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.

At eight o'clock that midsummer evening, Bathsheba appeared in the fern hollow amid the soft, green, shoulder-high fronds. She paused, changed her mind, and was halfway home again before she caught sight of a red coat approaching. She considered Troy's disappointment were she not to appear, and she ran back to the hollow. When she reached the verge of a pit in the midst of the ferns, she saw Troy standing at the bottom and looking toward her. Troy's performance with the sword was precise and filled with bravado. It grew a bit frightening. He pretended the girl was the enemy and brandished his sword about her so realistically that she imagined herself run through. It was a dexterous feat. As a final tour-de-force, he said, "That outer loose lock of hair wants tidying. . . . Wait: I'll do it for you." "An area of silver shone on her right side; the sword had descended. The lock dropped to the ground." Next Troy speared a caterpillar that had settled upon Bathsheba's bosom. Only then did Troy admit that the sword was razor-sharp. "You have been within half an inch of being pared alive two hundred and ninety-five times." Then the man stopped to pick up the lock of Bathsheba's hair. He tucked it inside his coat. Softly he announced that he had to leave. He disappeared, and, overcome by tumultuous emotion, "aflame to the very hollows of her feet," Bathsheba wept, feeling "like one who has sinned a great sin." "The circumstances had been the gentle dip of Troy's mouth downwards upon her own. He had kissed her."

Troy is so completely in command of his sword and so perfectly confident of his skill that he does not hesitate to risk Bathsheba's life for the sake of his performance. His actions have utterly overwhelmed Bathsheba: "She felt powerless to withstand or deny him." We must not overlook Hardy's own showmanship. He creates a sensuous chapter, with the lush setting, textures, colors, and lighting all playing their parts. He does a masterful job of describing the flashing of lights and the lightning speed of Troy's every move. Hardy was interested in dramatics and here uses his sense of effective staging.


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.

"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 had never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new." Bathsheba had talked of Boldwood to Liddy, but she spoke to no one of Troy. Gabriel, however, noticed and sorrowed over this new infatuation. He decided to talk with Bathsheba, basing his appeal on her unfairness to Boldwood. Oak met Bathsheba one evening when she went for a walk. He spoke of bad characters in the neighborhood, wishing to imply that Troy was one of them. He said that in the absence of Boldwood, who would normally protect her, he thought it advisable to take on this role himself. Bathsheba assured him that no wedding with Boldwood was in prospect; she said she had given the farmer no answer. Gabriel cited Troy's unworthiness. He considered him to be a man without conscience and on a downward course in life. Bathsheba countered his arguments. Oak begged her to be discreet: "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." Again Bathsheba wanted to dismiss Oak for meddling, and again he agreed to go, but only if she were to hire a good bailiff. When she refused to do so, Gabriel refused to leave the farm. Then, "as a woman," she asked him to leave her alone. Gabriel saw her meet Troy but, not wishing to eavesdrop, he left. Troy had told Bathsheba that he attended church secretly, entering by the side door. Gabriel, doubting Troy's truthfulness, checked this door; he found it overgrown with ivy and therefore impossible to enter.

We admire Gabriel for his honesty, fairness, and courage in confronting Bathsheba with her dalliance with Troy. Oak is almost certain that she will not heed him, but he deems it his duty to speak. We understand his point of view when his lack of faith in Troy's veracity is corroborated.


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!"

Despite her promise not to reject Boldwood before his return, Bathsheba could not wait. "The farewell words of Troy, who had accompanied her to her very door, still lingered in her ears. He had bidden her adieu for two days, which were, so he stated, to be spent in Bath visiting some friends. He had also kissed her a second time." Restless and perturbed, Bathsheba impulsively wrote to Boldwood that she could not marry him. Taking the letter to the kitchen for one of the maids to mail, she overheard the servants gossiping about her latest romance. Furiously insisting that she hated Troy, but with the next breath defending him, she forbade their gossip. Alone with Liddy, Bathsheba confided her love, begging reassurance that all the stories circulating about Troy were not true. Eager to please her mistress, Liddy agreed with all her statements. Bathsheba turned on her: "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 today . . . I don't see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed at for nothing!'" Liddy's words led to a tearful reconciliation; she promised always to be Bathsheba's friend, shedding a few more tears "not from any particular necessity, but from an artistic sense of making herself in keeping with the remainder of the picture."

Hardy's portrait of feminine frailty and women's weapons is not without humor. Bathsheba does not wish to think ill of Troy, does not want to believe the stories about him, and fights against the possibility of their truth. Liddy envies her mistress her femininity and her conquests. She is also proud of her position and dignity. Both girls enjoy having a good cry. They agree that "God likes us to be good friends." Liddy assures her mistress that, while Bathsheba is a match for any man, she is not mannish. "O no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish that 'tis getting on that way sometimes. I wish I had half your failing that way. 'Tis a great protection to a poor maid in these illegit'mate days!"


BLAME--FURY

The next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the way
of Mr. Boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her note
in person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy some
few hours earlier.  Bathsheba's companion, as a gauge of their
reconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit her
sister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib-maker
living in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far beyond
Yalbury.  The arrangement was that Miss Everdene should honour
them by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious
contrivances which this man of the woods had introduced into his
wares.

Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann, that they were to
see everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of the
house just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined
the air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath
was dry as ever.  Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied
contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath;
and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene.  Before her, among
the clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fierce
light which showed themselves in the neighbourhood of a hidden sun,
lingering on to the farthest north-west corner of the heavens that
this midsummer season allowed.

She had walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how the
day was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly
melting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the
time of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over Yalbury
hill the very man she sought so anxiously to elude.  Boldwood was
stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength which
was his customary gait, in which he always seemed to be balancing
two thoughts.  His manner was stunned and sluggish now.

Boldwood had for the first time been awakened to woman's privileges
in tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible
blight.  That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less
inconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope;
for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a
straight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though her
fancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncritical
love.  But the argument now came back as sorry gleams from a broken
mirror.  The discovery was no less a scourge than a surprise.

He came on looking upon the ground, and did not see Bathsheba till
they were less than a stone's throw apart.  He looked up at the sound
of her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to
her the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter.

"Oh; is it you, Mr. Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing
in her face.

Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a
means more effective than words.  There are accents in the eye which
are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can
enter an ear.  It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter
moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.  Boldwood's look was
unanswerable.

Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are you afraid of
me?"

"Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba.

"I fancied you looked so," said he.  "And it is most strange, because
of its contrast with my feeling for you."

She regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited.

"You know what that feeling is," continued Boldwood, deliberately.
"A thing strong as death.  No dismissal by a hasty letter affects
that."

"I wish you did not feel so strongly about me," she murmured.  "It is
generous of you, and more than I deserve, but I must not hear it
now."

"Hear it?  What do you think I have to say, then?  I am not to marry
you, and that's enough.  Your letter was excellently plain.  I want
you to hear nothing--not I."

Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for
freeing herself from this fearfully awkward position.  She confusedly
said, "Good evening," and was moving on.  Boldwood walked up to her
heavily and dully.

"Bathsheba--darling--is it final indeed?"

"Indeed it is."

"Oh, Bathsheba--have pity upon me!" Boldwood burst out. "God's sake,
yes--I am come to that low, lowest stage--to ask a woman for pity!
Still, she is you--she is you."

Bathsheba commanded herself well.  But she could hardly get a clear
voice for what came instinctively to her lips: "There is little
honour to the woman in that speech."  It was only whispered, for
something unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this
spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a
passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.

"I am beyond myself about this, and am mad," he said.  "I am no stoic
at all to be supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you.  I wish
you knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible,
that.  In bare human mercy to a lonely man, don't throw me off now!"

"I don't throw you off--indeed, how can I?  I never had you."  In her
noon-clear sense that she had never loved him she forgot for a moment
her thoughtless angle on that day in February.

"But there was a time when you turned to me, before I thought of you!
I don't reproach you, for even now I feel that the ignorant and cold
darkness that I should have lived in if you had not attracted me by
that letter--valentine you call it--would have been worse than my
knowledge of you, though it has brought this misery.  But, I say,
there was a time when I knew nothing of you, and cared nothing
for you, and yet you drew me on.  And if you say you gave me no
encouragement, I cannot but contradict you."

"What you call encouragement was the childish game of an idle minute.
I have bitterly repented of it--ay, bitterly, and in tears.  Can you
still go on reminding me?"

"I don't accuse you of it--I deplore it.  I took for earnest what
you insist was jest, and now this that I pray to be jest you say is
awful, wretched earnest.  Our moods meet at wrong places.  I wish
your feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours!  Oh,
could I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was going
to lead me into, how I should have cursed you; but only having been
able to see it since, I cannot do that, for I love you too well!  But
it is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this....  Bathsheba, you
are the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked at
to love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own
that makes this denial so hard to bear.  How nearly you promised me!
But I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because
of my pain; it is no use, that.  I must bear it; my pain would get no
less by paining you."

"But I do pity you--deeply--O, so deeply!" she earnestly said.

"Do no such thing--do no such thing.  Your dear love, Bathsheba, is
such a vast thing beside your pity, that the loss of your pity as
well as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the
gain of your pity make it sensibly less.  O sweet--how dearly you
spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn
at the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at your
home!  Where are your pleasant words all gone--your earnest hope to
be able to love me?  Where is your firm conviction that you would get
to care for me very much?  Really forgotten?--really?"

She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, and
said in her low, firm voice, "Mr. Boldwood, I promised you nothing.
Would you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest,
highest compliment a man can pay a woman--telling her he loves her?
I was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a graceless
shrew.  Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day--the day
just for the pleasure.  How was I to know that what is a pastime to
all other men was death to you?  Have reason, do, and think more
kindly of me!"

"Well, never mind arguing--never mind.  One thing is sure: you
were all but mine, and now you are not nearly mine.  Everything is
changed, and that by you alone, remember.  You were nothing to me
once, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how
different the second nothing is from the first!  Would to God you
had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!"

Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel unmistakable signs
that she was inherently the weaker vessel. She strove miserably
against this femininity which would insist upon supplying unbidden
emotions in stronger and stronger current.  She had tried to elude
agitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial object
before her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could not
save her now.

"I did not take you up--surely I did not!" she answered as heroically
as she could.  "But don't be in this mood with me.  I can endure
being told I am in the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently!
O sir, will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it cheerfully?"

"Cheerfully!  Can a man fooled to utter heart-burning find a reason
for being merry?  If I have lost, how can I be as if I had won?
Heavens you must be heartless quite!  Had I known what a fearfully
bitter sweet this was to be, how I would have avoided you, and never
seen you, and been deaf of you.  I tell you all this, but what do you
care!  You don't care."

She returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayed
her head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they came
showering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in the
climax of life, with his bronzed Roman face and fine frame.

"Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between the two opposites
of recklessly renouncing you, and labouring humbly for you again.
Forget that you have said No, and let it be as it was!  Say,
Bathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun--come, say
it to me!"

"It would be untrue, and painful to both of us.  You overrate my
capacity for love.  I don't possess half the warmth of nature you
believe me to have.  An unprotected childhood in a cold world has
beaten gentleness out of me."

He immediately said with more resentment: "That may be true,
somewhat; but ah, Miss Everdene, it won't do as a reason!  You are
not the cold woman you would have me believe.  No, no!  It isn't
because you have no feeling in you that you don't love me.  You
naturally would have me think so--you would hide from me that you
have a burning heart like mine.  You have love enough, but it is
turned into a new channel. I know where."

The swift music of her heart became hubbub now, and she throbbed
to extremity.  He was coming to Troy.  He did then know what had
occurred!  And the name fell from his lips the next moment.

"Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked, fiercely.
"When I had no thought of injuring him, why did he force himself upon
your notice!  Before he worried you your inclination was to have me;
when next I should have come to you your answer would have been Yes.
Can you deny it--I ask, can you deny it?"

She delayed the reply, but was too honest to withhold it.  "I
cannot," she whispered.

"I know you cannot.  But he stole in in my absence and robbed me.
Why didn't he win you away before, when nobody would have been
grieved?--when nobody would have been set tale-bearing.  Now the
people sneer at me--the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till I
blush shamefully for my folly.  I have lost my respect, my good name,
my standing--lost it, never to get it again.  Go and marry your
man--go on!"

"Oh sir--Mr. Boldwood!"

"You may as well.  I have no further claim upon you.  As for me, I
had better go somewhere alone, and hide--and pray. I loved a woman
once.  I am now ashamed.  When I am dead they'll say, miserable
love-sick man that he was.  Heaven--heaven--if I had got jilted
secretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept!  But
no matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained.  Shame upon
him--shame!"

His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him,
without obviously moving, as she said, "I am only a girl--do not
speak to me so!"

"All the time you knew--how very well you knew--that your new freak
was my misery.  Dazzled by brass and scarlet--Oh, Bathsheba--this is
woman's folly indeed!"

She fired up at once.  "You are taking too much upon yourself!" she
said, vehemently.  "Everybody is upon me--everybody.  It is unmanly
to attack a woman so!  I have nobody in the world to fight my battles
for me; but no mercy is shown.  Yet if a thousand of you sneer and
say things against me, I WILL NOT be put down!"

"You'll chatter with him doubtless about me.  Say to him, 'Boldwood
would have died for me.'  Yes, and you have given way to him, knowing
him to be not the man for you.  He has kissed you--claimed you as
his.  Do you hear--he has kissed you.  Deny it!"

The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood
was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another
sex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered.  She gasped, "Leave me, sir--leave
me!  I am nothing to you.  Let me go on!"

"Deny that he has kissed you."

"I shall not."

"Ha--then he has!" came hoarsely from the farmer.

"He has," she said, slowly, and, in spite of her fear, defiantly.  "I
am not ashamed to speak the truth."

"Then curse him; and curse him!" said Boldwood, breaking into a
whispered fury. "Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand,
you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and--kiss you!
Heaven's mercy--kiss you! ...  Ah, a time of his life shall come
when he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he has
caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and
yearn--as I do now!"

"Don't, don't, oh, don't pray down evil upon him!" she implored in a
miserable cry.  "Anything but that--anything.  Oh, be kind to him,
sir, for I love him true!"

Boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline
and consistency entirely disappear.  The impending night appeared to
concentrate in his eye.  He did not hear her at all now.

"I'll punish him--by my soul, that will I!  I'll meet him, soldier or
no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft
of my one delight.  If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him--"
He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally.  "Bathsheba, sweet,
lost coquette, pardon me!  I've been blaming you, threatening you,
behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner.  He
stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ...  It is a
fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment--that
he's away up the country, and not here!  I hope he may not return
here just yet.  I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may
be tempted beyond myself.  Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away--yes, keep
him away from me!"

For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul
seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his
passionate words.  He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his
form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed
in with the low hiss of the leafy trees.

Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this
latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to
ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away.  Such astounding
wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were
incomprehensible, dreadful.  Instead of being a man trained to
repression he was--what she had seen him.

The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a
circumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was coming
back to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two.  Troy
had not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and others
supposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in Bath,
and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough.

She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this
nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel
would be the consequence.  She panted with solicitude when she
thought of possible injury to Troy.  The least spark would kindle
the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his
self-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might become
aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's
anger might then take the direction of revenge.

With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this
guileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of
carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions.  But now there
was no reserve.  In her distraction, instead of advancing further she
walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on her
brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself.  Then she sat down on a heap
of stones by the wayside to think.  There she remained long.  Above
the dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of
coppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western
sky.  Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting
world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the
shape of indecisive and palpitating stars.  She gazed upon their
silent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all.
Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.

