THE SAME NIGHT--THE FIR PLANTATION

Among the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed
upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the
particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed,
to see that all was right and safe for the night.  Gabriel had
almost constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching
her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of
surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a
great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was
somewhat thanklessly received.  Women are never tired of bewailing
man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.

As watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark
lantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light
to examine nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan
policeman.  This coolness may have owed its existence not so much
to her fearlessness of expected danger as to her freedom from the
suspicion of any; her worst anticipated discovery being that a horse
might not be well bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed.

This night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round
to the farm paddock.  Here the only sounds disturbing the stillness
were steady munchings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from
all but invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing
of bellows slowly.  Then the munching would recommence, when the
lively imagination might assist the eye to discern a group of
pink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very clammy and humid on
their surfaces, not exactly pleasant to the touch until one got used
to them; the mouths beneath having a great partiality for closing
upon any loose end of Bathsheba's apparel which came within reach of
their tongues.  Above each of these a still keener vision suggested a
brown forehead and two staring though not unfriendly eyes, and above
all a pair of whitish crescent-shaped horns like two particularly
new moons, an occasional stolid "moo!" proclaiming beyond the shade
of a doubt that these phenomena were the features and persons of
Daisy, Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot, Twinkle-eye, etc.,
etc.--the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging to Bathsheba
aforesaid.

Her way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of
tapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter
the premises from the north wind.  By reason of the density of
the interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless
noontide, twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and
black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.  To describe the spot
is to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling
of which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor
being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed
cones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there.

This bit of the path was always the crux of the night's ramble,
though, before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid
enough to lead her to take a companion.  Slipping along here covertly
as Time, Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering the
track at the opposite end.  It was certainly a rustle of footsteps.
Her own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes.  She reassured
herself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the
traveller was probably some villager returning home; regretting,
at the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the
darkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own
door.

The noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the
point of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and
pinned it forcibly to the ground.  The instantaneous check nearly
threw Bathsheba off her balance.  In recovering she struck against
warm clothes and buttons.

"A rum start, upon my soul!" said a masculine voice, a foot or so
above her head.  "Have I hurt you, mate?"

"No," said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink away.

"We have got hitched together somehow, I think."

"Yes."

"Are you a woman?"

"Yes."

"A lady, I should have said."

"It doesn't matter."

"I am a man."

"Oh!"

Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.

"Is that a dark lantern you have?  I fancy so," said the man.

"Yes."

"If you'll allow me I'll open it, and set you free."

A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst
out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with
astonishment.

The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet.
He was a soldier.  His sudden appearance was to darkness what the
sound of a trumpet is to silence.  Gloom, the _genius loci_ at all
times hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light
than by what the lantern lighted.  The contrast of this revelation
with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so
great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.

It was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had become
entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress.  He
caught a view of her face.

"I'll unfasten you in one moment, miss," he said, with new-born
gallantry.

"Oh no--I can do it, thank you," she hastily replied, and stooped for
the performance.

The unfastening was not such a trifling affair.  The rowel of the
spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments,
that separation was likely to be a matter of time.

He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them
threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the
blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm.  It
radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation
gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming
distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.

He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment;
Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be
received point-blank with her own.  But she had obliquely noticed
that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his
sleeve.

Bathsheba pulled again.

"You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter," said
the soldier, drily.  "I must cut your dress if you are in such a
hurry."

"Yes--please do!" she exclaimed, helplessly.

"It wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment," and he unwound
a cord from the little wheel.  She withdrew her own hand, but,
whether by accident or design, he touched it.  Bathsheba was vexed;
she hardly knew why.

His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end.
She looked at him again.

"Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!" said the young
sergeant, without ceremony.

She coloured with embarrassment.  "'Twas unwillingly shown," she
replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity--which was very little--as
she could infuse into a position of captivity.

"I like you the better for that incivility, miss," he said.

"I should have liked--I wish--you had never shown yourself to me by
intruding here!" She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began
to give way like liliputian musketry.

"I deserve the chastisement your words give me.  But why should such
a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?"

"Go on your way, please."

"What, Beauty, and drag you after me?  Do but look; I never saw such
a tangle!"

"Oh, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose
to keep me here--you have!"

"Indeed, I don't think so," said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle.

"I tell you you have!" she exclaimed, in high temper.  "I insist upon
undoing it.  Now, allow me!"

"Certainly, miss; I am not of steel."  He added a sigh which had as
much archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature
altogether.  "I am thankful for beauty, even when 'tis thrown to me
like a bone to a dog.  These moments will be over too soon!"

She closed her lips in a determined silence.

Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate
rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily
behind her.  The thought was too dreadful.  The dress--which she had
put on to appear stately at the supper--was the head and front of her
wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well.  What woman
in Bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call of her
retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear
a price?

"All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive," said her cool
friend.

"This trifling provokes, and--and--"

"Not too cruel!"

"--Insults me!"

"It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologizing to
so charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam," he
said, bowing low.

Bathsheba really knew not what to say.

"I've seen a good many women in my time," continued the young man in
a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding
her bent head at the same time; "but I've never seen a woman so
beautiful as you.  Take it or leave it--be offended or like it--I
don't care."

"Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?"

"No stranger.  Sergeant Troy.  I am staying in this place.--There!
it is undone at last, you see.  Your light fingers were more eager
than mine.  I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no
untying!"

This was worse and worse.  She started up, and so did he.  How to
decently get away from him--that was her difficulty now.  She sidled
off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the
redness of his coat no longer.

