance of a hundred yards, ascended again, and crossed boldly in a slow walk towards the front entrance of the tent. His object was now to get the penny-ways, and prevent a repetition of the announcement until such time as he should choose. Troy reached the tent door, and standing among the groups there gathered, looked anxiously for penny-ways, evidently not wishing to make himself prominent by inquiring for him. One or two men were speaking of the daring attempt that had just been made to rob a young lady by lifting the canvas of the tent beside her. It was supposed that the rogue had imagined a slip of paper which she held in her hand to be a bank note, for he had seized it, and made off of it leaving her purse behind. His shagrin and disappointment at discovering its worthlessness would be a good joke, it was said. However, the occurrence seemed to have become known to few, for it had not interrupted a fiddler, who had lately begun playing by the door of the tent, nor the four bowed old men with grim countenances and walking sticks in hand, who were dancing major malleys real to the tune. Behind these stood penny-ways. Troy glided up to him, beckoned, and whispered a few words, and with a mutual glance of concurrence the two men went into the night together. END OF CHAPTER 50 The arrangement for getting back again to Wetherbury had been that oak should take the place of poor grass in Bathsheba's conveyance and drive her home, it being discovered late in the afternoon that Joseph was suffering from his old complaint, a multiplying eye, and was therefore hardly trustworthy as a coachman and protector to a woman. But oak had found himself so occupied, and was full of so many cares relative to those portions of boldwood's flocks that are not disposed of, that Bathsheba, without telling oak or anybody, resolved to drive home herself, as she had many times done from Castorbridge Market, and trust to her good angel for performing the journey unmolested. But having fallen in with former boldwood accidentally, on her part at least, at the refreshment-tent, she found it impossible to refuse his offer to ride on horseback beside her as escort. It had grown twilight before she was aware, but boldwood assured her that there was no cause for uneasiness as the moon would be up in half an hour. Shortly after the incident, in the tent, she had risen to go, now absolutely alarmed and really grateful for her old lover's protection, though regretting Gabriel's absence, whose company she would have much preferred as being more proper, as well as more pleasant, since he was her own managing-man and servant. This, however, could not be helped. She would not on any consideration treat boldwood harshly, having once already ill-used him, and the moon having risen, and the gig being ready, she drove across the hill-top in the wending ways which led downwards, to oblivious obscurity, as it seemed, for the moon and the hill it flooded with light were in appearance on a level, the rest of the world, lying as a vast shady concave between them. Boldwood mounted his horse, and followed in close attendance behind. Thus they descended into the lowlands, and the sounds of those left on the hill came like voices from the sky, and the lights were as those of a camp in heaven. They soon passed the merry stragglers in the immediate vicinity of the hill, traversed Kingsbeer, and got upon the high road. The keen instincts of Bathsheba had perceived that the farmer's staunch devotion to herself was still undiminished, and she sympathized deeply. The sight had quite depressed her this evening, had reminded her of her folly. She wished anew, as she had wished many months ago, for some means of making reparation for her fault. Hence her pity for the man who so persistently loved on to his own injury and permanent loom, had betrayed Bathsheba into an injudicious considerateness of manner, which appeared almost like tenderness, and gave new vigor to the exquisite dream of Jacob's seven years' service in poor Boldwood's mind. He found an excuse for advancing from his position in the rear, and rode close by her side. They had gone two or three miles in the moonlight, speaking desultorily across the wheel of her gig concerning the fair, farming, oak's usefulness to them both, and other indifferent subjects, when Boldwood said suddenly and simply, Mrs. Troy, you will marry again some day? This point-blank query unmistakably confused her, and it was not till a minute or more had elapsed that she said, I have not seriously thought of any such subject. I quite understand that, yet your late husband has been dead nearly one year, and you forget that his debt was never absolutely proved, and may not have taken place, so that I may not be really a widow, she said, catching at the straw of escape that the fact afforded. Not absolutely proved, perhaps, but it was proved circumstantially. A man saw him drowning, too. No reasonable person has any doubt of his debt, nor of you, ma'am, I should imagine. I have none now, or I should have acted differently, she said gently. I certainly at first had a strange, unaccountable feeling that he could not have perished, but I have been able to explain that in several ways since, but