To avoid Boldwood at his return, Bathsheba planned to visit Liddy, who, granted a week's holiday, was visiting her sister. Bathsheba set out on foot and, after walking about two miles, saw coming toward her the very man she was seeking to evade. Boldwood was obviously disturbed by her letter of rejection and expressed his feeling for Bathsheba in these words: "You know what that feeling is. . . . A thing as strong as death. No dismissal by a hasty letter affects that." He pleaded with her, claiming to be beyond himself, as Bathsheba feared he indeed was. Referring to the valentine, he repeated that she must have had some feeling for him. Bathsheba tried to explain it away by saying, "You overrate my capacity for love." Boldwood countered that he knew she was not the cold woman she claimed to be. "You have love enough, but it is turned to a new channel. I know where." Bathsheba delayed her reply but could not deny the accusation. Boldwood became unreasonably angry and launched into a long, distraught harangue. "Bathsheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! I've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! . . . I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted beyond myself . . . yes, keep him away from me." With that, he slowly went on his way. Bathsheba, unable to comprehend "such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man," feared for Troy. Previously she had been in control of herself. "But now there was no reserve. In her distraction, instead of advancing further, she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing her brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself." Copper clouds appeared in the sky, presaging inclement weather. Then the stars came out. Bathsheba saw nothing. "Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy."

Boldwood, obviously overwrought, has been pushed to the point of potential violence. He bears little resemblance to the remote, dignified gentleman we first encountered at Bathsheba's house. Keep in mind the curse which Boldwood places on Troy: "May he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn -- as I do now!"


NIGHT--HORSES TRAMPING

The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst,
and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead.  The church
clock struck eleven.  The air was so empty of other sounds that the
whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct,
and so was also the click of the same at their close.  The notes flew
forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things--flapping
and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds,
spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.

Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by
Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba
had set out to visit.  A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann
turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed.  She was totally
unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep.  It led
to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation
that something had happened.  She left her bed and looked out of the
window.  The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the
paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure
approaching the horse that was feeding there.  The figure seized the
horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field.  Here
she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle,
for after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the
trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light
wheels.

Two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with
the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure.  They were a woman and
a gipsy man.  A woman was out of the question in such an occupation
at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might
probably have known the weakness of the household on this particular
night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt.
Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies
in Weatherbury Bottom.

Maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence,
having seen him depart had no fear.  She hastily slipped on her
clothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred
creaks, ran to Coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm.
Coggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first,
and together they went to the paddock.  Beyond all doubt the horse
was gone.

"Hark!" said Gabriel.

They listened.  Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a
trotting horse passing up Longpuddle Lane--just beyond the gipsies'
encampment in Weatherbury Bottom.

"That's our Dainty--I'll swear to her step," said Jan.

"Mighty me!  Won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids when she comes
back!" moaned Maryann.  "How I wish it had happened when she was at
home, and none of us had been answerable!"

"We must ride after," said Gabriel, decisively.  "I'll  be
responsible to Miss Everdene for what we do.  Yes, we'll follow."

"Faith, I don't see how," said Coggan.  "All our horses are too heavy
for that trick except little Poppet, and what's she between two of
us?--If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something."

"Which pair?"

"Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll."

"Then wait here till I come hither again," said Gabriel.  He ran down
the hill towards Farmer Boldwood's.

"Farmer Boldwood is not at home," said Maryann.

"All the better," said Coggan.  "I know what he's gone for."

Less than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same
pace, with two halters dangling from his hand.

"Where did you find 'em?" said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon
the hedge without waiting for an answer.

"Under the eaves.  I knew where they were kept," said Gabriel,
following him.  "Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to
look for saddles."

"Like a hero!" said Jan.

"Maryann, you go to bed," Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the
hedge.

Springing down into Boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to
hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely
allowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were
dexterously slipped on.  Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and
Coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case
through the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side.  Oak
vaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when
they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by
Bathsheba's horse and the robber.  Whose vehicle the horse had been
harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty.

Weatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes.  They
scanned the shady green patch by the roadside.  The gipsies were
gone.

"The villains!" said Gabriel.  "Which way have they gone, I wonder?"

"Straight on, as sure as God made little apples," said Jan.

"Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake em", said Oak.
"Now on at full speed!"

No sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered.  The
road-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left
behind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat
plastic, but not muddy state.  They came to cross-roads.  Coggan
suddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off.

"What's the matter?" said Gabriel.

"We must try to track 'em, since we can't hear 'em," said Jan,
fumbling in his pockets.  He struck a light, and held the match to
the ground.  The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse
tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by
the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which
reflected the flame of the match like eyes.  One set of tracks was
fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty,
and not small canals, like the others.  The footprints forming this
recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in
equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot
of each pair being exactly opposite one another.

"Straight on!" Jan exclaimed.  "Tracks like that mean a stiff gallop.
No wonder we don't hear him.  And the horse is harnessed--look at the
ruts.  Ay, that's our mare sure enough!"

"How do you know?"

"Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I'd swear to his make
among ten thousand."

"The rest of the gipsies must ha' gone on earlier, or some other
way," said Oak.  "You saw there were no other tracks?"

"True." They rode along silently for a long weary time. Coggan
carried an old pinchbeck repeater which he had inherited from some
genius in his family; and it now struck one.  He lighted another
match, and examined the ground again.

"'Tis a canter now," he said, throwing away the light.  "A twisty,
rickety pace for a gig.  The fact is, they over-drove her at
starting; we shall catch 'em yet."