"Ah, Beauty; good-bye!" he said.

She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty
yards, turned about, and ran indoors.

Liddy had just retired to rest.  In ascending to her own chamber,
Bathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two, and, panting, said--

"Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village--sergeant somebody--
rather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking--a red coat with
blue facings?"

"No, miss ... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on
furlough, though I have not seen him.  He was here once in that way
when the regiment was at Casterbridge."

"Yes; that's the name.  Had he a moustache--no whiskers or beard?"

"He had."

"What kind of a person is he?"

"Oh! miss--I blush to name it--a gay man!  But I know him to be very
quick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire.
Such a clever young dandy as he is!  He's a doctor's son by name,
which is a great deal; and he's an earl's son by nature!"

"Which is a great deal more.  Fancy!  Is it true?"

"Yes.  And, he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge
Grammar School for years and years.  Learnt all languages while he
was there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down
Chinese in shorthand; but that I don't answer for, as it was only
reported.  However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier;
but even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all.  Ah!
such a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine
out even in the ranks and files.  And is he really come home, miss?"

"I believe so.  Good-night, Liddy."

After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently
offended with the man?  There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba
will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour.  When they
want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered,
which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.
Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba,
with a dash of the second.  Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the
ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome
stranger who had evidently seen better days.

So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he
had insulted her or not.

"Was ever anything so odd!" she at last exclaimed to herself, in her
own room.  "And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did--to
skulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!" Clearly
she did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now.

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her
she was beautiful.

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.

SCENE ON THE VERGE OF THE HAY-MEAD

"Ah, Miss Everdene!" said the sergeant, touching his diminutive cap.
"Little did I think it was you I was speaking to the other night.
And yet, if I had reflected, the 'Queen of the Corn-market' (truth is
truth at any hour of the day or night, and I heard you so named in
Casterbridge yesterday), the 'Queen of the Corn-market.' I say, could
be no other woman.  I step across now to beg your forgiveness a
thousand times for having been led by my feelings to express myself
too strongly for a stranger.  To be sure I am no stranger to the
place--I am Sergeant Troy, as I told you, and I have assisted your
uncle in these fields no end of times when I was a lad.  I have been
doing the same for you to-day."

"I suppose I must thank you for that, Sergeant Troy," said the Queen
of the Corn-market, in an indifferently grateful tone.

The sergeant looked hurt and sad.  "Indeed you must not, Miss
Everdene," he said.  "Why could you think such a thing necessary?"

"I am glad it is not."

"Why? if I may ask without offence."

"Because I don't much want to thank you for anything."

"I am afraid I have made a hole with my tongue that my heart will
never mend.  O these intolerable times: that ill-luck should follow
a man for honestly telling a woman she is beautiful!  'Twas the most
I said--you must own that; and the least I could say--that I own
myself."

"There is some talk I could do without more easily than money."

"Indeed.  That remark is a sort of digression."

"No.  It means that I would rather have your room than your company."

"And I would rather have curses from you than kisses from any other
woman; so I'll stay here."

Bathsheba was absolutely speechless.  And yet she could not help
feeling that the assistance he was rendering forbade a harsh repulse.

"Well," continued Troy, "I suppose there is a praise which is
rudeness, and that may be mine.  At the same time there is a
treatment which is injustice, and that may be yours.  Because a plain
blunt man, who has never been taught concealment, speaks out his mind
without exactly intending it, he's to be snapped off like the son of
a sinner."

"Indeed there's no such case between us," she said, turning away.  "I
don't allow strangers to be bold and impudent--even in praise of me."

"Ah--it is not the fact but the method which offends you," he said,
carelessly.  "But I have the sad satisfaction of knowing that my
words, whether pleasing or offensive, are unmistakably true.  Would
you have had me look at you, and tell my acquaintance that you are
quite a common-place woman, to save you the embarrassment of being
stared at if they come near you?  Not I.  I couldn't tell any such
ridiculous lie about a beauty to encourage a single woman in England
in too excessive a modesty."

"It is all pretence--what you are saying!" exclaimed Bathsheba,
laughing in spite of herself at the sly method.  "You have a rare
invention, Sergeant Troy.  Why couldn't you have passed by me that
night, and said nothing?--that was all I meant to reproach you for."

"Because I wasn't going to.  Half the pleasure of a feeling lies in
being able to express it on the spur of the moment, and I let out
mine.  It would have been just the same if you had been the reverse
person--ugly and old--I should have exclaimed about it in the same
way."

"How long is it since you have been so afflicted with strong feeling,
then?"

"Oh, ever since I was big enough to know loveliness from deformity."

"'Tis to be hoped your sense of the difference you speak of doesn't
stop at faces, but extends to morals as well."

"I won't speak of morals or religion--my own or anybody else's.
Though perhaps I should have been a very good Christian if you pretty
women hadn't made me an idolater."

Bathsheba moved on to hide the irrepressible dimplings of merriment.
Troy followed, whirling his crop.

"But--Miss Everdene--you do forgive me?"

"Hardly."

"Why?"

"You say such things."

"I said you were beautiful, and I'll say so still; for, by G---- so you
are!  The most beautiful ever I saw, or may I fall dead this instant!
Why, upon my ----"

"Don't--don't!  I won't listen to you--you are so profane!" she said,
in a restless state between distress at hearing him and a _penchant_
to hear more.

"I again say you are a most fascinating woman.  There's nothing
remarkable in my saying so, is there?  I'm sure the fact is evident
enough.  Miss Everdene, my opinion may be too forcibly let out
to please you, and, for the matter of that, too insignificant to
convince you, but surely it is honest, and why can't it be excused?"