though I am fully persuaded that I shall see him no more, I am far from thinking of marriage with another. I should be very contemptible to indulge in such a thought. They were silent now a while, and having struck into an unfrequented track across a common, the creeks of Bouldwood's saddle, and her gig-springs were all the sounds to be heard. Bouldwood ended the pause. Do you remember when I carried you fainting in my arms, into the king's arms, in Casterbridge? Every dog has his day. That was mine. I know, I know it all, she said hurriedly. I for one shall never cease regretting that a vent so fell out as to deny you to me. I too am very sorry, she said, and then checked herself. I mean, you know, I am sorry you thought I—I have always this dreary pleasure in thinking over those past times with you, that I was something to you before he was anything, and that you belonged almost to me. But of course, that's nothing. You never liked me. I did, and respected you, too. Do you now? Yes? Which? How do you mean which? Do you like me, or do you respect me? I don't know, at least I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. My treatment of you was tauntless, inexcusable, wicked. I shall eternally regret it. If there had been anything I could have done to make amends, I would most gladly have done it. And there was nothing on earth I so longed to do was to repair the error, but that was not possible. Don't blame yourself. You are not so far in the wrong as you suppose. That's sheba. Suppose you had real complete proof that you are what, in fact, you are, a widow. Would you repair the old wrong to me by marrying me? I cannot say. I shouldn't yet, at any rate. But you might, at some future time of your life. Oh, yes, I might at some time. Well, then, do you know that without further proof of any kind you may marry again, in about six years from the present, and subject to nobody's objection or blame? Oh, yes, she said quickly, I know all that, but don't talk of it, seven or six years. Where may we all be by that time? They will soon died by, and it will seem an astonishingly short time to look back upon when they are past, much less than to look forward to now. Yes, yes, I have found that in my own experience. Now listen once more, Bouldwood pleaded. If I wait that time, will you marry me? You own that you owe me amends? Let that be your way of making them. But, Mr. Bouldwood, six years! Do you want to be the wife of any other man? No, indeed. I mean, that I don't like to talk about this matter now. Perhaps it is not proper, and I ought not to allow it. Let us drop it. My husband may be living, as I said. Of course, I'll drop the subject if you wish, but propriety has nothing to do with reasons. I am a middle-aged man, willing to protect you for the remainder of our lives. On your side, at least, there is no passion or blamable haste, than mine perhaps there is. But I can't help seeing that if you choose from a feeling of pity, and, as you say, a wish to make amends, to make a bargain with me for a far ahead time, an agreement which will set all things right and make me happy, late though it may be, there is no fault to be found with you as a woman. Hadn't I the first place beside you? Haven't you been almost mine once already? Surely you can say to me, as much as this, you will have me back again, should circumstances permit. Now pray, speak, O Bathsheba, promise. It is only a little promise, that if you marry again you will marry me. His tone was so excited, that she almost feared him at this moment, even whilst she sympathised. It was a simple physical fear, the weak of the strong, there was no emotional aversion or inner repugnance. She said with some distress in her voice, for she remembered vividly his outburst on the Yalbury Road, and shrank from a repetition of his anger. I will never marry another man, whilst you wish me to be your wife, whatever comes. But to say more, you have taken me so by surprise. But let it stand in these simple words, that in six years' time you will be my wife, unexpected accidents will not mention, because those of course must be given way to. Now, this time I know you will keep your word. That's why I hesitate to give it. But do give it, remember the past, and be kind. She breathed, and then said mournfully, Oh, what shall I do? I don't love you, and a much fear that I never shall love you as much as a woman ought to love a husband. If you, sir, know that, and I can yet give you happiness by a mere promise to marry you at the end of six years, if my husband should not come back, it is a great honour to me, and if you value such an act of friendship from a woman who doesn't esteem herself as she did. And has little love left, why, I, I will, promise, consider, if I cannot promise soon. But soon is perhaps never. Oh, no, it is not, I mean soon, a Christmas, we'll say. Christmas! He said nothing further till he added. Well, I'll say no more to you about it till that time. Bathsheba was in a very peculiar state of mind, which showed how entirely the soul is a slave of the body, the ethereal spirit dependent for its quality upon the tangible flesh and blood. It is hardly too much to say that she felt coerced by a force