bosom of the one beloved can deter from combating his
or her errors. Oak determined to speak to his mistress.
He would base his appeal on what he considered her
unfair treatment of Farmer Boldwood, now absent from
home.
An opportunity occurred one evening when she had
gone for a short walk by a path through the neighbour-
ing cornfields. It was dusk when Oak, who had not
been far a-field that day, took the same path and met
her returning, quite pensively, as he thought.
The wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow;
thus the way was quite a sunken groove between the
embowing thicket on either side. Two persons could
not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and Oak
stood aside to let her pass.
"Oh, is it Gabriel?" she said. "You are taking a
walk too. Good-night."
"I thought I would come to meet you, as it is rather
late," said Oak, turning and following at her heels when
she had brushed somewhat quickly by him.
"Thank you, indeed, but I am not very fearful."
"O no; but there are bad characters about."
"I never meet them."
Now Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going
to introduce the gallant sergeant through the channel of
"bad characters." But all at once the scheme broke
down, it suddenly occurring to him that this was rather a
clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with. He tried
another preamble.
"And as the man who would naturally come to meet
you is away from home, too - I mean Farmer Boldwood
- why, thinks I, I'll go." he said.
"Ah, yes." She walked on without turning her head,
and for many steps nothing further was heard from her
quarter than the rustle of her dress against the heavy
corn-ears. Then she resumed rather tartly -
"I don't quite understand what you meant by saying
that Mr. Boldwood would naturally come to meet me."
I meant on account of the wedding which they say
is likely to take place between you and him, miss. For-
give my speaking plainly."
"They say what is not true." she returned quickly.
No marriage is likely to take place between us."
Gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for
the moment had come. "Well, Miss Everdene." he
said, "putting aside what people say, I never in my life
saw any courting if his is not a courting of you."
Bathsheba would probably have terminated the con-
versation there and then by flatly forbidding the subject,
had not her conscious weakness of position allured her
to palter and argue in endeavours to better it.
"Since this subject has been mentioned." she said
very emphatically, "I am glad of the opportunity of
clearing up a mistake which is very common and very
provoking. I didn't definitely promise Mr. Boldwood
anything. I have never cared for him. I respect him,
and he has urged me to marry him. But I have given
him no distinct answer. As soon as he returns I shall
do so; and the answer will be that I cannot think of
marrying him."
"People are full of mistakes, seemingly."
"They are."
The other day they said you were trifling with him,
and you almost proved that you were not; lately they
have said that you be not, and you straightway begin
to show - - "
That I am, I suppose you mean."
"Well, I hope they speak the truth."
They do, but wrongly applied. I don't trifle with
him; but then, I have nothing to do with him."
Oak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood's
rival in a wrong tone to her after all. "I wish you had
never met that young Sergeant Troy, miss." he sighed.
Bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic. "Why?"
she asked.
"He is not good enough for 'ee."
"Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?"
"Nobody at all."
"Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not
concern us here." she said, intractably." Yet I must say
that Sergeant Troy is an educated man, and quite worthy
of any woman. He is well born."
"His being higher in learning and birth than the
ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It
show's his course to be down'ard."
"I cannot see what this has to do with our conversa-
tion. Mr. Troy's course is not by any means downward;
and his superiority IS a proof of his worth!"
"I believe him to have no conscience at all. And I
cannot help begging you, miss, to have nothing to do
with him. Listen to me this once - only this once!
I don't say he's such a bad man as I have fancied - I
pray to God he is not. But since we don't exactly
know what he is, why not behave as if he MIGHT be bad,
simply for your own safety? Don't trust him, mistress;
I ask you not to trust him so."
"Why, pray?"
"I like soldiers, but this one I do not like." he said,
sturdily. "His cleverness in his calling may have
tempted him astray, and what is mirth to the neighbours
is ruin to the woman. When he tries to talk to 'ee again,
why not turn away with a short "Good day," and when
you see him coming one way, turn the other. When
he says anything laughable, fail to see the point
and don't smile, and speak of him before those who will
report your talk as "that fantastical man." or " that
Sergeant What's-his-name." "That man of a family
that has come to the dogs." Don't be unmannerly
towards en, but harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the
man."
No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever
pulsed as did Bathsheba now.