"Because it--it isn't a correct one," she femininely murmured.

"Oh, fie--fie!  Am I any worse for breaking the third of that
Terrible Ten than you for breaking the ninth?"

"Well, it doesn't seem QUITE true to me that I am fascinating," she
replied evasively.

"Not so to you: then I say with all respect that, if so, it is owing
to your modesty, Miss Everdene.  But surely you must have been told
by everybody of what everybody notices?  And you should take their
words for it."

"They don't say so exactly."

"Oh yes, they must!"

"Well, I mean to my face, as you do," she went on, allowing herself
to be further lured into a conversation that intention had rigorously
forbidden.

"But you know they think so?"

"No--that is--I certainly have heard Liddy say they do, but--"  She
paused.

Capitulation--that was the purport of the simple reply, guarded as it
was--capitulation, unknown to herself.  Never did a fragile tailless
sentence convey a more perfect meaning.  The careless sergeant smiled
within himself, and probably too the devil smiled from a loop-hole in
Tophet, for the moment was the turning-point of a career.  Her tone
and mien signified beyond mistake that the seed which was to lift the
foundation had taken root in the chink: the remainder was a mere
question of time and natural changes.

"There the truth comes out!" said the soldier, in reply.  "Never tell
me that a young lady can live in a buzz of admiration without knowing
something about it.  Ah, well, Miss Everdene, you are--pardon my
blunt way--you are rather an injury to our race than otherwise."

"How--indeed?" she said, opening her eyes.

"Oh, it is true enough.  I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb
(an old country saying, not of much account, but it will do for a
rough soldier), and so I will speak my mind, regardless of your
pleasure, and without hoping or intending to get your pardon.  Why,
Miss Everdene, it is in this manner that your good looks may do more
harm than good in the world."  The sergeant looked down the mead in
critical abstraction.  "Probably some one man on an average falls in
love with each ordinary woman.  She can marry him: he is content,
and leads a useful life.  Such women as you a hundred men always
covet--your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing
fancy for you--you can only marry one of that many.  Out of these
say twenty will endeavour to drown the bitterness of despised love
in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or
attempt to make a mark in he world, because they have no ambition
apart from their attachment to you; twenty more--the susceptible
person myself possibly among them--will be always draggling after
you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things.
Men are such constant fools!  The rest may try to get over their
passion with more or less success.  But all these men will be
saddened.  And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine
women they might have married are saddened with them.  There's my
tale.  That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss
Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race."

The handsome sergeant's features were during this speech as rigid and
stern as John Knox's in addressing his gay young queen.

Seeing she made no reply, he said, "Do you read French?"

"No; I began, but when I got to the verbs, father died," she said
simply.

"I do--when I have an opportunity, which latterly has not been often
(my mother was a Parisienne)--and there's a proverb they have,
_Qui aime bien, chatie bien_--'He chastens who loves well.'  Do you
understand me?"

"Ah!" she replied, and there was even a little tremulousness in the
usually cool girl's voice; "if you can only fight half as winningly
as you can talk, you are able to make a pleasure of a bayonet wound!"
And then poor Bathsheba instantly perceived her slip in making this
admission: in hastily trying to retrieve it, she went from bad to
worse.  "Don't, however, suppose that _I_ derive any pleasure from
what you tell me."

"I know you do not--I know it perfectly," said Troy, with much hearty
conviction on the exterior of his face: and altering the expression
to moodiness; "when a dozen men are ready to speak tenderly to you,
and give the admiration you deserve without adding the warning you
need, it stands to reason that my poor rough-and-ready mixture of
praise and blame cannot convey much pleasure.  Fool as I may be, I
am not so conceited as to suppose that!"

"I think you--are conceited, nevertheless," said Bathsheba, looking
askance at a reed she was fitfully pulling with one hand, having
lately grown feverish under the soldier's system of procedure--not
because the nature of his cajolery was entirely unperceived, but
because its vigour was overwhelming.

"I would not own it to anybody else--nor do I exactly to you.  Still,
there might have been some self-conceit in my foolish supposition
the other night.  I knew that what I said in admiration might be
an opinion too often forced upon you to give any pleasure, but I
certainly did think that the kindness of your nature might prevent
you judging an uncontrolled tongue harshly--which you have done--and
thinking badly of me and wounding me this morning, when I am working
hard to save your hay."

"Well, you need not think more of that: perhaps you did not mean to
be rude to me by speaking out your mind: indeed, I believe you did
not," said the shrewd woman, in painfully innocent earnest.  "And I
thank you for giving help here.  But--but mind you don't speak to me
again in that way, or in any other, unless I speak to you."

"Oh, Miss Bathsheba!  That is too hard!"

"No, it isn't.  Why is it?"

"You will never speak to me; for I shall not be here long.  I am soon
going back again to the miserable monotony of drill--and perhaps
our regiment will be ordered out soon.  And yet you take away the
one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life
of mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman's most marked
characteristic."

"When are you going from here?" she asked, with some interest.

"In a month."

"But how can it give you pleasure to speak to me?"

"Can you ask Miss Everdene--knowing as you do--what my offence is
based on?"

"If you do care so much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, I
don't mind doing it," she uncertainly and doubtingly answered.  "But
you can't really care for a word from me? you only say so--I think
you only say so."

"That's unjust--but I won't repeat the remark.  I am too gratified to
get such a mark of your friendship at any price to cavil at the tone.
I DO, Miss Everdene, care for it.  You may think a man foolish to
want a mere word--just a good morning.  Perhaps he is--I don't know.
But you have never been a man looking upon a woman, and that woman
yourself."