stronger than her own will, not only into the act of promising upon this singularly remote and vague matter, but into the emotion of fancying that she ought to promise. In the weeks intervening between the night of this conversation and Christmas day began perceptibly to diminish her anxiety and perplexity increased. One day she was led by an accident into an oddly confidential dialogue with Gabriel about her difficulty. It afforded her a little relief of a dull and cheerless kind. They were auditing accounts, and something occurred in the course of their labours which led Oak to say, speaking of Bouldwood, He'll never forget you, ma'am, never. Then out came her trouble before she was aware, and she told him how she had again got into the toils, what Bouldwood had asked her, and how he was expecting her assent. The most mournful reason of all for my agreeing to it, she said sadly, and the true reason why I think to do so for good or for evil is this. It is a thing I have not breathed to a living soul as yet. I believe that if I don't give my word, he'll go out of his mind. Really, do ye? said Gabriel gravely. I believe this, she continued with reckless frankness, and heaven knows I say it in a spirit, the very reverse of vain, for I am grieved and troubled to my soul about it. I believe I hold that man's future in my hand. His career depends entirely upon my treatment of him. Oh, Gabriel, I tremble at my responsibility, for it is terrible. Well, I think this much, ma'am, as I told you years ago, said Oak, that his life is a total blank whenever he is in hope of free, but I can't suppose. I hope that nothing so dreadful hangs on to it as you fancy. His natural manner has always been dark and strange, you know, but since the case is so sad and odd-like, why don't you give the conditional promise? I think I would. What is it right? Some rash acts of my past life have taught me that a watched woman must have very much circumspection to retain only a very little credit, and I do want and long to be discreet in this. And six years, why, we may all be in our graves by that time, even if Mr. Troy does not come back again, which he may not impossibly do. Such thoughts give a sort of absurdity to the scheme. Now, isn't it preposterous, Gabriel? When he came to dream of it, I cannot think. But is it wrong? You know, you are older than I. Eight years, older, ma'am. Yes, eight years. And is it wrong? Perhaps it would be an uncommon agreement for a man and woman to make. I don't see anything really wrong about it, said Oak, slowly. In fact, the very thing that makes it doubtful if you are to marry him under any condition, is, you are not caring about him, for, I may suppose. Yes, you may suppose that love is wanting. She said shortly, Love is not only bygone, sorry, worn out, miserable thing with me, for him or anyone else. Well, you are one of love seems to me the one thing that takes away harm from such an agreement with him. If wild heat had to do with it, in making you long to overcome the awkwardness about your husband's vanishing, it may be wrong, but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a man seems different somehow. The real sin, ma'am, in my mind, lies in thinking of ever wedding with a man you don't love, honest and true. That I am willing to pay the penalty of, said Bathsheba, firmly. You know, Gabriel, this is what I cannot get off my conscience, that I once seriously injured him in sheer idleness. If I had never played a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me. Oh, if I could only pay some heavy damages and money to him for the harm I did, and so get the sin off my soul that way. Well, there is the debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and I believe I am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any consideration of my own future at all. When a rake gambles away his expectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make him the less liable. I have been a rake, and the single point I ask you is, in considering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the eye of the law my husband is only missing, will keep any man from marrying me until seven years have passed, am I free to entertain such an idea, even though it is a sort of penance? For it will be that. I hate the act of marriage under such circumstances, and the class of women I should seem to belong to by doing it. It seems to me that all depends on whether you think, as everyone else do, that your husband is dead. Yes, I have long ceased to doubt that. I well know I would have brought him back, long before this time if he had lived. Well, then, in a religious sense, you will be as free to think of marrying again as any real widow of one year's standing. But why don't you ask Mr. Turdley's advice on how to treat Mr. Bouldwood? No. When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the person's opinion on the law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business man's, that is, yours, on morals, and on love. My own. I am afraid there is a hitch in that argument, said Oak, with a grave smile. She did not reply at once, and then, saying, Good evening, Mr. Oak. Went away. She had spoken frankly, and neither asked nor