Again they hastened on, and entered Blackmore Vale.  Coggan's watch
struck one.  When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as
to form a sort of zigzag if united, like the lamps along a street.

"That's a trot, I know," said Gabriel.

"Only a trot now," said Coggan, cheerfully.  "We shall overtake him
in time."

They pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles.  "Ah! a moment,"
said Jan.  "Let's see how she was driven up this hill.  'Twill help
us."  A light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the
examination made.

"Hurrah!" said Coggan.  "She walked up here--and well she might.  We
shall get them in two miles, for a crown."

They rode three, and listened.  No sound was to be heard save a
millpond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy
possibilities of drowning by jumping in.  Gabriel dismounted when
they came to a turning.  The tracks were absolutely the only guide as
to the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary
to avoid confusing them with some others which had made their
appearance lately.

"What does this mean?--though I guess," said Gabriel, looking up
at Coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning.
Coggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown
signs of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters.  This
time only three were of the regular horseshoe shape.  Every fourth
was a dot.

He screwed up his face and emitted a long "Whew-w-w!"

"Lame," said Oak.

"Yes.  Dainty is lamed; the near-foot-afore," said Coggan slowly,
staring still at the footprints.

"We'll push on," said Gabriel, remounting his humid steed.

Although the road along its greater part had been as good as any
turnpike-road in the country, it was nominally only a byway.  The
last turning had brought them into the high road leading to Bath.
Coggan recollected himself.

"We shall have him now!" he exclaimed.

"Where?"

"Sherton Turnpike.  The keeper of that gate is the sleepiest man
between here and London--Dan Randall, that's his name--knowed en for
years, when he was at Casterbridge gate. Between the lameness and the
gate 'tis a done job."

They now advanced with extreme caution.  Nothing was said until,
against a shady background of foliage, five white bars were visible,
crossing their route a little way ahead.

"Hush--we are almost close!" said Gabriel.

"Amble on upon the grass," said Coggan.

The white bars were blotted out in the midst by a dark shape in
front of them.  The silence of this lonely time was pierced by an
exclamation from that quarter.

"Hoy-a-hoy!  Gate!"

It appeared that there had been a previous call which they had not
noticed, for on their close approach the door of the turnpike-house
opened, and the keeper came out half-dressed, with a candle in his
hand.  The rays illumined the whole group.

"Keep the gate close!" shouted Gabriel.  "He has stolen the horse!"

"Who?" said the turnpike-man.

Gabriel looked at the driver of the gig, and saw a woman--Bathsheba,
his mistress.

On hearing his voice she had turned her face away from the light.
Coggan had, however, caught sight of her in the meanwhile.

"Why, 'tis mistress--I'll take my oath!" he said, amazed.

Bathsheba it certainly was, and she had by this time done the trick
she could do so well in crises not of love, namely, mask a surprise
by coolness of manner.

"Well, Gabriel," she inquired quietly, "where are you going?"

"We thought--" began Gabriel.

"I am driving to Bath," she said, taking for her own use the
assurance that Gabriel lacked.  "An important matter made it
necessary for me to give up my visit to Liddy, and go off at once.
What, then, were you following me?"

"We thought the horse was stole."

"Well--what a thing!  How very foolish of you not to know that I had
taken the trap and horse.  I could neither wake Maryann nor get into
the house, though I hammered for ten minutes against her window-sill.
Fortunately, I could get the key of the coach-house, so I troubled no
one further. Didn't you think it might be me?"

"Why should we, miss?"

"Perhaps not.  Why, those are never Farmer Boldwood's horses!
Goodness mercy! what have you been doing--bringing trouble upon me in
this way?  What! mustn't a lady move an inch from her door without
being dogged like a thief?"

"But how was we to know, if you left no account of your doings?"
expostulated Coggan, "and ladies don't drive at these hours, miss,
as a jineral rule of society."

"I did leave an account--and you would have seen it in the morning.
I wrote in chalk on the coach-house doors that I had come back for
the horse and gig, and driven off; that I could arouse nobody, and
should return soon."

"But you'll consider, ma'am, that we couldn't see that till it got
daylight."

"True," she said, and though vexed at first she had too much sense
to blame them long or seriously for a devotion to her that was as
valuable as it was rare.  She added with a very pretty grace, "Well,
I really thank you heartily for taking all this trouble; but I wish
you had borrowed anybody's horses but Mr. Boldwood's."

"Dainty is lame, miss," said Coggan.  "Can ye go on?"

"It was only a stone in her shoe.  I got down and pulled it out a
hundred yards back.  I can manage very well, thank you.  I shall be
in Bath by daylight.  Will you now return, please?"

She turned her head--the gateman's candle shimmering upon her quick,
clear eyes as she did so--passed through the gate, and was soon
wrapped in the embowering shades of mysterious summer boughs.  Coggan
and Gabriel put about their horses, and, fanned by the velvety air of
this July night, retraced the road by which they had come.

"A strange vagary, this of hers, isn't it, Oak?" said Coggan,
curiously.

"Yes," said Gabriel, shortly.

"She won't be in Bath by no daylight!"

"Coggan, suppose we keep this night's work as quiet as we can?"

"I am of one and the same mind."

"Very well.  We shall be home by three o'clock or so, and can creep
into the parish like lambs."

