finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_24_part_0.txt
Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 25
chapter 25
{"name": "Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-25", "summary": "\"Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being. He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. . . . With him the past was yesterday; the future, tomorrow; never, the day after.\" Troy was \"moderately truthful\" to men, but lied to and flattered women. \"He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing. There was no third method. 'Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man,' he would say.\" Bathsheba was relieved by Boldwood's absence. She was surveying the haymaking in her fields when she noticed a red uniform behind a wagon. The sergeant had \"come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by his voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time.\" As soon as Bathsheba appeared, Troy put down his fork, gathered his riding crop, and came toward her. Bathsheba blushed and lowered her eyes.", "analysis": "Sergeant Troy is an undeniably charming liar who gives no thought to the harm his words may cause. When we remember Bathsheba's unthinking acts -- her treatment of Oak, her valentine to Boldwood -- we cannot help but feel some satisfaction that she has finally met her match -- and more."}


THE NEW ACQUAINTANCE DESCRIBED


Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as
an exceptional being.

He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations
a superfluity.  Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was
before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present.  His outlook
upon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that
projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which
makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word
for circumspection, was foreign to Troy.  With him the past was
yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.

On this account he might, in certain lights, have been regarded as
one of the most fortunate of his order.  For it may be argued with
great plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than a
disease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form--that of
absolute faith--is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form
of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve,
curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.

Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of
expectation, was never disappointed.  To set against this negative
gain there may have been some positive losses from a certain
narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed.  But
limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser
therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts
plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it,
whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer.  It is not a denial
of anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had never
enjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what sober
people missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemed
greater than theirs.

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like
a Cretan--a system of ethics above all others calculated to win
popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; and
the possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference
only to the future.

He never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the
ugly; and hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded,
disapproval of them had frequently been tempered with a smile.  This
treatment had led to his becoming a sort of regrater of other men's
gallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a Corinthian, rather than
to the moral profit of his hearers.

His reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocating
influence, having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence it
sometimes happened that, while his intentions were as honourable as
could be wished, any particular deed formed a dark background which
threw them into fine relief.  The sergeant's vicious phases being the
offspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool meditation, the
latter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen.

Troy was full of activity, but his activities were less of a
locomotive than a vegetative nature; and, never being based upon
any original choice of foundation or direction, they were exercised
on whatever object chance might place in their way.  Hence, whilst
he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that was
spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability
to guide incipient effort.  He had a quick comprehension and
considerable force of character; but, being without the power to
combine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities
whilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself
in useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension.

He was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class--
exceptionally well educated for a common soldier.  He spoke fluently
and unceasingly.  He could in this way be one thing and seem another:
for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the
husband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe.

The wondrous power of flattery in _passados_ at woman is a perception
so universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost as
automatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they are
Christians and the like, without thinking much of the enormous
corollaries which spring from the proposition.  Still less is it
acted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to.
With the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those trite
aphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendous
meanings thoroughly home.  When expressed with some amount of
reflectiveness it seems co-ordinate with a belief that this flattery
must be reasonable to be effective.  It is to the credit of men that
few attempt to settle the question by experiment, and it is for
their happiness, perhaps, that accident has never settled it for
them.  Nevertheless, that a male dissembler who by deluging her with
untenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powers
reaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many by
unsought and wringing occurrences.  And some profess to have attained
to the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntily
continue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect.
Sergeant Troy was one.

He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind
the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing.  There was
no third method.  "Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man." he
would say.

This person's public appearance in Weatherbury promptly followed his
arrival there.  A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, feeling
a nameless relief of spirits on account of Boldwood's absence,
approached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards the
haymakers.  They consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled and
flexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, who
wore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upon
their shoulders.  Coggan and Mark Clark were mowing in a less forward
meadow, Clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, to
which Jan made no attempt to keep time with his.  In the first mead
they were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks and
windrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon.

From behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went on
loading unconcernedly with the rest.  It was the gallant sergeant,
who had come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that
he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by this
voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time.

As soon as she had entered the field Troy saw her, and sticking his
pitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he came
forward.  Bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, and
adjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path.




Chapter 25
"Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being. He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. . . . With him the past was yesterday; the future, tomorrow; never, the day after." Troy was "moderately truthful" to men, but lied to and flattered women. "He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing. There was no third method. 'Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man,' he would say." Bathsheba was relieved by Boldwood's absence. She was surveying the haymaking in her fields when she noticed a red uniform behind a wagon. The sergeant had "come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by his voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time." As soon as Bathsheba appeared, Troy put down his fork, gathered his riding crop, and came toward her. Bathsheba blushed and lowered her eyes.
Sergeant Troy is an undeniably charming liar who gives no thought to the harm his words may cause. When we remember Bathsheba's unthinking acts -- her treatment of Oak, her valentine to Boldwood -- we cannot help but feel some satisfaction that she has finally met her match -- and more.