expected any reply from Gabriel more satisfactory than that she had obtained. Yet, in the centremost parts of her complicated heart, there existed at this minute a little pang of disappointment, for a reason she would not allow herself to recognise. Oak had not once wished her free, that he might marry her himself. Not once said, I could wait for you as well as he. That was the insect's ding. Not that she would have listened to any such hypothesis. Oh, no! For wasn't she saying all the time that such thoughts of the future were improper, and wasn't Gabriel far too poor a man to speak sentiment to her? Yet he might have just hinted about that old love of his, and asked, in a playful offhand way, if he might speak of it. It would have seemed pretty and sweet, if no more. And then she would have shown how kind and inoffensive a woman's know can sometimes be. But to give such cool advice, the very advice she had asked for, it ruffled our heroine all the afternoon. End of Chapter 51 Chapter 52 of Far From the Madding Crowd. This liberal box recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tyge Hines. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Chapter 52 Converging Courses 1. Christmas Eve came, and the party that Bouldwood was to give in the evening was the great subject of talk in Wetherbury. It was not that the rarity of Christmas parties in their parish made this one a wonder, but that Bouldwood should be the giver. The announcement had had an abnormal and incongruous sound, as if one should hear of croquet playing in a cathedral aisle, or that some much-respected judge was going up on the stage. That the party was intended to be a truly jovial one, there was no room for doubt. A large bough of mistletoe had been brought from the woods that day, and suspended in the hall of the bachelor's home. Holly and Ivy had followed in armfuls. From six that morning till past noon the huge wood fire in the kitchen roared and sparkled at its highest. The kettle, the saucepan, and the three-legged pot appearing in the midst of the flames like Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego. Moreover, roasting and basing operations were continually carried on in front of the genial blaze. As it grew later the fire was made up in the large long hall into which the staircase descended, and all encumbrances were cleared out for dancing. The log, which was to form the back-brand of the evening fire, was the uncleft trunk of a tree. So unwieldy that it could be neither brought nor rolled into its place, and accordingly two men were to be observed dragging and heaving it in by chains and levers as the hour of assembly grew near. In spite of all this the spirit of reverie was wanting in the atmosphere of the house. Such a thing had never been attempted before by its owner, and it was now done as by a wrench. Intended gayities would insist upon appearing like solemn grandeurs. The organization of the whole effort was carried out coldly, by harlings, and a shadow seemed to move about the rooms, saying that the proceedings were unnatural to the place and the lone man who lived therein, and hence not good. II Bathsheba was at this time in her room, dressing for the event. She had called for candles, and Liddy entered, and placed one on each side of her mistress's glass. "'Don't go away, Liddy,' said Bathsheba, almost timidly. I am foolishly agitated. I cannot tell why. I wish I had not been obliged to go to this dance, but there's no escaping now. I have not spoken to Mr. Bouldwood since the autumn, when I promised to see him at Christmas on business, but I had no idea there was to be anything of this kind.' "'But I would go now,' said Liddy, who was going with her, for Bouldwood had been indiscriminate in his invitations. "'Yes, I shall make my appearance, of course,' said Bathsheba. But I am the cause of the party, and that upsets me. Don't tell Liddy.' "'Oh, no, ma'am! You are the cause of it, ma'am.' "'Yes, I am the reason for the party. I. If it had not been for me, there would never have been one. I cannot explain any more. There's no more to be explained. I wish I had never seen Wetherbury.' "'That's wicked of you. To wish to be worse off than you are.' "'No, Liddy. I have never been free from trouble since I have lived here, and this party is likely to bring me more. Now fetch my black silk-dress and see how it sits upon me. But you will leave off that surely, ma'am. You have been a widow-lady fourteen months, and ought to brighten up a little on such a night as this. Is it necessary? No. I will appear as usual, for if I were to wear any light-dress, people would say things about me, and I should seem to be rejoicing when I am solemn all the time. The party doesn't suit me a bit. But never mind. Stay, and help to finish me off.' Three. Bouldwood was dressing also at this hour. A tailor from Castlebridge was with him, assisting him in the operation of trying on a new coat that had just been brought home. Never had Bouldwood been so fastidious, unreasonable about the fit, and generally difficult to please. The tailor walked round and round him, tugging at the waist, pulling the sleeve, pressing out the collar, and for the first time in his experience Bouldwood