I say - I say again - that it doesn't become you to
talk about him. Why he should be mentioned passes
me quite . she exclaimed desperately. "I know this,
th-th-that he is a thoroughly conscientious man - blunt
sometimes even to rudeness - but always speaking his
mind about you plain to your face!"
"Oh."
"He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is
very particular, too, about going to church - yes, he
is!"
"I am afraid nobody saw him there. I never
did certainly."
"The reason of that is." she said eagerly, " that he goes
in privately by the old tower door, just when the service
commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He
told me so."
This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon
Gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock.
It was not only received with utter incredulity as re-
garded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances
that had preceded it.
Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him.
He brimmed with deep feeling as he replied in a steady
voice, the steadiness of which was spoilt by the palpable-
ness of his great effort to keep it so: -
"You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love
you always. I only mention this to bring to your mind
that at any rate I would wish to do you no harm:
beyond that I put it aside. I have lost in the race for
money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to
pretend to 'ee now I am poor, and you have got alto-
gether above me. But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this
I beg you to consider - that, both to keep yourself well
honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity
to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you
PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK
should be more discreet in your bearing towards this
soldier."
"Don't, don't, don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking
voice.
"Are ye not more to me than my own affairs, and
even life!" he went on. "Come, listen to me! I am
six years older than you, and Mr. Boldwood is ten years
older than I, and consider - I do beg of 'ee to consider
before it is too late - how safe you would be in his
hands!"
Oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to
some extent, her anger at his interference; but she
could not really forgive him for letting his wish to marry
her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good, any more
than for his slighting treatment of Troy.
"I wish you to go elsewhere." she commanded, a
paleness of face invisible to the eye being suggested by
the trembling words. "Do not remain on this farm any
longer. I don't want you - I beg you to go!"
"That's nonsense." said Oak, calmly. "This is the
second time you have pretended to dismiss me; and
what's the use o' it?"
"Pretended! You shall go, sir - your lecturing I
will not hear! I am mistress here."
"Go, indeed - what folly will you say next? Treating
me like Dick, Tom and Harry when you know that a
short time ago my position was as good as yours! Upon
my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced. You know, too,
that I can't go without putting things in such a strait as
you wouldn't get out of I can't tell when. Unless, indeed,
you'll promise to have an understanding man as bailiff,
or manager, or something. I'll go at once if you'll
promise that."
"I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my
own manager." she said decisively.
"Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for
biding. How would the farm go on with nobody to
mind it but a woman? But mind this, I don't wish
"ee to feel you owe me anything. Not I. What I do,
I do. Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to
leave the place - for don't suppose I'm content to be a
nobody. I was made for better things. However, I
don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as they
must if you keep in this mind.... I hate taking my
own measure so plain, but, upon my life, your provok-
ing ways make a man say what he wouldn't dream of
at other times! I own to being rather interfering. But
you know well enough how it is, and who she is that I
like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be
civil to her!"
It is more than probable that she privately and un-
consciously respected him a little for this grim fidelity,
which had been shown in his tone even more than in
his words. At any rate she murmured something to the
effect that he might stay if he wished. She said more
distinctly, " Will you leave me alone now? I don't
order it as a mistress - I ask it as a woman, and I
expect you not to be so uncourteous as to refuse."
"Certainly I will, Miss Everdene." said Gabriel, gently.
He wondered that the request should have come at this
moment, for the strife was over, and they were on a
most desolate hill, far from every human habitation, and
the hour was getting late. He stood still and allowed
her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her
form upon the sky.
A distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of
him at that point now ensued. A figure apparently rose
from the earth beside her. The shape beyond all doubt
was Troy's. Oak would not be even a possible listener,
and at once turned back till a good two hundred yards
were between the lovers and himself.
Gabriel went home by way of the churchyard. In
passing the tower he thought of what she had said about
the sergeant's virtuous habit of entering the church un-
PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK
perceived at the beginning of service. Believing that
the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused, he
ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which
it stood, and examined it. The pale lustre yet hanging
in the north-western heaven was sufficient to show that
a sprig of ivy had grown from the wall across the door
to a length of more than a foot, delicately tying the
panel to the stone jamb. It was a decisive proof that
the door had not been opened at least since Troy came
back to Weatherbury.
CHAPTER XXX
HOT CHEEKS AND TEARFUL EYES
HALF an hour later Bathsheba entered her own house.