Bathsheba's perturbed meditations by the roadside had ultimately
evolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the
present desperate state of affairs.  The first was merely to
keep Troy away from Weatherbury till Boldwood's indignation had
cooled; the second to listen to Oak's entreaties, and Boldwood's
denunciations, and give up Troy altogether.

Alas!  Could she give up this new love--induce him to renounce her
by saying she did not like him--could no more speak to him, and beg
him, for her good, to end his furlough in Bath, and see her and
Weatherbury no more?

It was a picture full of misery, but for a while she contemplated it
firmly, allowing herself, nevertheless, as girls will, to dwell upon
the happy life she would have enjoyed had Troy been Boldwood, and the
path of love the path of duty--inflicting upon herself gratuitous
tortures by imagining him the lover of another woman after forgetting
her; for she had penetrated Troy's nature so far as to estimate his
tendencies pretty accurately, but unfortunately loved him no less in
thinking that he might soon cease to love her--indeed, considerably
more.

She jumped to her feet.  She would see him at once.  Yes, she would
implore him by word of mouth to assist her in this dilemma.  A letter
to keep him away could not reach him in time, even if he should be
disposed to listen to it.

Was Bathsheba altogether blind to the obvious fact that the support
of a lover's arms is not of a kind best calculated to assist a
resolve to renounce him?  Or was she sophistically sensible, with a
thrill of pleasure, that by adopting this course for getting rid of
him she was ensuring a meeting with him, at any rate, once more?

It was now dark, and the hour must have been nearly ten.  The only
way to accomplish her purpose was to give up her idea of visiting
Liddy at Yalbury, return to Weatherbury Farm, put the horse into
the gig, and drive at once to Bath.  The scheme seemed at first
impossible: the journey was a fearfully heavy one, even for a strong
horse, at her own estimate; and she much underrated the distance.
It was most venturesome for a woman, at night, and alone.

But could she go on to Liddy's and leave things to take their course?
No, no; anything but that.  Bathsheba was full of a stimulating
turbulence, beside which caution vainly prayed for a hearing.  She
turned back towards the village.

Her walk was slow, for she wished not to enter Weatherbury till the
cottagers were in bed, and, particularly, till Boldwood was secure.
Her plan was now to drive to Bath during the night, see Sergeant Troy
in the morning before he set out to come to her, bid him farewell,
and dismiss him: then to rest the horse thoroughly (herself to weep
the while, she thought), starting early the next morning on her
return journey.  By this arrangement she could trot Dainty gently
all the day, reach Liddy at Yalbury in the evening, and come home to
Weatherbury with her whenever they chose--so nobody would know she
had been to Bath at all.  Such was Bathsheba's scheme.  But in her
topographical ignorance as a late comer to the place, she misreckoned
the distance of her journey as not much more than half what it really
was.

This idea she proceeded to carry out, with what initial success we
have already seen.

"The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the clock of the same at their close." Maryann, alone in the manorhouse, was startled by a stealthy footfall. She saw a gray figure enter the paddock; shortly thereafter, she heard the gig traveling down the road. Thinking that gypsies had stolen the wagon, she ran to Coggan's house, where Gabriel was again staying. The men found that Dainty was the horse that had been stolen. To pursue her, they would need light, quick horses; Gabriel decided to borrow Boldwood's. They followed the hoofmarks, and were sure because of the shoeing on one foot that it was indeed Dainty. Finally, at a tollgate, they caught up, only to discover that the "thief' was -- Bathsheba! Bathsheba explained that she had given up the trip to Liddy's for "an important matter." Then, unable to rouse Maryann, she had chalked a message on the coach-house door. She said that now that she had removed the stone from Dainty's shoe, she would be able to reach Bath by daylight. The men were sure she was miscalculating the distance, as in truth she was. "Bathsheba's perturbed mediations by the roadside had ultimately evolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the present desperate state of affairs. The first was merely to keep Troy away from Weatherbury till Boldwood's indignation had cooled; the second, to listen to Oak's entreaties, and Boldwood's denunciations, and give up Troy altogether." Following Troy to Bath insured another meeting with him, but this was something Bathsheba chose not to think about. The rest of her plan was to go from Bath to Yalbury, meet Liddy, and return with her.

The deductions made by the men in tracing and identifying the "stolen" horse reveal native skills, as does their estimation of distances. Since both men are sufficiently convinced that Bathsheba's behavior is erratic, Gabriel easily enjoins Coggan to silence.


IN THE SUN--A HARBINGER

A week passed, and there were no tidings of Bathsheba; nor was there
any explanation of her Gilpin's rig.

Then a note came for Maryann, stating that the business which had
called her mistress to Bath still detained her there; but that she
hoped to return in the course of another week.

Another week passed.  The oat-harvest began, and all the men were
a-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air
and short shadows of noon.  Indoors nothing was to be heard save
the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of
scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their
perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath.
Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the
form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and
cheeks.  Drought was everywhere else.

They were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade
of a tree in the fence, when Coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and
brass buttons running to them across the field.

"I wonder who that is?" he said.

"I hope nothing is wrong about mistress," said Maryann, who with some
other women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this
farm), "but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning.  I
went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the
stone floor and broke into two pieces.  Breaking a key is a dreadful
bodement.  I wish mis'ess was home."

"'Tis Cain Ball," said Gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook.

Oak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but
the harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was
Bathsheba's, so he lent a hand.