was not bored. Others had been when the farmer had exclaimed against all such niceties as childish, but now no philosophic or hasty rebuke whatever was provoked by this man, for attaching as much importance to a crease in the coat as to an earthquake in South America. Bouldwood at last expressed himself nearly satisfied and paid the bill, the tailor passing out of the door just as Oak came in, to report progress for the day. Oh, Oak, said Bouldwood, I shall of course see you here to-night. Make yourself merry. I am determined that neither expense nor trouble shall be spared. I'll try to be here, sir, though perhaps it may not be very early, said Gabriel quietly. I am glad to see such a change in me from what I used to be. Yes, I must own it. I am bright to-night, and cheerful, and more than cheerful, so much so that I am almost sad again with the sense that all of this is passing away, and sometimes when I am excessively hopeful and blithe, a trouble is looming in the distance, so that I often get to look upon bloom in me with content and to fear a happy mood. Still, this may be absurd, but I feel that it is absurd. Perhaps my day is dawning at last. I hope it will be a long and a fair one. Thank you. Thank you. Perhaps my cheerfulness rests on a slender hope, and yet I trust my hope. It is faith, not hope. I think this time I reckon with my host. Oak, my hands are a little shaky or something. I can't tie this neck-achieve properly. Perhaps you will tie it for me. The fact is, I have not been well lately, you know. I am sorry to hear that, sir. Oh, it's nothing. I want it done, as well as you can, please. Is there any late knot in fashion, Oak? I don't know, sir, said Oak. His tone had sunk to sadness. Baldwood approached Gabriel, and as Oak tied the neck-achieve, the farmer went on feverishly. Does a woman keep her promises, Gabriel? Neither does it not inconvenient to her, she may, or rather an implied promise. I won't answer for her employing, said Oak, with faint bitterness. That's a word as full of holes as a save with them. Oak, don't talk like that. You've got quite cynical lately. How is it? We seem to have shifted our positions. I have become the young and hopeful man, and you the old and unbelieving one. However, does a woman keep a promise, not to marry, but to enter on an engagement to marry at some time? Now, you know women better than I. Tell me. I am afraid you honour my understanding too much. However, she may keep such a promise, if it is made with an honest meaning to repair her wrong. It has not gone far yet, but I think it soon will. Yes, I know it will, he said, in an impulsive whisper. I have pressed upon her the subject, and she inclines to be kind to me, and to think of me as a husband at a long future time, and that's enough for me. How can I expect more? She has a notion that a woman should not marry within seven years of her husband's disappearance. That her own self shouldn't, I mean, because his body was not found. It may be merely this legal reason which influences her, or it may be a religious one, but she is reluctant to talk on the point. Yet she has promised, implied, that she will ratify an engagement to-night. In seven years, murmured oak. No, no, it's no such thing, he said with impatience. Five years, nine months, and a few days, fifteen months nearly have passed since he vanished. And is there anything so wonderful in an engagement of little more than five years? It seems long in a forward view. Don't build too much upon such promises, sir. Remember, you have once been deceived, or mean it may be good, but there, she's young yet. Deceived? Never," said Bouldard vehemently. She never promised me at that first time, and hence she did not break her promise. If she promises me, she'll marry me. Bathsheba is a woman to her word. Four. Troy was sitting in a corner of the Whiteheart Tavern at Castor Bridge, smoking and drinking a steaming mixture from a glass. A knock was given at the door, and Pennyways entered. Well, have you seen him? Troy inquired, pointing to a chair. Bouldard? No. Lie along. He wasn't at home. I went there first, too. That's a nuisance. Tis rather, I suppose. Yet I don't see that because a man appears to be drowned, and was not. He should be liable for anything. I shan't ask any lawyer. Not I. But that's not it exactly. If a man changes his name and so forth, and takes steps to deceive the world and his own wife, he's a cheat. And that in the eye of the law is always a rogue, and that is always a lamekin vagabond. And that's a punishable situation. Ha! Ha! Well done, Pennyways. Troy had laughed, but it was with some anxiety that he said, Now, what I want to know is this. Do you think there's really anything going on between her and Bouldwood? Upon my soul I should never have believed it. How she must detest me. Have you found out whether she has encouraged him? I hadn't been able to learn. There's a deal of feeling on his side, seemingly, but I don't answer for horror. I didn't know a word about any such thing till yesterday, and all I heard then was that she was going to the party at his house to-night. This is the first time she's ever gone there, they say, and they say that she has not so much as