"Well."

"Then you know nothing of what such an experience is like--and Heaven
forbid that you ever should!"

"Nonsense, flatterer!  What is it like?  I am interested in knowing."

"Put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in
any direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without
torture."

"Ah, sergeant, it won't do--you are pretending!" she said, shaking
her head. "Your words are too dashing to be true."

"I am not, upon the honour of a soldier."

"But WHY is it so?--Of course I ask for mere pastime."

"Because you are so distracting--and I am so distracted."

"You look like it."

"I am indeed."

"Why, you only saw me the other night!"

"That makes no difference.  The lightning works instantaneously.  I
loved you then, at once--as I do now."

Bathsheba surveyed him curiously, from the feet upward, as high as
she liked to venture her glance, which was not quite so high as his
eyes.

"You cannot and you don't," she said demurely.  "There is no such
sudden feeling in people.  I won't listen to you any longer.  Hear
me, I wish I knew what o'clock it is--I am going--I have wasted too
much time here already!"

The sergeant looked at his watch and told her.  "What, haven't you a
watch, miss?" he inquired.

"I have not just at present--I am about to get a new one."

"No.  You shall be given one.  Yes--you shall.  A gift, Miss
Everdene--a gift."

And before she knew what the young man was intending, a heavy gold
watch was in her hand.

"It is an unusually good one for a man like me to possess," he
quietly said.  "That watch has a history.  Press the spring and open
the back."

She did so.

"What do you see?"

"A crest and a motto."

"A coronet with five points, and beneath, _Cedit amor rebus_--'Love
yields to circumstance.' It's the motto of the Earls of Severn.
That watch belonged to the last lord, and was given to my mother's
husband, a medical man, for his use till I came of age, when it was
to be given to me.  It was all the fortune that ever I inherited.
That watch has regulated imperial interests in its time--the stately
ceremonial, the courtly assignation, pompous travels, and lordly
sleeps.  Now it is yours."

"But, Sergeant Troy, I cannot take this--I cannot!" she exclaimed,
with round-eyed wonder.  "A gold watch!  What are you doing?  Don't
be such a dissembler!"

The sergeant retreated to avoid receiving back his gift, which she
held out persistently towards him.  Bathsheba followed as he retired.

"Keep it--do, Miss Everdene--keep it!" said the erratic child of
impulse.  "The fact of your possessing it makes it worth ten times
as much to me.  A more plebeian one will answer my purpose just
as well, and the pleasure of knowing whose heart my old one beats
against--well, I won't speak of that.  It is in far worthier hands
than ever it has been in before."

"But indeed I can't have it!" she said, in a perfect simmer of
distress.  "Oh, how can you do such a thing; that is if you really
mean it!  Give me your dead father's watch, and such a valuable one!
You should not be so reckless, indeed, Sergeant Troy!"

"I loved my father: good; but better, I love you more.  That's how I
can do it," said the sergeant, with an intonation of such exquisite
fidelity to nature that it was evidently not all acted now.  Her
beauty, which, whilst it had been quiescent, he had praised in jest,
had in its animated phases moved him to earnest; and though his
seriousness was less than she imagined, it was probably more than he
imagined himself.

Bathsheba was brimming with agitated bewilderment, and she said, in
half-suspicious accents of feeling, "Can it be!  Oh, how can it be,
that you care for me, and so suddenly!  You have seen so little
of me: I may not be really so--so nice-looking as I seem to you.
Please, do take it; Oh, do!  I cannot and will not have it.  Believe
me, your generosity is too great.  I have never done you a single
kindness, and why should you be so kind to me?"

A factitious reply had been again upon his lips, but it was again
suspended, and he looked at her with an arrested eye.  The truth was,
that as she now stood--excited, wild, and honest as the day--her
alluring beauty bore out so fully the epithets he had bestowed upon
it that he was quite startled at his temerity in advancing them as
false.  He said mechanically, "Ah, why?" and continued to look at
her.

"And my workfolk see me following you about the field, and are
wondering.  Oh, this is dreadful!" she went on, unconscious of the
transmutation she was effecting.

"I did not quite mean you to accept it at first, for it was my one
poor patent of nobility," he broke out, bluntly; "but, upon my soul,
I wish you would now.  Without any shamming, come!  Don't deny me the
happiness of wearing it for my sake?  But you are too lovely even to
care to be kind as others are."

"No, no; don't say so!  I have reasons for reserve which I cannot
explain."

"Let it be, then, let it be," he said, receiving back the watch at
last; "I must be leaving you now.  And will you speak to me for these
few weeks of my stay?"

"Indeed I will.  Yet, I don't know if I will!  Oh, why did you come
and disturb me so!"

"Perhaps in setting a gin, I have caught myself.  Such things have
happened.  Well, will you let me work in your fields?" he coaxed.

"Yes, I suppose so; if it is any pleasure to you."

"Miss Everdene, I thank you."

"No, no."

"Good-bye!"

The sergeant brought his hand to the cap on the slope of his head,
saluted, and returned to the distant group of haymakers.

Bathsheba could not face the haymakers now.  Her heart erratically
flitting hither and thither from perplexed excitement, hot, and
almost tearful, she retreated homeward, murmuring, "Oh, what have I
done!  What does it mean!  I wish I knew how much of it was true!"

