finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_47_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 48
chapter 48
{"name": "Chapter 48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-48", "summary": "Bathsheba doesn't know what to make of her husband's disappearance. The more time goes by, the stranger she feels. In her mind, she belongs to him, and she can't imagine why he wouldn't come home to claim her. Her pride makes it very hard to admit to herself that Troy loved another woman more than her. The first Saturday after Troy's disappearance, Bathsheba goes to Casterbridge alone on business. While she's at the market, she overhears someone asking about her. The man says that he has to deliver the terrible news that her husband is drowned. She can't believe her ears, and she faints before anything else is said. At this same moment, Boldwood is standing behind her, and he catches her in his arms as she falls. What a concidence, eh? It turns out that someone on the coast found Troy's clothes on the beach. Another person saw him getting pulled out to sea by a riptide. But no one saw the sailors save Troy's bacon. Boldwood carries Bathsheba to a nearby hotel. When she regains consciousness, she demands to go home. Boldwood can only think about how wonderful it was to hold her in his arms. Oh, jeepers. Bathsheba is barely home for an hour before Liddy knocks on her bedroom door and says that she'll need a black dress for mourning. Bathsheba won't hear of it, though, because she doesn't believe that Troy is actually dead. After all, they never found his body. Bathsheba's confidence in Troy's survival starts to wane when she sees the announcement of his death in the paper that week and reads the eyewitness account of the person who saw him struggling out at sea. Worse yet, she starts to wonder if Troy killed himself on purpose to be with Fanny. When it's time for her to collect Troy's clothes, she opens his pocket watch and finds the lock of Fanny Robin's hair still inside it. Figuring that it's best that Troy and Fanny are now together, she holds Fanny's lock of hair over the fire, then snatches it back at the last second to remember Fanny by.", "analysis": ""}


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 recognizes 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 Everdene'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 on without good materials
for the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and
energetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes
on as a sort of clockwork which the merest 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 Casterbridge
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 business-men gathered as usual in front of the market-house,
who were as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that
those healthy lives were dearly paid for by exclusion from possible
aldermanship, 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 him.

"I am looking for Mrs. Troy.  Is that she there?"

"Yes; that's the young lady, I believe," said the the person
addressed.

"I 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 Boldwood, looking up at the bringer of the big
news, as he supported her.

"Her husband was drowned this week while bathing in Lulwind Cove.
A coastguardsman found his clothes, and brought them into Budmouth
yesterday."

Thereupon a strange fire lighted up Boldwood'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 Inn.  Here he passed with her under the
archway into a private room; and by the time he had deposited--so
lothly--the precious burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her
eyes.  Remembering all that had occurred, she murmured, "I want to go
home!"

Boldwood 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 did it matter about her not knowing it?  She had been
close to his breast; he had been close to hers.

He started onward again, and sending a woman to her, 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 returned to inform her.  He found
that, though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for
the Budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all
there was to know.

Being hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town,
Boldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get
her a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, 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
Weatherbury 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.  Somebody came to the door, knocked, and opened
it.

"Well, what is it, Liddy?" she said.

"I was thinking there must be something got for you to wear," said
Liddy, with hesitation.

"What do you mean?"

"Mourning."

"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's 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 they have found him, Liddy?--or--I
don't know how it is, but death would have been different from how
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 methodizing
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 remoter 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 her 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, less 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
the little coil of pale hair which had been as the fuze to this great
explosion.

"He was hers and she was his; 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.




Chapter 48
Bathsheba doesn't know what to make of her husband's disappearance. The more time goes by, the stranger she feels. In her mind, she belongs to him, and she can't imagine why he wouldn't come home to claim her. Her pride makes it very hard to admit to herself that Troy loved another woman more than her. The first Saturday after Troy's disappearance, Bathsheba goes to Casterbridge alone on business. While she's at the market, she overhears someone asking about her. The man says that he has to deliver the terrible news that her husband is drowned. She can't believe her ears, and she faints before anything else is said. At this same moment, Boldwood is standing behind her, and he catches her in his arms as she falls. What a concidence, eh? It turns out that someone on the coast found Troy's clothes on the beach. Another person saw him getting pulled out to sea by a riptide. But no one saw the sailors save Troy's bacon. Boldwood carries Bathsheba to a nearby hotel. When she regains consciousness, she demands to go home. Boldwood can only think about how wonderful it was to hold her in his arms. Oh, jeepers. Bathsheba is barely home for an hour before Liddy knocks on her bedroom door and says that she'll need a black dress for mourning. Bathsheba won't hear of it, though, because she doesn't believe that Troy is actually dead. After all, they never found his body. Bathsheba's confidence in Troy's survival starts to wane when she sees the announcement of his death in the paper that week and reads the eyewitness account of the person who saw him struggling out at sea. Worse yet, she starts to wonder if Troy killed himself on purpose to be with Fanny. When it's time for her to collect Troy's clothes, she opens his pocket watch and finds the lock of Fanny Robin's hair still inside it. Figuring that it's best that Troy and Fanny are now together, she holds Fanny's lock of hair over the fire, then snatches it back at the last second to remember Fanny by.