spoke to him since they were at Greenhill Fair, but what can folk believe of it? However, she's not fond of him, quite offish, and quite careless, I know. I'm not so sure of that. She's a handsome woman, Pennyways. Is she not? Own that you never saw a finer or more splendid creature in your life. From my honour, when I said eyes upon her that day I wondered what I could have been made of to be able to leave her by herself so long, and then I was hampered with that bothering show which I'm free of at last, thanks to stars. He smoked on a while, and then added. How did she look when you passed by yesterday? Oh, she took no grey heed of me. You may well fancy, but she looked well enough, far as I know. Just flashed her holly eyes upon my poor scram body, then let them go past me to what was beyond. Much as if it would be no more than a leafless tree. She had just got off her mare to look at the last ring-down of cider for the year. She had been riding, and so the colours were up, and her breath rather quick, so that her bosom plimmed and fell, plimmed and fell, every time plain to my eye. Eye, and there were the fellers round her, ringing down the cheese, and bustling about and saying, Where it upon me, ma'am, to spoil your gown? Never mind me, says she. Then Gabe brought her some of the new cider, and she must need to go drinking it through a straw-mode, and not in a natural way at all. Liddy, says she, bring indoors a few gallons, and I'll make some cider-wine. Sergeant, I was no more to whore than a morsel of scruff in the fuel-house. I must go and find her out at once. Yes, I see that. I must go. Oak is head-man still, isn't he? Yes, I believe. And a little weather we farm to, he manages everything. He'll puzzle him to manage her, or any other man of his compass. We don't know about that. She can't do without him, and knowing it well, he's pretty independent, and she's a few soft corners to her mind, though I'd never been able to get into one. The devil's in it. Ah, Bailey, she's a notch above you, and you must own it, a higher class of animal, a finer tissue. However, stick to me, and neither this haughty goddess, dashing piece of womanhood, Juneau wife of mine, Juneau was a goddess, you know, or anybody else shall hurt you. But all this once looking into I perceive, what would one thing and another I see that my work is well cut out for me. Five. How do I look to-night, Liddy? said Bathsheba, giving a final adjustment to her dress before leaving the glass. I never saw you look so well before. Yes, I'll tell you when you look like it, that night, a year and a half ago, when you came in so wild-like, and scolded us for making remarks about you and Mr. Troy. Everybody would think that I'm setting myself to captivate Mr. Bouldwood, I suppose. She murmured. At least they'll say so. Can't my hair be brushed down a little flatter? I dread going, yet I dread the risk of wounding him by staying away. Anyhow, ma'am, you can't well be dressed any plainer than you are, unless you go in a sack-cloth at once. Did your excitement is what makes you look so noticeable to-night? I don't know what's the matter. I feel wretched at one time, and buoyant at another. I wish I could have continued quite alone as I have been for the last year or so, with no hopes and no fears, and no pleasure and no grief. Now, just suppose Mr. Bouldwood should ask you, only just suppose her, to run away with him. What would you do, ma'am? Liddy, none of that, said Bathsheba, gravely. Mind, I won't hear joking on any such matter. Do you hear? I beg pardon, ma'am, but knowing what room things we women be, I just said, ah, however, I won't speak of it again. No marrying for me yet for many a year, if ever, to be for reasons very, very different from those you think our others will believe. Now get my cloak, for it's time to go. Six. Oak, said Bouldwood, before you go I want to mention what has been passing in my mind lately, that little arrangement we made about your share of the farm, I mean. That share is small, too small, considering how little I attend to business now, and how much time and thought you give to it, well, since the world is brightening for me, I want to show my sense of it by increasing your proportion and the partnership. I make a memorandum of the arrangement which struck me as likely to be convenient, for I haven't time to talk about it now, and then we'll discuss it at our leisure. My intention is ultimately to retire from the management altogether, and until you can take all the expenditure upon your shoulders, I'll be a sleeping partner in the stock. Then if I marry her, and I hope, I feel I shall, why, pray, don't speak of it, sir, said oak hastily, we don't know what may happen, so many upsets may be folly, there's many a step, as they say, and I would advise you, I know you'll pardon me this once, not to be too sure. I know, I know, but the feeling I have about increasing your share is on account of what I know of you. Oak, I have learnt a little about your secret. Your interest in her is more than that of a bailiff or an employer, which you have behaved like a man. And I, as a sort of successful rival, a successful partly through your goodness of heart, should like definitely