There burnt upon her face when she met the light of
the candles the flush and excitement which were little
less than chronic with her now. The farewell words of
Troy, who had accompanied her to the very door, still
lingered in her ears. He had bidden her adieu for two
days, which were so he stated, to be spent at Bath in
visiting some friends. He had also kissed her a second
time.
It is only fair to Bathsheba to explain here a little
fact which did not come to light till a long time after-
wards: that Troy's presentation of himself so aptly at
the roadside this evening was not by any distinctly pre-
concerted arrangement. He had hinted - she had
forbidden; and it was only on the chance of his still
coming that she had dismissed Oak, fearing a meeting
between them just then.
She now sank down into a chair, wild and perturbed
by all these new and fevering sequences. Then she
jumped up with a manner of decision, and fetched her
desk from a side table.
In three minutes, without pause or modification, she
had written a letter to Boldwood, at his address beyond
Casterbridge, saying mildly but firmly that she had well
considered the whole subject he had brought before her
and kindly given her time to decide upon; that her
final decision was that she could not marry him. She
had expressed to Oak an intention to wait till Boldwood
came home before communicating to him her conclusive
reply. But Bathsheba found that she could not wait.
It was impossible to send this letter till the next day;
yet to quell her uneasiness by getting it out of her hands,
and so, as it were, setting the act in motion at once, she
arose to take it to any one of the women who might be
in the kitchen.
She paused in the passage. A dialogue was going
on in the kitchen, and Bathsheba and Troy were the
subject of it.
"If he marry her, she'll gie up farming."
"Twill be a gallant life, but may bring some trouble
between the mirth - so say I."
"Well, I wish I had half such a husband."
Bathsheba had too much sense to mind seriously
what her servitors said about her; but too much womanly
redundance of speech to leave alone what was said till
it died the natural death of unminded things. She
burst in upon them.
"Who are you speaking of?" she asked.
There was a pause before anybody replied. At last
Liddy said frankly," What was passing was a bit of a
word about yourself, miss."
"I thought so! Maryann and Liddy and Temper-
ance - now I forbid you to suppose such things. You
know I don't care the least for Mr. Troy - not I. Every-
body knows how much I hate him. - Yes." repeated the
froward young person, "HATE him!"
"We know you do, miss." said Liddy; "and so do we
all."
"I hate him too." said Maryann.
"Maryann - O you perjured woman! How can you
speak that wicked story!" said Bathsheba, excitedly.
"You admired him from your heart only this morning
in the very world, you did. Yes, Maryann, you know it!"
"Yes, miss, but so did you. He is a wild scamp
now, and you are right to hate him."
"He's NOT a wild scamp! How dare you to my face!
I have no right to hate him, nor you, nor anybody.
But I am a silly woman! What is it to me what he is?
You know it is nothing. I don't care for him; I don"t
mean to defend his good name, not I. Mind this, if
any of you say a word against him you'll be dismissed
instantly!"
She flung down the letter and surged back into the
parlour, with a big heart and tearful eyes, Liddy following
her.
"O miss!" said mild Liddy, looking pitifully into
Bathsheba's face. "I am sorry we mistook you so!
did think you cared for him; but I see you don't now."
"Shut the door, Liddy."
Liddy closed the door, and went on: " People always
say such foolery, miss. I'll make answer hencefor'ard,
"Of course a lady like Miss Everdene can't love him;"
I'll say it out in plain black and white."
Bathsheba burst out: "O Liddy, are you such a
simpleton? Can't you read riddles? Can't you see?
Are you a woman yourself?"
Liddy's clear eyes rounded with wonderment.
"Yes; you must be a blind thing, Liddy!" she said,
in reckless abandonment and grief. "O, I love him
to very distraction and misery and agony! Don't be
frightened at me, though perhaps I am enough to frighten
any innocent woman. Come closer - closer." She put
her arms round Liddy's neck. "I must let it out to
somebody; it is wearing me away! Don't you yet know
enough of me to see through that miserable denial of
mine? O God, what a lie it was! Heaven and my
Love forgive me. And don't you know that a woman
who loves at all thinks nothing of perjury when it is
balanced against her love? There, go out of the room;
I want to be quite alone."
Liddy went towards the door.
"Liddy, come here. Solemnly swear to me that he's
not a fast man; that it is all lies they say about him!"
