FANNY'S REVENGE

"Do you want me any longer ma'am?" inquired Liddy, at a later hour
the same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in
her hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the
large parlour beside the first fire of the season.

"No more to-night, Liddy."

"I'll sit up for master if you like, ma'am.  I am not at all afraid
of Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle.  She was
such a childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn't appear
to anybody if it tried, I'm quite sure."

"Oh no, no!  You go to bed.  I'll sit up for him myself till twelve
o'clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up
and go to bed too."

"It is half-past ten now."

"Oh! is it?"

"Why don't you sit upstairs, ma'am?"

"Why don't I?" said Bathsheba, desultorily.  "It isn't worth
while--there's a fire here, Liddy."  She suddenly exclaimed in an
impulsive and excited whisper, "Have you heard anything strange said
of Fanny?" The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of
unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears.

"No--not a word!" said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with
astonishment.  "What is it makes you cry so, ma'am; has anything hurt
you?"  She came to Bathsheba's side with a face full of sympathy.

"No, Liddy--I don't want you any more.  I can hardly say why I have
taken to crying lately: I never used to cry.  Good-night."

Liddy then left the parlour and closed the door.

Bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than
she had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that
of the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude
of a cave.  And within the last day or two had come these disquieting
thoughts about her husband's past.  Her wayward sentiment that
evening concerning Fanny's temporary resting-place had been the
result of a strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba's bosom.
Perhaps it would be more accurately described as a determined
rebellion against her prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct
of uncharitableness, which would have withheld all sympathy from
the dead woman, because in life she had preceded Bathsheba in the
attentions of a man whom Bathsheba had by no means ceased from
loving, though her love was sick to death just now with the gravity
of a further misgiving.

In five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door.  Liddy
reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at
length she said, "Maryann has just heard something very strange, but
I know it isn't true.  And we shall be sure to know the rights of it
in a day or two."

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma'am.  It is about Fanny.
That same thing you have heard."

"I have heard nothing."

"I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last
hour--that--"  Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the
remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as
she spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay.

Bathsheba trembled from head to foot.

"I don't believe it!" she said, excitedly.  "And there's only one
name written on the coffin-cover."

"Nor I, ma'am.  And a good many others don't; for we should surely
have been told more about it if it had been true--don't you think so,
ma'am?"

"We might or we might not."

Bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see
her face.  Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy
glided out, closed the door softly, and went to bed.

Bathsheba's face, as she continued looking into the fire that
evening, might have excited solicitousness on her account even among
those who loved her least.  The sadness of Fanny Robin's fate did not
make Bathsheba's glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor
Vashti, and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects
as contrasts to each other.  When Liddy came into the room a second
time the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary
look.  When she went out after telling the story they had expressed
wretchedness in full activity.  Her simple country nature, fed on
old-fashioned principles, was troubled by that which would have
troubled a woman of the world very little, both Fanny and her child,
if she had one, being dead.

Bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own
history and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny's end which Oak
and Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing.  The
meeting with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been
unwitnessed and unspoken of.  Oak may have had the best of intentions
in withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had
happened to Fanny; but had he known that Bathsheba's perceptions had
already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to
lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the
certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected
after all.

She suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than
herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with
dignity and her lurking doubts with stoicism.  Where could she find
such a friend? nowhere in the house.  She was by far the coolest of
the women under her roof.  Patience and suspension of judgement for
a few hours were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to
teach her.  Might she but go to Gabriel Oak!--but that could not be.
What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things.  Boldwood,
who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than
Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple
lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he
gave--that among the multitude of interests by which he was
surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the
most absorbing and important in his eyes.  Oak meditatively looked
upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his
own standpoint in the midst.  That was how she would wish to be.  But
then Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the inmost matter of his
bosom, as she was at this moment.  Oak knew all about Fanny that he
wished to know--she felt convinced of that.  If she were to go to him
now at once and say no more than these few words, "What is the truth
of the story?" he would feel bound in honour to tell her.  It would
be an inexpressible relief.  No further speech would need to be
uttered.  He knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in
her would alarm him.

She flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it.  Every
blade, every twig was still.  The air was yet thick with moisture,
though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady
smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost
musical in its soothing regularity.  It seemed better to be out of
the house than within it, and Bathsheba closed the door, and walked
slowly down the lane till she came opposite to Gabriel's cottage,
where he now lived alone, having left Coggan's house through being
pinched for room.  There was a light in one window only, and that
was downstairs.  The shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or
curtain drawn over the window, neither robbery nor observation being
a contingency which could do much injury to the occupant of the
domicile.  Yes, it was Gabriel himself who was sitting up: he was
reading.  From her standing-place in the road she could see him
plainly, sitting quite still, his light curly head upon his hand, and
only occasionally looking up to snuff the candle which stood beside
him.  At length he looked at the clock, seemed surprised at the
lateness of the hour, closed his book, and arose.  He was going to
bed, she knew, and if she tapped it must be done at once.

Alas for her resolve!  She felt she could not do it.  Not for worlds
now could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him
plainly for information on the cause of Fanny's death.  She must
suspect, and guess, and chafe, and bear it all alone.

Like a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and
fascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from
that little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own.  Gabriel
appeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench,
and then--knelt down to pray.  The contrast of the picture with her
rebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for
her to bear to look upon longer.  It was not for her to make a truce
with trouble by any such means.  She must tread her giddy distracting
measure to its last note, as she had begun it.  With a swollen heart
she went again up the lane, and entered her own door.

More fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which Oak's
example had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the
door of the room wherein Fanny lay.  She locked her fingers, threw
back her head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her
forehead, saying, with a hysterical sob, "Would to God you would
speak and tell me your secret, Fanny! ... Oh, I hope, hope it is not
true that there are two of you! ... If I could only look in upon you
for one little minute, I should know all!"

A few moments passed, and she added, slowly, "AND I WILL."

Bathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried
her through the actions following this murmured resolution on this
memorable evening of her life.  She went to the lumber-closet for a
screw-driver.  At the end of a short though undefined time she found
herself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a mist before her
eyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain, standing beside the
uncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end had so entirely
engrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice as she gazed
within--

"It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!"

She was conscious of having brought about this situation by a series
of actions done as by one in an extravagant dream; of following that
idea as to method, which had burst upon her in the hall with glaring
obviousness, by gliding to the top of the stairs, assuring herself by
listening to the heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep,
gliding down again, turning the handle of the door within which the
young girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what, if she
had anticipated any such undertaking at night and alone, would have
horrified her, but which, when done, was not so dreadful as was the
conclusive proof of her husband's conduct which came with knowing
beyond doubt the last chapter of Fanny's story.

Bathsheba's head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which had been
bated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was exhaled now in the
form of a whispered wail: "Oh-h-h!" she said, and the silent room
added length to her moan.

Her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin:
tears of a complicated origin, of a nature indescribable, almost
indefinable except as other than those of simple sorrow.  Assuredly
their wonted fires must have lived in Fanny's ashes when events were
so shaped as to chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet
effectual manner.  The one feat alone--that of dying--by which a mean
condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved.
And to that had destiny subjoined this reencounter to-night, which
had, in Bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion's failure to
success, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendency;
it had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon
all things about her an ironical smile.

Fanny's face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and there was
no longer much room for doubt as to the origin of the curl owned by
Troy.  In Bathsheba's heated fancy the innocent white countenance
expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was
retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic
law: "Burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife."

Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by
immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient
and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that
could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless.
Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying
her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her
rival's case.  She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly
her habit when excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as
she thought and in part expressed in broken words: "O, I hate her,
yet I don't mean that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and
yet I hate her a little!  Yes, my flesh insists upon hating her,
whether my spirit is willing or no! ... If she had only lived, I
could have been angry and cruel towards her with some justification;
but to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman recoils upon myself.
O God, have mercy!  I am miserable at all this!"

Bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind
that she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself.  The
vision of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the
imitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea,
resolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray.  Gabriel had prayed; so
would she.

She knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and
for a time the room was silent as a tomb.  Whether from a purely
mechanical, or from any other cause, when Bathsheba arose it was with
a quieted spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which
had seized upon her just before.

In her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the
window, and began laying them around the dead girl's head.  Bathsheba
knew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by
giving them flowers.  She knew not how long she remained engaged
thus.  She forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing.  A
slamming together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to
herself again.  An instant after, the front door opened and closed,
steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to
the room, looking in upon her.

He beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the scene, as
if he thought it an illusion raised by some fiendish incantation.
Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same
wild way.

So little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate induction
that, at this moment, as he stood with the door in his hand, Troy
never once thought of Fanny in connection with what he saw.  His
first confused idea was that somebody in the house had died.

"Well--what?" said Troy, blankly.

"I must go!  I must go!" said Bathsheba, to herself more than to him.
She came with a dilated eye towards the door, to push past him.

"What's the matter, in God's name? who's dead?" said Troy.

"I cannot say; let me go out.  I want air!" she continued.

"But no; stay, I insist!"  He seized her hand, and then volition
seemed to leave her, and she went off into a state of passivity.  He,
still holding her, came up the room, and thus, hand in hand, Troy and
Bathsheba approached the coffin's side.

The candle was standing on a bureau close by them, and the light
slanted down, distinctly enkindling the cold features of both mother
and babe.  Troy looked in, dropped his wife's hand, knowledge of it
all came over him in a lurid sheen, and he stood still.

So still he remained that he could be imagined to have left in him no
motive power whatever.  The clashes of feeling in all directions
confounded one another, produced a neutrality, and there was motion
in none.

"Do you know her?" said Bathsheba, in a small enclosed echo, as from
the interior of a cell.

"I do," said Troy.

"Is it she?"

"It is."

He had originally stood perfectly erect.  And now, in the well-nigh
congealed immobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient
movement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a
while.  He was gradually sinking forwards.  The lines of his features
softened, and dismay modulated to illimitable sadness.  Bathsheba
was regarding him from the other side, still with parted lips and
distracted eyes.  Capacity for intense feeling is proportionate to
the general intensity of the nature, and perhaps in all Fanny's
sufferings, much greater relatively to her strength, there never was
a time she suffered in an absolute sense what Bathsheba suffered now.

What Troy did was to sink upon his knees with an indefinable union of
remorse and reverence upon his face, and, bending over Fanny Robin,
gently kissed her, as one would kiss an infant asleep to avoid
awakening it.

At the sight and sound of that, to her, unendurable act, Bathsheba
sprang towards him.  All the strong feelings which had been scattered
over her existence since she knew what feeling was, seemed gathered
together into one pulsation now.  The revulsion from her indignant
mood a little earlier, when she had meditated upon compromised
honour, forestalment, eclipse in maternity by another, was violent
and entire.  All that was forgotten in the simple and still
strong attachment of wife to husband.  She had sighed for her
self-completeness then, and now she cried aloud against the severance
of the union she had deplored.  She flung her arms round Troy's neck,
exclaiming wildly from the deepest deep of her heart--

"Don't--don't kiss them!  O, Frank, I can't bear it--I can't!  I love
you better than she did: kiss me too, Frank--kiss me!  YOU WILL,
FRANK, KISS ME TOO!"

There was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain
and simplicity of this appeal from a woman of Bathsheba's calibre
and independence, that Troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from
his neck, looked at her in bewilderment.  It was such an unexpected
revelation of all women being alike at heart, even those so different
in their accessories as Fanny and this one beside him, that Troy
could hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife Bathsheba.
Fanny's own spirit seemed to be animating her frame.  But this was
the mood of a few instants only.  When the momentary surprise had
passed, his expression changed to a silencing imperious gaze.

"I will not kiss you!" he said pushing her away.