"He's dressed up in his best clothes," said Matthew Moon.  "He hev
been away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon
his finger; for 'a said, since I can't work I'll have a hollerday."

"A good time for one--a' excellent time," said Joseph Poorgrass,
straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way
of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons
preternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in
his Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude.  "Twas a bad leg
allowed me to read the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and Mark Clark learnt
All-Fours in a whitlow."

"Ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go
courting," said Jan Coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face
with his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of
his neck.

By this time Cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was
perceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand,
from which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a
bandage.  When he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and
he began to cough violently.

"Now, Cainy!" said Gabriel, sternly.  "How many more times must I
tell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating?  You'll
choke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, Cain Ball."

"Hok-hok-hok!" replied Cain.  "A crumb of my victuals went the
wrong way--hok-hok!  That's what 'tis, Mister Oak!  And I've been
visiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb; yes, and I've
seen--ahok-hok!"

Directly Cain mentioned Bath, they all threw down their hooks and
forks and drew round him.  Unfortunately the erratic crumb did not
improve his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that
of a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which
dangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise.

"Yes," he continued, directing his thoughts to Bath and letting his
eyes follow, "I've seed the world at last--yes--and I've seed our
mis'ess--ahok-hok-hok!"

"Bother the boy!" said Gabriel. "Something is always going the wrong
way down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be
told."

"Ahok! there!  Please, Mister Oak, a gnat have just fleed into my
stomach and brought the cough on again!"

"Yes, that's just it.  Your mouth is always open, you young rascal!"

"'Tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!"
said Matthew Moon.

"Well, at Bath you saw--" prompted Gabriel.

"I saw our mistress," continued the junior shepherd, "and a sojer,
walking along.  And bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they
went arm-in-crook, like courting complete--hok-hok! like courting
complete--hok!--courting complete--"  Losing the thread of his
narrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their
informant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to
it.  "Well, I see our mis'ess and a soldier--a-ha-a-wk!"

"Damn the boy!" said Gabriel.

"'Tis only my manner, Mister Oak, if ye'll excuse it," said Cain
Ball, looking reproachfully at Oak, with eyes drenched in their own
dew.

"Here's some cider for him--that'll cure his throat," said Jan
Coggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying
the hole to Cainy's mouth; Joseph Poorgrass in the meantime beginning
to think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow
Cainy Ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his Bath
adventures dying with him.

"For my poor self, I always say 'please God' afore I do anything,"
said Joseph, in an unboastful voice; "and so should you, Cain Ball.
'Tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked
to death some day."

Mr. Coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liberality at the
suffering Cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of
the flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside
his throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being
coughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the
form of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a
small exhalation.

"There's a great clumsy sneeze!  Why can't ye have better manners,
you young dog!" said Coggan, withdrawing the flagon.

"The cider went up my nose!" cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak;
"and now 'tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and
over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!"

"The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate," said Matthew Moon.
"And a great history on hand, too.  Bump his back, shepherd."

"'Tis my nater," mourned Cain.  "Mother says I always was so
excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!"

"True, true," said Joseph Poorgrass.  "The Balls were always a very
excitable family.  I knowed the boy's grandfather--a truly nervous
and modest man, even to genteel refinery. 'Twas blush, blush with
him, almost as much as 'tis with me--not but that 'tis a fault in
me!"

"Not at all, Master Poorgrass," said Coggan.  "'Tis a very noble
quality in ye."

"Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad--nothing at all,"
murmured Poorgrass, diffidently.  "But we be born to things--that's
true.  Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high
nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to
my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts....  But under your
bushel, Joseph! under your bushel with 'ee!  A strange desire,
neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due.  Yet there is a
Sermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and
certain meek men may be named therein."

"Cainy's grandfather was a very clever man," said Matthew Moon.
"Invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his
name to this day--the Early Ball.  You know 'em, Jan?  A Quarrenden
grafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o' that again.  'Tis
trew 'a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a 'ooman in a way he
had no business to by rights, but there--'a were a clever man in the
sense of the term."

"Now then," said Gabriel, impatiently, "what did you see, Cain?"

"I seed our mis'ess go into a sort of a park place, where there's
seats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer," continued
Cainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very
effective as regarded Gabriel's emotions.  "And I think the sojer
was Sergeant Troy.  And they sat there together for more than
half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most
to death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was
as white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as
far-gone friendly as a man and woman can be."

Gabriel's features seemed to get thinner.  "Well, what did you see
besides?"

"Oh, all sorts."

"White as a lily?  You are sure 'twas she?"

"Yes."

"Well, what besides?"

"Great glass windows to the shops, and great clouds in the sky, full
of rain, and old wooden trees in the country round."

"You stun-poll!  What will ye say next?" said Coggan.

"Let en alone," interposed Joseph Poorgrass.  "The boy's meaning is
that the sky and the earth in the kingdom of Bath is not altogether
different from ours here.  'Tis for our good to gain knowledge of
strange cities, and as such the boy's words should be suffered, so
to speak it."

"And the people of Bath," continued Cain, "never need to light their
fires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth
ready boiled for use."

"'Tis true as the light," testified Matthew Moon. "I've heard other
navigators say the same thing."

"They drink nothing else there," said Cain, "and seem to enjoy it, to
see how they swaller it down."

"Well, it seems a barbarian practice enough to us, but I daresay the
natives think nothing o' it," said Matthew.