"Put, miss, how can I say he is not if - - "
"You graceless girl! How can you have the cruel
heart to repeat what they say? Unfeeling thing that
you are.... But I'LL see if you or anybody else in the
village, or town either, dare do such a thing!" She
started off, pacing from fireplace to door, and back
again.
"No, miss. I don't - I know it is not true!" said
Liddy, frightened at Bathsheba's unwonted vehemence.
I suppose you only agree with me like that to please
me. But, Liddy, he CANNOT BE had, as is said. Do you
hear? "
"Yes, miss, yes."
"And you don't believe he is?"
"I don't know what to say, miss." said Liddy, be-
ginning to cry. "If I say No, you don"t believe me;
and if I say Yes, you rage at me!"
"Say you don't believe it - say you don't!"
"I don't believe him to be so had as they make out."
"He is not had at all.... My poor life and heart,
how weak I am!" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory
way, heedless of Liddy's presence. "O, how I wish I
had never seen him! Loving is misery for women
always. I shall never forgive God for making me a
woman, and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour
of owning a pretty face." She freshened and turned to
Liddy suddenly. "Mind this, Lydia Smallbury, if you
repeat anywhere a single word of what l have said to
you inside this closed door, I'll never trust you, or love
you, or have you with me a moment longer - not a
moment!"
"I don't want to repeat anything." said Liddy, with
womanly dignity of a diminutive order; "but I don't
wish to stay with you. And, if you please, I'll go at the
end of the harvest, or this week, or to-day.... I don't
see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed at for
nothing!" concluded the small woman, bigly.
"No, no, Liddy; you must stay!" said Bathsheba,
dropping from haughtiness to entreaty with capricious
inconsequence. "You must not notice my being in a
taking just now. You are not as a servant - you are a
companion to me. Dear, dear - I don't know what I
am doing since this miserable ache o'! my heart has
weighted and worn upon me so! What shall I come
to! I suppose I shall get further and further into
troubles. I wonder sometimes if I am doomed to die
in the Union. I am friendless enough, God knows!"
"I won't notice anything, nor will I leave you!" sobbed
Liddy, impulsively putting up her lips to Bathsheba's,
and kissing her.
Then Bathsheba kissed Liddy, and all was smooth
again.
"I don't often cry, do I, Lidd? but you have made
tears come into my eyes." she said, a smile shining
through the moisture. "Try to think him a good man,
won't you, dear Liddy?"
"I will, miss, indeed."
"He is a sort of steady man in a wild way, you know.
way. I am afraid that's how I am. And promise me
to keep my secret - do, Liddy! And do not let them
know that I have been crying about him, because it will
be dreadful for me, and no good to him, poor thing!"Death's head himself
shan't wring it from me, mistress,
if I've a mind to keep anything; and I'll always be your
friend." replied Liddy, emphatically, at the same time
bringing a few more tears into her own eyes, not from
any particular necessity, but from an artistic sense of
making herself in keeping with the remainder of the
picture, which seems to influence women at such times.
"I think God likes us to be good friends, don't you?"
"Indeed I do."
"And, dear miss, you won"t harry me and storm at
me, will you? because you seem to swell so tall as a
lion then, and it frightens me! Do you know, I fancy
you would be a match for any man when you are in one
O' your takings."
"Never! do you?" said Bathsheba, slightly laughing,
though somewhat seriously alarmed by this Amazonian
picture of herself. "I hope I am not a bold sort of
maid - mannish?" she continued with some anxiety.
"O no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish
that 'tis getting on that way sometimes. Ah! miss." she
said, after having drawn her breath very sadly in and
sent it very sadly out, "I wish I had half your failing
that way. 'Tis a great protection to a poor maid in
these illegit'mate days!"
CHAPTER XXXI
BLAME - FURY
THE next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting
out of the way of Mr. Boldwood in the event of his
returning to answer her note in person, proceeded to
fulfil an engagement made with Liddy some few hours
earlier. Bathsheba's companion, as a gage of their
reconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to
visit her sister, who was married to a thriving hurdler
and cattle-crib-maker living in a delightful labyrinth of
hazel copse not far beyond Yalbury. The arrangement
was that Miss Everdene should honour them by coming
there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious con-
trivances which this man of the woods had introduced
into his wares.
Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann,
that they were to see everything carefully locked up for
the night, she went out of the house just at the close of
a timely thunder-shower, which had refined the air, and
daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath
was dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence
from the varied contours of bank and hollow, as if the
earth breathed maiden breath; and the pleased birds
were hymning to the scene. Before her, among the
clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of
fierce light which showed themselves in the neighbour-
hood of a hidden sun, lingering on to the farthest north-
west corner of the heavens that this midsummer season
allowed.
She had walked nearly two miles of her journey,
watching how the day was retreating, and thinking how
the time of deeds was quietly melting into the time of
thought, to give place in its turn to the time of prayer
and sleep, when she beheld advancing over Yalbury hill
the very man she sought so anxiously to elude. Boldwood
was stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved
strength which was his customary gait, in which he
always seemed to be balancing two thoughts. His
manner was stunned and sluggish now.
Boldwood had for the first time been awakened to
woman's privileges in tergiversation even when it involves
another person's possible blight. That Bathsheba was
a firm and positive girl, far less inconsequent than her
fellows, had been the very lung of his hope; for he had
held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a
straight course for consistency's sake, and accept him,
though her fancy might not flood him with the iridescent
hues of uncritical love. But the argument now came
back as sorry gleams from a broken mirror. The dis-
covery was no less a scourge than a surprise.
He came on looking upon the ground, and did not
see Bathsheba till they were less than a stone's throw
apart. He looked up at the sound of her pit-pat, and
his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to her the
depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her
letter.
"Oh; is it you, Mr. Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty
warmth pulsing in her face.
Those who have the power of reproaching in silence
may find it a means more effective than words. There
are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and
more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear.
It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter
moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. Bold-
wood's look was unanswerable.
Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are
you afraid of me?"
Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba.
"I fancied you looked so." said he. "And it is most
strange, because of its contrast with my feeling for you.
She regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly,
and waited.
"You know what that feeling is." continued Boldwood,
deliberately. "A thing strong as death. No dismissal
by a hasty letter affects that."
"I wish you did not feel so strongly about me." she
murmured. "It is generous of you, and more than I
deserve, but I must not hear it now."
"Hear it? What do you think I have to say, then?
I am not to marry you, and that's enough. Your letter
was excellently plain. I want you to hear nothing -
not I."
Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any
definite groove for freeing herself from this fearfully
and was moving on. Boldwood walked up to her heavily
and dully.
"Bathsheba - darling - is it final indeed?"
"Indeed it is."
"O, Bathsheba - have pity upon me!" Boldwood
burst out. "God's sake, yes - I am come to that low,
lowest stage - to ask a woman for pity! Still, she is
you - she is you."
Bathsheba commanded herself well. But she could
hardly get a clear voice for what came instinctively to
her lips: "There is little honour to the woman in that
speech." It was only whispered, for something unutter-
ably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle
of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a
passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.
"I am beyond myself about this, and am mad." he
said. "I am no stoic at all to he supplicating here; but
I do supplicate to you. I wish you knew what is in
me of devotion to you; but it is impossible, that. In
bare human mercy to a lonely man, don't throw me off
now!"
"I don't throw you off - indeed, how can I? I never
had you." In her noon-clear sense that she had never
loved him she forgot for a moment her thoughtless angle
on that day in February.
"But there was a time when you turned to me,
before I thought of you! I don't reproach you, for
even now I feel that the ignorant and cold darkness
that I should have lived in if you had not attracted me
by that letter - valentine you call it - would have been
worse than my knowledge of you, though it has brought
this misery. But, I say, there was a time when I knew
nothing of you, and cared nothing for you, and yet you
drew me on. And if you say you gave me no en-
couragement, I cannot but contradict you."
"What you call encouragement was the childish
game of an idle minute. I have bitterly repented of it
- ay, bitterly, and in tears. Can you still go on re-
minding me?"
"I don't accuse you of it - I deplore it. I took for
earnest what you insist was jest, and now this that I
pray to be jest you say is awful, wretched earnest. Our
moods meet at wrong places. I wish your feeling was
more like mine, or my feeling more like yours! O,
could I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick
was going to lead me into, how I should have cursed
you; but only having been able to see it since, I cannot
do that, for I love you too well! But it is weak, idle
drivelling to go on like this.... Bathsheba, you are
the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever
looked at to love, and it is the having been so near
claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard
to bear. How nearly you promised me! But I don't
speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve
because of my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it;
my pain would get no less by paining you."