HIVING THE BEES

The Weatherbury bees were late in their swarming this year. It was in
the latter part of June, and the day after the interview with Troy in
the hayfield, that Bathsheba was standing in her garden, watching a
swarm in the air and guessing their probable settling place.  Not
only were they late this year, but unruly.  Sometimes throughout a
whole season all the swarms would alight on the lowest attainable
bough--such as part of a currant-bush or espalier apple-tree; next
year they would, with just the same unanimity, make straight off to
the uppermost member of some tall, gaunt costard, or quarrenden,
and there defy all invaders who did not come armed with ladders and
staves to take them.

This was the case at present.  Bathsheba's eyes, shaded by one hand,
were following the ascending multitude against the unexplorable
stretch of blue till they ultimately halted by one of the unwieldy
trees spoken of.  A process somewhat analogous to that of alleged
formations of the universe, time and times ago, was observable.  The
bustling swarm had swept the sky in a scattered and uniform haze,
which now thickened to a nebulous centre: this glided on to a bough
and grew still denser, till it formed a solid black spot upon the
light.

The men and women being all busily engaged in saving the hay--even
Liddy had left the house for the purpose of lending a hand--Bathsheba
resolved to hive the bees herself, if possible.  She had dressed the
hive with herbs and honey, fetched a ladder, brush, and crook, made
herself impregnable with armour of leather gloves, straw hat, and
large gauze veil--once green but now faded to snuff colour--and
ascended a dozen rungs of the ladder.  At once she heard, not ten
yards off, a voice that was beginning to have a strange power in
agitating her.

"Miss Everdene, let me assist you; you should not attempt such a
thing alone."

Troy was just opening the garden gate.

Bathsheba flung down the brush, crook, and empty hive, pulled the
skirt of her dress tightly round her ankles in a tremendous flurry,
and as well as she could slid down the ladder.  By the time she
reached the bottom Troy was there also, and he stooped to pick up
the hive.

"How fortunate I am to have dropped in at this moment!" exclaimed the
sergeant.

She found her voice in a minute.  "What! and will you shake them in
for me?" she asked, in what, for a defiant girl, was a faltering way;
though, for a timid girl, it would have seemed a brave way enough.

"Will I!" said Troy.  "Why, of course I will.  How blooming you are
to-day!"  Troy flung down his cane and put his foot on the ladder to
ascend.

"But you must have on the veil and gloves, or you'll be stung
fearfully!"

"Ah, yes.  I must put on the veil and gloves.  Will you kindly show
me how to fix them properly?"

"And you must have the broad-brimmed hat, too, for your cap has no
brim to keep the veil off, and they'd reach your face."

"The broad-brimmed hat, too, by all means."

So a whimsical fate ordered that her hat should be taken off--veil
and all attached--and placed upon his head, Troy tossing his own into
a gooseberry bush.  Then the veil had to be tied at its lower edge
round his collar and the gloves put on him.

He looked such an extraordinary object in this guise that, flurried
as she was, she could not avoid laughing outright. It was the removal
of yet another stake from the palisade of cold manners which had kept
him off.

Bathsheba looked on from the ground whilst he was busy sweeping and
shaking the bees from the tree, holding up the hive with the other
hand for them to fall into.  She made use of an unobserved minute
whilst his attention was absorbed in the operation to arrange her
plumes a little.  He came down holding the hive at arm's length,
behind which trailed a cloud of bees.

"Upon my life," said Troy, through the veil, "holding up this hive
makes one's arm ache worse than a week of sword-exercise." When the
manoeuvre was complete he approached her.  "Would you be good enough
to untie me and let me out? I am nearly stifled inside this silk
cage."

To hide her embarrassment during the unwonted process of untying the
string about his neck, she said:--

"I have never seen that you spoke of."

"What?"

"The sword-exercise."

"Ah! would you like to?" said Troy.

Bathsheba hesitated.  She had heard wondrous reports from time to
time by dwellers in Weatherbury, who had by chance sojourned awhile
in Casterbridge, near the barracks, of this strange and glorious
performance, the sword-exercise.  Men and boys who had peeped through
chinks or over walls into the barrack-yard returned with accounts of
its being the most flashing affair conceivable; accoutrements and
weapons glistening like stars--here, there, around--yet all by rule
and compass.  So she said mildly what she felt strongly.

"Yes; I should like to see it very much."

"And so you shall; you shall see me go through it."

"No!  How?"

"Let me consider."

"Not with a walking-stick--I don't care to see that.  It must be a
real sword."

"Yes, I know; and I have no sword here; but I think I could get one
by the evening.  Now, will you do this?"

Troy bent over her and murmured some suggestion in a low voice.

"Oh no, indeed!" said Bathsheba, blushing. "Thank you very much, but
I couldn't on any account."

"Surely you might?  Nobody would know."

She shook her head, but with a weakened negation.  "If I were to,"
she said, "I must bring Liddy too.  Might I not?"

Troy looked far away.  "I don't see why you want to bring her," he
said coldly.

An unconscious look of assent in Bathsheba's eyes betrayed that
something more than his coldness had made her also feel that Liddy
would be superfluous in the suggested scene.  She had felt it, even
whilst making the proposal.

"Well, I won't bring Liddy--and I'll come.  But only for a very short
time," she added; "a very short time."

"It will not take five minutes," said Troy.

THE HOLLOW AMID THE FERNS

The hill opposite Bathsheba's dwelling extended, a mile off, into an
uncultivated tract of land, dotted at this season with tall thickets
of brake fern, plump and diaphanous from recent rapid growth, and
radiant in hues of clear and untainted green.