Had the wife now but gone no further.  Yet, perhaps, under the
harrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which
can be better understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and
politic one, her rival being now but a corpse.  All the feeling she
had been betrayed into showing she drew back to herself again by a
strenuous effort of self-command.

"What have you to say as your reason?" she asked, her bitter voice
being strangely low--quite that of another woman now.

"I have to say that I have been a bad, black-hearted man," he
answered.

"And that this woman is your victim; and I not less than she."

"Ah! don't taunt me, madam.  This woman is more to me, dead as she
is, than ever you were, or are, or can be.  If Satan had not tempted
me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should
have married her.  I never had another thought till you came in my
way.  Would to God that I had; but it is all too late!"  He turned
to Fanny then.  "But never mind, darling," he said; "in the sight of
Heaven you are my very, very wife!"

At these words there arose from Bathsheba's lips a long, low cry of
measureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had
never before been heard within those old-inhabited walls.  It was the
"Tetelestai" [GREEK word meaning "it is finished"] of her union with Troy.

"If she's--that,--what--am I?" she added, as a continuation of the
same cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such
abandonment only made the condition more dire.

"You are nothing to me--nothing," said Troy, heartlessly.  "A
ceremony before a priest doesn't make a marriage.  I am not morally
yours."

A vehement impulse to flee from him, to run from this place, hide,
and escape his words at any price, not stopping short of death
itself, mastered Bathsheba now.  She waited not an instant, but
turned to the door and ran out.

UNDER A TREE--REACTION

Bathsheba went along the dark road, neither knowing nor caring about
the direction or issue of her flight.  The first time that she
definitely noticed her position was when she reached a gate leading
into a thicket overhung by some large oak and beech trees.  On
looking into the place, it occurred to her that she had seen it by
daylight on some previous occasion, and that what appeared like an
impassable thicket was in reality a brake of fern now withering fast.
She could think of nothing better to do with her palpitating self
than to go in here and hide; and entering, she lighted on a spot
sheltered from the damp fog by a reclining trunk, where she sank down
upon a tangled couch of fronds and stems.  She mechanically pulled
some armfuls round her to keep off the breezes, and closed her eyes.

Whether she slept or not that night Bathsheba was not clearly aware.
But it was with a freshened existence and a cooler brain that, a long
time afterwards, she became conscious of some interesting proceedings
which were going on in the trees above her head and around.

A coarse-throated chatter was the first sound.

It was a sparrow just waking.

Next: "Chee-weeze-weeze-weeze!" from another retreat.

It was a finch.

Third: "Tink-tink-tink-tink-a-chink!" from the hedge.

It was a robin.

"Chuck-chuck-chuck!" overhead.

A squirrel.

Then, from the road, "With my ra-ta-ta, and my rum-tum-tum!"

It was a ploughboy.  Presently he came opposite, and she believed
from his voice that he was one of the boys on her own farm.  He was
followed by a shambling tramp of heavy feet, and looking through the
ferns Bathsheba could just discern in the wan light of daybreak a
team of her own horses.  They stopped to drink at a pond on the other
side of the way.  She watched them flouncing into the pool, drinking,
tossing up their heads, drinking again, the water dribbling from
their lips in silver threads.  There was another flounce, and they
came out of the pond, and turned back again towards the farm.

She looked further around.  Day was just dawning, and beside its cool
air and colours her heated actions and resolves of the night stood
out in lurid contrast.  She perceived that in her lap, and clinging
to her hair, were red and yellow leaves which had come down from
the tree and settled silently upon her during her partial sleep.
Bathsheba shook her dress to get rid of them, when multitudes of the
same family lying round about her rose and fluttered away in the
breeze thus created, "like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."