"But I do pity you - deeply - O so deeply!" she
earnestly said.
"Do no such thing - do no such thing. Your dear
love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity,
that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great
addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity
make it sensibly less. O sweet - how dearly you
spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool,
and in the barn at the shearing, and that dearest last
time in the evening at your home! Where are your
pleasant words all gone - your earnest hope to be able
to love me? Where is your firm conviction that you
would get to care for me very much? Really forgotten?
- really?"
She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly
in the face, and said in her low, firm voice, " Mr. Bold-
wood, I promised you nothing. Would you have had
me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest,
highest compliment a man can pay a woman - telling
her he loves her? I was bound to show some feeling,
if l would not be a graceless shrew. Yet each of those
pleasures was just for the day - the day just for the
pleasure. How was I to know that what is a pastime
to all other men was death to you? Have reason, do,
and think more kindly of me!"
"Well, never mind arguing - never mind. One
thing is sure: you were all but mine, and now you are
not nearly mine. Everything is changed, and that by
you alone, remember. You were nothing to me once,
and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again,
and how different the second nothing is from the first!
Would to God you had never taken me up, since it was
only to throw me down!"
Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel un-
mistakable signs that she was inherently the weaker
vessel. She strove miserably against this feminity
which would insist upon supplying unbidden emotions
in stronger and stronger current. She had tried to
elude agitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any
trivial object before her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell,
but ingenuity could not save her now.
"I did not take you up - surely I did not!" she
answered as heroically as she could. "But don't be in
this mood with me. I can endure being told I am in
the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently! O sir,
will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it
cheerfully?"
"Cheerfully! Can a man fooled to utter heart-
burning find a reason for being merry> If I have lost,
how can I be as if I had won? Heavens you must be
heartless quite! Had I known what a fearfully bitter
sweet this was to be, how would I have avoided you,
and never seen you, and been deaf of you. I tell you
all this, but what do you care! You don't care."
She returned silent and weak denials to his charges,
and swayed her head desperately, as if to thrust away
the words as they came showering about her ears from
the lips of the trembling man in the climax of life, with
his bronzed Roman face and fine frame.
"Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between
the two opposites of recklessly renouncing you, and
labouring humbly for you again. Forget that you have
said No, and let it be as it was! Say, Bathsheba, that
you only wrote that refusal to me in fun - come, say it
to me!"
"It would be untrue, and painful to both of us. You
overrate my capacity for love. I don't possess half
the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An un-
protected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentle-
ness out of me."
He immediately said with more resentment: "That
may be true, somewhat; but ah, Miss Everdene, it won't
do as a reason! You are not the cold woman you
would have me believe. No, no! It isn't because you
have no feeling in you that you don't love me. You
naturally would have me think so - you would hide from
that you have a burning heart like mine. You have
love enough, but it is turned into a new channel. I
know where."
The swift music of her heart became hubbub now,
and she throbbed to extremity. He was coming to
Troy. He did then know what had occurred! And
the name fell from his lips the next moment.
"Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he
asked, fiercely. "When I had no thought of injuring
him, why did he force himself upon your notice!
Before he worried you your inclination was to have me;
when next I should have come to you your answer
would have been Yes. Can you deny it - I ask, can
you deny it?"
She delayed the reply, but was to honest to with
hold it." I cannot." she whispered.
"I know you cannot. But he stole in in my absence
and robbed me. Why did't he win you away before,
when nobody would have been grieved? - when nobody
would have been set tale-bearing. Now the people
sneer at me - the very hills and sky seem to laugh at
me till I blush shamefuly for my folly. I have lost my
respect, my good name, my standing - lost it, never to
get it again. Go and marry your man - go on!"
"O sir - Mr. Boldwood!"
"You may as well. I have no further claim upon you.
As for me, I had better go somewhere alone, and hide -
and pray. I loved a woman once. I am now ashamed.
When I am dead they'll say, Miserable love-sick man
that he was. Heaven - heaven - if I had got jilted
secretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position
kept! But no matter, it is gone, and the woman not
gained. Shame upon him - shame!"
His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided
from him, without obviously moving, as she said, "I am
only a girl - do not speak to me so!"
"All the time you knew - how very well you knew -
that your new freak was my misery. Dazzled by brass
and scarlet - O, Bathsheba - this is woman's folly
indeed!"