At eight o'clock this midsummer evening, whilst the bristling ball
of gold in the west still swept the tips of the ferns with its long,
luxuriant rays, a soft brushing-by of garments might have been heard
among them, and Bathsheba appeared in their midst, their soft,
feathery arms caressing her up to her shoulders.  She paused, turned,
went back over the hill and half-way to her own door, whence she cast
a farewell glance upon the spot she had just left, having resolved
not to remain near the place after all.

She saw a dim spot of artificial red moving round the shoulder of the
rise.  It disappeared on the other side.

She waited one minute--two minutes--thought of Troy's disappointment
at her non-fulfilment of a promised engagement, till she again ran
along the field, clambered over the bank, and followed the original
direction.  She was now literally trembling and panting at this her
temerity in such an errant undertaking; her breath came and went
quickly, and her eyes shone with an infrequent light.  Yet go she
must.  She reached the verge of a pit in the middle of the ferns.
Troy stood in the bottom, looking up towards her.

"I heard you rustling through the fern before I saw you," he said,
coming up and giving her his hand to help her down the slope.

The pit was a saucer-shaped concave, naturally formed, with a top
diameter of about thirty feet, and shallow enough to allow the
sunshine to reach their heads.  Standing in the centre, the sky
overhead was met by a circular horizon of fern: this grew nearly to
the bottom of the slope and then abruptly ceased.  The middle within
the belt of verdure was floored with a thick flossy carpet of moss
and grass intermingled, so yielding that the foot was half-buried
within it.

"Now," said Troy, producing the sword, which, as he raised it into
the sunlight, gleamed a sort of greeting, like a living thing,
"first, we have four right and four left cuts; four right and four
left thrusts.   Infantry cuts and guards are more interesting than
ours, to my mind; but they are not so swashing.  They have seven
cuts and three thrusts.   So much as a preliminary.  Well, next, our
cut one is as if you were sowing your corn--so."  Bathsheba saw a
sort of rainbow, upside down in the air, and Troy's arm was still
again.  "Cut two, as if you were hedging--so.  Three, as if you were
reaping--so. Four, as if you were threshing--in that way.  Then the
same on the left.  The thrusts are these: one, two, three, four,
right; one, two, three, four, left."  He repeated them.  "Have 'em
again?" he said.  "One, two--"

She hurriedly interrupted: "I'd rather not; though I don't mind your
twos and fours; but your ones and threes are terrible!"

"Very well.  I'll let you off the ones and threes.  Next, cuts,
points and guards altogether."  Troy duly exhibited them.  "Then
there's pursuing practice, in this way."  He gave the movements as
before.   "There, those are the stereotyped forms.  The infantry have
two most diabolical upward cuts, which we are too humane to use.
Like this--three, four."

"How murderous and bloodthirsty!"

"They are rather deathly.  Now I'll be more interesting, and let you
see some loose play--giving all the cuts and points, infantry and
cavalry, quicker than lightning, and as promiscuously--with just
enough rule to regulate instinct and yet not to fetter it.  You are
my antagonist, with this difference from real warfare, that I shall
miss you every time by one hair's breadth, or perhaps two.  Mind you
don't flinch, whatever you do."

"I'll be sure not to!" she said invincibly.

He pointed to about a yard in front of him.

Bathsheba's adventurous spirit was beginning to find some grains of
relish in these highly novel proceedings.  She took up her position
as directed, facing Troy.

"Now just to learn whether you have pluck enough to let me do what I
wish, I'll give you a preliminary test."

He flourished the sword by way of introduction number two, and the
next thing of which she was conscious was that the point and blade of
the sword were darting with a gleam towards her left side, just above
her hip; then of their reappearance on her right side, emerging as
it were from between her ribs, having apparently passed through her
body.  The third item of consciousness was that of seeing the same
sword, perfectly clean and free from blood held vertically in Troy's
hand (in the position technically called "recover swords").  All was
as quick as electricity.

"Oh!" she cried out in affright, pressing her hand to her side. "Have
you run me through?--no, you have not!  Whatever have you done!"

"I have not touched you," said Troy, quietly.  "It was mere sleight
of hand.  The sword passed behind you.  Now you are not afraid, are
you?  Because if you are I can't perform.  I give my word that I will
not only not hurt you, but not once touch you."

"I don't think I am afraid.  You are quite sure you will not hurt
me?"

"Quite sure."

"Is the sword very sharp?"

"O no--only stand as still as a statue.  Now!"

In an instant the atmosphere was transformed to Bathsheba's eyes.
Beams of light caught from the low sun's rays, above, around, in
front of her, well-nigh shut out earth and heaven--all emitted in
the marvellous evolutions of Troy's reflecting blade, which seemed
everywhere at once, and yet nowhere specially.  These circling gleams
were accompanied by a keen rush that was almost a whistling--also
springing from all sides of her at once.  In short, she was enclosed
in a firmament of light, and of sharp hisses, resembling a sky-full
of meteors close at hand.

Never since the broadsword became the national weapon had there been
more dexterity shown in its management than by the hands of Sergeant
Troy, and never had he been in such splendid temper for the
performance as now in the evening sunshine among the ferns with
Bathsheba.  It may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness
of his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to
leave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the
space left untouched would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba's
figure.

Behind the luminous streams of this _aurora militaris_, she could see
the hue of Troy's sword arm, spread in a scarlet haze over the space
covered by its motions, like a twanged harpstring, and behind all
Troy himself, mostly facing her; sometimes, to show the rear cuts,
half turned away, his eye nevertheless always keenly measuring
her breadth and outline, and his lips tightly closed in sustained
effort.  Next, his movements lapsed slower, and she could see them
individually.  The hissing of the sword had ceased, and he stopped
entirely.