"And don't victuals spring up as well as drink?" asked Coggan,
twirling his eye.

"No--I own to a blot there in Bath--a true blot.  God didn't provide
'em with victuals as well as drink, and 'twas a drawback I couldn't
get over at all."

"Well, 'tis a curious place, to say the least," observed Moon; "and
it must be a curious people that live therein."

"Miss Everdene and the soldier were walking about together, you say?"
said Gabriel, returning to the group.

"Ay, and she wore a beautiful gold-colour silk gown, trimmed with
black lace, that would have stood alone 'ithout legs inside if
required.  'Twas a very winsome sight; and her hair was brushed
splendid.  And when the sun shone upon the bright gown and his red
coat--my! how handsome they looked.  You could see 'em all the
length of the street."

"And what then?" murmured Gabriel.

"And then I went into Griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then I
went to Riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the
cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not
quite.  And whilst I was chawing 'em down I walked on and seed a
clock with a face as big as a baking trendle--"

"But that's nothing to do with mistress!"

"I'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, Mister Oak!"
remonstrated Cainy.  "If you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my
cough, and then I shan't be able to tell ye nothing."

"Yes--let him tell it his own way," said Coggan.

Gabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and Cainy
went on:--

"And there were great large houses, and more people all the week long
than at Weatherbury club-walking on White Tuesdays.  And I went to
grand churches and chapels.  And how the parson would pray!  Yes; he
would kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy
gold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd
earned by praying so excellent well!--Ah yes, I wish I lived there."

"Our poor Parson Thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings," said
Matthew Moon, thoughtfully.  "And as good a man as ever walked.  I
don't believe poor Thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin
or copper.  Such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull
afternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles!
But 'tis impossible, poor man.  Ah, to think how unequal things be."

"Perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear 'em," said
Gabriel, grimly. "Well, that's enough of this.  Go on, Cainy--quick."

"Oh--and the new style of parsons wear moustaches and long beards,"
continued the illustrious traveller, "and look like Moses and Aaron
complete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like
the children of Israel."

"A very right feeling--very," said Joseph Poorgrass.

"And there's two religions going on in the nation now--High Church
and High Chapel.  And, thinks I, I'll play fair; so I went to High
Church in the morning, and High Chapel in the afternoon."

"A right and proper boy," said Joseph Poorgrass.

"Well, at High Church they pray singing, and worship all the colours
of the rainbow; and at High Chapel they pray preaching, and worship
drab and whitewash only.  And then--I didn't see no more of Miss
Everdene at all."

"Why didn't you say so afore, then?" exclaimed Oak, with much
disappointment.

"Ah," said Matthew Moon, "she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's
over intimate with that man."

"She's not over intimate with him," said Gabriel, indignantly.

"She would know better," said Coggan.  "Our mis'ess has too much
sense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing."

"You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought
up," said Matthew, dubiously.  "'Twas only wildness that made him a
soldier, and maids rather like your man of sin."

"Now, Cain Ball," said Gabriel restlessly, "can you swear in the most
awful form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?"

"Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling," said Joseph in the
sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, "and you know what taking
an oath is.  'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and
seal with your blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on
whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.  Now, before
all the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the
shepherd asks ye?"

"Please no, Mister Oak!" said Cainy, looking from one to the other
with great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position.  "I
don't mind saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true,
if that's what you mane."

"Cain, Cain, how can you!" asked Joseph sternly.  "You be asked to
swear in a holy manner, and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of
Gera, who cursed as he came.  Young man, fie!"

"No, I don't!  'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph
Poorgrass--that's what 'tis!" said Cain, beginning to cry.  "All I
mane is that in common truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy,
but in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it
perhaps 'twas somebody else!"

"There's no getting at the rights of it," said Gabriel, turning to
his work.

"Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!" groaned Joseph Poorgrass.

Then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds
went on.  Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did
nothing to show that he was particularly dull.  However, Coggan knew
pretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together
he said--

"Don't take on about her, Gabriel.  What difference does it make
whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?"

"That's the very thing I say to myself," said Gabriel.

After a week, Bathsheba had not returned. Maryann received a note that her mistress was detained. Another week elapsed, and the oat harvest began. As the men worked in the fields they saw a runner. Maryann, who was helping bind sheaves, had an uncomfortable premonition, for she had dropped the door key that morning and it had broken. The runner proved to be Cainy Ball, on holiday because he had an inflammation on his finger and could not work. The men commented on the advantages of an occasional indisposition that afforded time to get other things done, things more to one's liking. Cainy, choking and coughing, exasperated everyone because he was unable to catch his breath sufficiently to deliver his message. They pounded him and gave him cider to drink. Finally, in spasms, he told of having been to Bath, where he had seen Bathsheba with a soldier. "And I think the sojer was Sergeant Troy. And they sat there together for more than half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most to death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was as white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as far gone friendly as a man and woman can be." Gabriel, deeply affected, tried to question Cainy further, but the boy had nothing more to tell about Bathsheba, and wanted to talk only about the wonders of Bath. Coggan privately advised Oak, "Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?" "'That's the very thing I say to myself,' said Gabriel."

Realistically, Cainy blurts out the narrative between coughs and sneezes. In his discomfort and obtuseness, he arouses the curiosity of the listeners even more. After a long-winded recital of trivia about the town of Bath, he can offer no further morsel of excitement to climax his tale. The account is not without caricature and humor.