She fired up at once. "You are taking too much
upon yourself!" she said, vehemently. "Everybody is
upon me - everybody. It is unmanly to attack a
woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my
battles for me; but no mercy is shown. Yet if a
thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I WILL
NOT be put down!"
"You'll chatter with him doubtless about me. Say to
him, "Boldwood would have died for me." Yes, and
you have given way to him, knowing him to be not the
man for you. He has kissed you - claimed you as his.
Do you hear - he has kissed you. Deny it!"
The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man,
and although Boldwood was, in vehemence and glow,
nearly her own self rendered into another sex,
Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped," Leave me,
sir - leave me! I am nothing to you. Let me go on!"
"Deny that he has kissed you."
"I shall not."
"Ha - then he has!" came hoarsely from the farmer.
"He has," she said, slowly, and, in spite of her fear,
defiantly. "I am not ashamed to speak the truth."
"Then curse him; and curse him!" said Boldwood,
breaking into a whispered fury." Whilst I would have
given worlds to touch your hand, you have let a rake come
in without right or ceremony and - kiss you! Heaven's
mercy - kiss you! ... Ah, a time of his life shall come
when he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of
the pain he has caused another man; and then may he
ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn - as I do now!"
"Don't, don't, O, don't pray down evil upon him!"
she implored in a miserable cry. "Anything but that -
anything. O, be kind to him, sir, for I love him true ."
Boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at
which outline and consistency entirely disappear. The
impending night appeared to concentrate in his eye.
He did not hear her at all now.
"I'll punish him - by my soul, that will I! I'll meet
him, soldier or no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely
stripling for this reckless theft of my one delight. If he
were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him - - " He
dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. "Bath-
sheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! I've been
blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to
you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear
heart away with his unfathomable lies! ... lt is a
fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his
regiment - that he's away up the country, and not here!
I hope he may not return here just yet. I pray God
he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted
beyond myself. O, Bathsheba, keep him away - yes,
keep him away from me!"
For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this
that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with
the breath of his passionate words. He turned his face
away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over
by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low
hiss of the leafy trees.
Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a
model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face,
and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which
had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered
feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were incompre-
hensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to
repression he was - what she had seen him.
The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a
circumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was
coming back to Weatherby in the course of the very next
day or two. Troy had not returned to his distant barracks as
Boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone to visit
some acquaintance in Bath, and had yet a week or more
remaining to his furlough.
She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at
this nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood,a
fierce quarrel would be the consequence. She panted with
solicitude when she thought of possible injury to Troy. The
least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage
and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this
evening; Troy's blitheness might become aggressive; it might
take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's anger might
then take the direction of revenge.
With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing
girl, this guileless woman too well concealed from the world
under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong
emotions. But now there was no reserve. In fer
her distraction, instead of advancing further she
walked up and down, beating
the air with her fingers, pressing on her brow, and sobbing
brokenly to herself. Then she sat down on a heap of stones by
the wayside to think. There she remained long. Above the
dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontor-
ies of coppery cloud,bounding a green and pellucid expanse
in the western sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then,
and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting
prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating
stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of
space, but realised none at all. Her troubled spirit was far
away with Troy.
CHAPTER XXXII
NIGHT - HORSES TRAMPING
THE village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard
in its midst, and the living were lying well nigh as still
as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The
air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the
clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct,
and so was also the click of the same at their close.
The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness
of inanimate things - flapping and rebounding among
walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading
through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.
Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night
occupied only by Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated,
with her sister, whom Bathsheba had set out to visit.
A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann turned
in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. She was
totally unconscious of the nature of the interruption to
her sleep. It led to a dream, and the dream to an
awakening, with an uneasy sensation that something
had happened. She left her bed and looked out of
the window. The paddock abutted on this end of the
building, and in the paddock she could just discern by
the uncertain gray a moving figure approaching the
horse that was feeding there. The figure seized the
horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the
field. Here she could see some object which circum-
stances proved to be a vehicle for after a few minutes
the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of
light wheels.
Two varieties only of humanity could have entered
the paddock with the ghostlike glide of that mysterious
figure. They were a woman and a gipsy man. A woman
was out of the question in such an occupation at this
hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who
might probably have known the weakness of the house-