"That outer loose lock of hair wants tidying," he said, before she
had moved or spoken.  "Wait: I'll do it for you."

An arc of silver shone on her right side: the sword had descended.
The lock dropped to the ground.

"Bravely borne!" said Troy.  "You didn't flinch a shade's thickness.
Wonderful in a woman!"

"It was because I didn't expect it.  Oh, you have spoilt my hair!"

"Only once more."

"No--no!  I am afraid of you--indeed I am!" she cried.

"I won't touch you at all--not even your hair.  I am only going to
kill that caterpillar settling on you.  Now: still!"

It appeared that a caterpillar had come from the fern and chosen the
front of her bodice as his resting place.  She saw the point glisten
towards her bosom, and seemingly enter it.  Bathsheba closed her eyes
in the full persuasion that she was killed at last.  However, feeling
just as usual, she opened them again.

"There it is, look," said the sergeant, holding his sword before her
eyes.

The caterpillar was spitted upon its point.

"Why, it is magic!" said Bathsheba, amazed.

"Oh no--dexterity.  I merely gave point to your bosom where the
caterpillar was, and instead of running you through checked the
extension a thousandth of an inch short of your surface."

"But how could you chop off a curl of my hair with a sword that has
no edge?"

"No edge!  This sword will shave like a razor.  Look here."

He touched the palm of his hand with the blade, and then, lifting it,
showed her a thin shaving of scarf-skin dangling therefrom.

"But you said before beginning that it was blunt and couldn't cut
me!"

"That was to get you to stand still, and so make sure of your safety.
The risk of injuring you through your moving was too great not to
force me to tell you a fib to escape it."

She shuddered.  "I have been within an inch of my life, and didn't
know it!"

"More precisely speaking, you have been within half an inch of being
pared alive two hundred and ninety-five times."

"Cruel, cruel, 'tis of you!"

"You have been perfectly safe, nevertheless.  My sword never errs."
And Troy returned the weapon to the scabbard.

Bathsheba, overcome by a hundred tumultuous feelings resulting from
the scene, abstractedly sat down on a tuft of heather.

"I must leave you now," said Troy, softly.  "And I'll venture to take
and keep this in remembrance of you."

She saw him stoop to the grass, pick up the winding lock which he
had severed from her manifold tresses, twist it round his fingers,
unfasten a button in the breast of his coat, and carefully put
it inside.  She felt powerless to withstand or deny him.  He was
altogether too much for her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing
a reviving wind, finds it blow so strongly that it stops the breath.
He drew near and said, "I must be leaving you."

He drew nearer still.  A minute later and she saw his scarlet form
disappear amid the ferny thicket, almost in a flash, like a brand
swiftly waved.

That minute's interval had brought the blood beating into her face,
set her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and
enlarged emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought.  It had
brought upon her a stroke resulting, as did that of Moses in Horeb,
in a liquid stream--here a stream of tears.  She felt like one who
has sinned a great sin.

The circumstance had been the gentle dip of Troy's mouth downwards
upon her own.  He had kissed her.

PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK

We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many
varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba
Everdene.  It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature.  Introduced
as lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured
her whole constitution.  Bathsheba, though she had too much
understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too
much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage.
Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than
in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she
knows to be false--except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical
on strictures that she knows to be true.

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women
love when they abandon their self-reliance.  When a strong woman
recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman
who has never had any strength to throw away.  One source of her
inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice
in making the best of such a condition.  Weakness is doubly weak by
being new.

Bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter.  Though in one
sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight
coteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and
winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on
the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody
in the tything, and where calculation is confined to market-days.
Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but
little, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.
Had her utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (and
by herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such a
matter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than her
discretion.  Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as
summer it was fresh as spring.  Her culpability lay in her making
no attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into
consequences.  She could show others the steep and thorny way, but
"reck'd not her own rede."

And Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst
his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with
homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose
virtues were as metals in a mine.

The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her
conduct.  Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the
greatest freedom to Liddy, but she had only communed with her own
heart concerning Troy.

All this infatuation Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the
time of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on
to the small hours of many a night.  That he was not beloved had
hitherto been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting into
the toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which
nearly obscured it.  It was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted
observation of Hippocrates concerning physical pains.

That is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even the
fear of breeding aversion in the 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 neighbouring 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."

"Oh 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.  Forgive 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 conversation 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 conversation.  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 afeard 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 regarded 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 palpableness 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 altogether 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
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 provoking 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 unconsciously
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 unperceived 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.

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 afterwards: that Troy's
presentation of himself so aptly at the roadside this evening was
not by any distinctly preconcerted 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 Temperance--now I forbid you
to suppose such things.  You know I don't care the least for Mr.
Troy--not I.   Everybody 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--Oh 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.

"Oh miss!" said mild Liddy, looking pitifully into Bathsheba's face.
"I am sorry we mistook you so!  I 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.  "Oh, 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!"

"But, 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 bad, 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, beginning 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 bad as they make out."

"He is not bad at all....  My poor life and heart, how weak I
am!" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of Liddy's
presence.  "Oh, 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 I 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 of 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.  That's better
than to be as some are, wild in a steady 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.

"Oh 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!"