to show my sense of your friendship under what must have been a great pain to you. Oh, that's not necessary, thank ye, said oak hurriedly. I must get used to such as that, other men have, and so shall I. Oak then left him. He was uneasy on Baldwood's account, for he saw and knew that this constant passion of the farmer made him not the man he had once been. As Baldwood continued a while in his room alone, ready and dressed to receive his company, the mood of anxiety about his appearance seemed to pass away, and to be succeeded by a deep solemnity. He looked out of the window, and regarded the dim outline of the trees upon the sky and the twilight deepening to darkness. He went to a locked closet, and took from a locked drawer therein a small circular case the size of a pill-box, and was about to put it in his pocket, but he lingered to open the cover and take a momentary glance inside. It contained a woman's finger ring set all the way round with small diamonds, and from its appearance had evidently been recently purchased. Baldwood's eyes dwelt upon its many sparkles a long time, though that its material aspect concerned him little was plain from his manner and mienne, which were those of a mind following out the presumed thread of that jewel's future history. The noise of wheels at the front of the house became audible. Baldwood closed the box, stowed it away carefully in his pocket, and went out upon the landing. The old man, who was his indoor factotum, came at the same moment to the foot of the stairs. There he come and saw her, lots of them, a foot and a drive-in. I was coming down this moment. Those wheels I heard, is it Mrs. Troy? No, sir, it is not she yet. A reserved and somber expression had returned to Baldwood's face again, but it poorly cloaked his feelings when he pronounced Bathsheba's name, and his feverish anxiety continued to show its existence by a galloping motion of his fingers upon the side of his tie as he went down the stairs. Seven. How does this cover me? said Troy, to Pennyways. Nobody would recognize me now, I'm sure. He was buttoning on a heavy grey overcoat of noation cut, with cape and high collar, the latter being erect and rigid like a girdling wall, and nearly reaching the surge of the travelling cap which was pulled down over his ears. Pennyways snuffed the candle, and then looked up and deliberately inspected Troy. You've made up your mind to go then, he said. Made up my mind? Yes, of course I have. Why not write to her? She's a very queer corner that you've got into, Sargent. You see, all these things will come to light if you go back, and they won't sound well at all. Fate! If I was you, I'd even bide as you be, a single man, of the name of Francis. A good wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all. Now that's my outspoken mind, and I've been called a long-headed feller here and there. All nonsense! said Troy angrily. There she is, with plenty of money, and a house, and farm, and horses, and comfort, and here am I, living from hand to mouth, an idiot venturer. Besides, it is no use talking now, it is too late, and I am glad of it. I have been seen and recognised here this very afternoon. I should have gone back to her the day after the fair, if it hadn't been for you, talking about the law, and rubbish about getting a separation, and I don't put it off any longer. What the juice put it into my head to run away at all, I can't think. Humbugging sentiment, that's what it was. But what man on earth was to know that his wife would be in such a hurry to get rid of his name? I should have known it. She's bad enough for anything. In many ways, mind who you were talking to. Well, Sergeant, all I say is this, that if I were you, I'd go abroad again where I came from. It isn't too late to do it now. I wouldn't stir up the business and get a bad name for the sake of living my whore. For all that about your play-act, and it's sure to come out, you know, although you think otherwise. My eyes and nymphs, they'll be in racket if you go back just now, in the middle of Bouldwood's Christmas-ing. Hmm, yes, I expect I shall not be a very welcome guest if he has got her there, said the Sergeant with a slight laugh, a sort of Alonso the Brave, and when I go in the guests will sit in silence and fear, and all laughter and pleasure will be hushed, and the lights in the chamber burn blue, and the worms—oh, horrible—ring for some more brandy-penny-ways. I felt an awful shudder just then. Well, what is there besides—a stick—I must have a walking-stick. Penny-ways now felt himself to be in something of a difficulty, for should Bathsheba and Troy become reconciled, it would be necessary to regain her good opinion if he would secure the patronage of her husband. I sometimes think she likes her yet, and is a good woman at bottom. He said, as a saving sentence, but there's no talent to a certainty from the body's outside. Well, you'll do as you like about going, of course, Sergeant, and as for me I'll do as you tell me. Now, let me see what the time is. Said Troy after emptying his glass in one draught as he stood, half past six o'clock. I shall not hurry along the road, and shall be there, then, before nine. End of chapter fifty-two