Moments after she tells Boldwood that she might marry him, Bathsheba wanders over her farm, as she always does, checking to see that everything is in order. She carries a darkened lantern so she cannot be seen. The narrator tells us that, unbeknownst to Bathsheba, Gabriel performs the same task every evening, a sign of his unending devotion to her. As she walks through the fir plantation, she hears footsteps nearing her and bumps into someone on the path. It is Sergeant Troy, and his spur has caught on her dress. She cannot free herself, and in the dark the two hold a conversation without identifying themselves. When Troy finally opens her lantern, Bathsheba is surprised to see he is a soldier, having expected a suspicious-looking intruder. Troy, for his part, is also struck by the appearance of his interlocutor; he immediately praises her beauty and delays in his untangling of her dress. She finally frees herself, confused by his praise, and speaking somewhat curtly. She later asks Liddy whether there is a soldier living near the fir plantation, and Liddy tells her that it must be Sergeant Troy. Bathsheba regrets being rude to him. In the next chapter Hardy gives an account of Troy's character, much as the author has done with Boldwood earlier on. We learn that Troy lives only for the moment and displays the opposite of Gabriel's ceaseless loyalty. He is full of activity without direction and regularly deceives women. Toward the end of the chapter, we learn that he has joined the haymakers in their task for the day. Bathsheba notices him in the fields, and as soon as he sees her, he approaches. Troy and Bathsheba converse for the second time, and Chapter 26 follows a long dialogue between them, with little description. Troy apologizes for not recognizing who she was in the woods and again compliments her. From her responses we can see that she is flattered, bewildered by his admiration--a very different woman from the scornful, proud individual we have heretofore seen asserting her independence with Gabriel and Boldwood. Troy offers her his watch as a gift, and she refuses but agrees that he may continue to join the hay- makers. In the next chapter their intimacy is increased when Troy encounters Bathsheba maintaining the bees; he helps her, donning the ridiculous-looking protective gear. When he mentions the famous sword exercise that soldiers learn, she confesses that she'd love to see it, and they set a date to meet. Bathsheba is reluctant to keep the date but comes at the last minute, and Troy shows her the sword exercise. He persuades her that the sword's edge is blunt as he sweeps the hissing, glittering sword around her. At the end of their meeting, as Bathsheba stands overwhelmed by the beauty and danger of the scene, Troy kisses her and disappears. Bathsheba has fallen in love. However, the narrator comments ominously, "When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had strength to throw away." Gabriel, too, feels the danger of her infatuation and decides to talk to her about it. Gabriel and Boldwood are the only ones who know  that Troy was Fanny Robin's lover, whom she intended to marry when she ran away. Knowing this, he tries to hint at Troy's immoral character. Bathsheba refuses to listen, however, and tries to fire Gabriel from the farm again, but he refuses to leave unless she agrees to hire someone else as a bailiff. She will not, so he refuses to leave his post. As they part, he sees Troy coming to meet Bathsheba. When Bathsheba comes home, she overhears the servants gossiping about her and Troy, and she forbids them to speak about it. Then, she chastises Liddy and confesses that she loves Troy. In the midst of their conversation Bathsheba breaks down in tears; she has lost all her self-possession.

Commentary Both Bathsheba and Boldwood are otherwise strong people who nevertheless develop sudden weaknesses for a single person--Boldwood for Bathsheba and Bathsheba for Sergeant Troy. Both of them have spurned earlier lovers. By describing the sensory perceptions of these characters as enhanced, Hardy conveys the fact that they are experiencing emotions unprecedented for them. Bathsheba's first view of Troy is a perfect example; after utter darkness, she sees a handsome man in scarlet and brass. The sword exercise is another; Bathsheba is overpowered by the sensory experience of having the blade surround her from all directions, nearly touching her. Notice that Sergeant Troy is repeatedly linked to a bright, burning color of scarlet. Bathsheba can spot his red uniform in the field with ease. Hardy's many different narrative strategies are also at work in this section. The first of these is his manipulation of the plot's pace. Boldwood has just extracted a promise from Bathsheba that he will have an answer to his proposal in six weeks. Then, Hardy immediately introduces Sergeant Troy. In each meeting, their intimacy increases noticeably: In the first, they are physically thrown together and entangled; in the second, he receives her permission to work on the farm and offers her his watch; in the third, she agrees to meet him, and in the fourth, they kiss. The speed of this growing intimacy contrasts strongly with the slow development of Bathsheba's relations with Boldwood, thus, commenting on the difference in chemistry between Bathsheba and each man. Another emerging pattern is Hardy's method of introducing important  characters. First, he shows them to us in action: Gabriel sees Bathsheba in her carriage; Bathsheba hears Boldwood ride up to the farm; she meets Troy in the wood; Gabriel meets Fanny Robin in the wood. In each of these scenes, the characters with whom we are already familiar know nothing about the character they are encountering except what they see at the time. Later, the omniscient narrator comes in and gives us background assessments of Boldwood, Bathsheba, Fanny, and Troy, in which we are given generalizations about their character and their approach to life. Finally, then, we come to see the characters at their truest, deepest level by watching how they are transformed by the events in the novel. Notice that the reader has much more room for interpretation when we first meet these characters in action. We have to decide what we think based on the clues Hardy gives us; later, then, we see whether these initial interpretations are borne out. Chapter 26, Bathsheba's conversation with Troy in the field, is an extreme example of deliberate narrative strategizing. The chapter consists almost wholly of dialogue, almost entirely lacking any narrative commentary or even description. We hear Troy's words, knowing him to be dishonest, and then we hear how Bathsheba responds to them; the narrator withholds his own speculations, putting almost all of the interpretive power in the hands of the reader. We experience the scene as Bathsheba does; however, because we have prior information--in addition to an objectivity she lacks--we know she misreads Troy's remarks, falling too quickly for his charming surface. This narrative situation creates in the reader a tense feeling of frustration as we watch Bathsheba enter Troy's trap.