There was an opening towards the east, and the glow from the as yet
unrisen sun attracted her eyes thither.  From her feet, and between
the beautiful yellowing ferns with their feathery arms, the ground
sloped downwards to a hollow, in which was a species of swamp,
dotted with fungi.  A morning mist hung over it now--a fulsome
yet magnificent silvery veil, full of light from the sun, yet
semi-opaque--the hedge behind it being in some measure hidden by its
hazy luminousness.  Up the sides of this depression grew sheaves of
the common rush, and here and there a peculiar species of flag, the
blades of which glistened in the emerging sun, like scythes.  But
the general aspect of the swamp was malignant.  From its moist and
poisonous coat seemed to be exhaled the essences of evil things in
the earth, and in the waters under the earth.  The fungi grew in
all manner of positions from rotting leaves and tree stumps, some
exhibiting to her listless gaze their clammy tops, others their
oozing gills.  Some were marked with great splotches, red as arterial
blood, others were saffron yellow, and others tall and attenuated,
with stems like macaroni.  Some were leathery and of richest browns.
The hollow seemed a nursery of pestilences small and great, in the
immediate neighbourhood of comfort and health, and Bathsheba arose
with a tremor at the thought of having passed the night on the brink
of so dismal a place.

There were now other footsteps to be heard along the road.
Bathsheba's nerves were still unstrung: she crouched down out of
sight again, and the pedestrian came into view.  He was a schoolboy,
with a bag slung over his shoulder containing his dinner, and a
book in his hand.  He paused by the gate, and, without looking up,
continued murmuring words in tones quite loud enough to reach her
ears.

"'O Lord, O Lord, O Lord, O Lord, O Lord':--that I know out o' book.
'Give us, give us, give us, give us, give us':--that I know.  'Grace
that, grace that, grace that, grace that':--that I know." Other
words followed to the same effect.  The boy was of the dunce class
apparently; the book was a psalter, and this was his way of learning
the collect.  In the worst attacks of trouble there appears to be
always a superficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged
and open to the notice of trifles, and Bathsheba was faintly amused
at the boy's method, till he too passed on.

By this time stupor had given place to anxiety, and anxiety began to
make room for hunger and thirst.  A form now appeared upon the rise
on the other side of the swamp, half-hidden by the mist, and came
towards Bathsheba.  The woman--for it was a woman--approached with
her face askance, as if looking earnestly on all sides of her.
When she got a little further round to the left, and drew nearer,
Bathsheba could see the newcomer's profile against the sunny sky, and
knew the wavy sweep from forehead to chin, with neither angle nor
decisive line anywhere about it, to be the familiar contour of Liddy
Smallbury.

Bathsheba's heart bounded with gratitude in the thought that she was
not altogether deserted, and she jumped up.  "Oh, Liddy!" she said,
or attempted to say; but the words had only been framed by her lips;
there came no sound.  She had lost her voice by exposure to the
clogged atmosphere all these hours of night.

"Oh, ma'am!  I am so glad I have found you," said the girl, as soon
as she saw Bathsheba.

"You can't come across," Bathsheba said in a whisper, which she
vainly endeavoured to make loud enough to reach Liddy's ears.  Liddy,
not knowing this, stepped down upon the swamp, saying, as she did so,
"It will bear me up, I think."

Bathsheba never forgot that transient little picture of Liddy
crossing the swamp to her there in the morning light.  Iridescent
bubbles of dank subterranean breath rose from the sweating sod beside
the waiting-maid's feet as she trod, hissing as they burst and
expanded away to join the vapoury firmament above.  Liddy did not
sink, as Bathsheba had anticipated.

She landed safely on the other side, and looked up at the beautiful
though pale and weary face of her young mistress.

"Poor thing!" said Liddy, with tears in her eyes, "Do hearten
yourself up a little, ma'am.  However did--"

"I can't speak above a whisper--my voice is gone for the present,"
said Bathsheba, hurriedly.  "I suppose the damp air from that
hollow has taken it away.  Liddy, don't question me, mind.  Who
sent you--anybody?"

"Nobody.  I thought, when I found you were not at home, that
something cruel had happened.  I fancy I heard his voice late last
night; and so, knowing something was wrong--"

"Is he at home?"

"No; he left just before I came out."

"Is Fanny taken away?"

"Not yet.  She will soon be--at nine o'clock."

"We won't go home at present, then.  Suppose we walk about in this
wood?"

Liddy, without exactly understanding everything, or anything, in this
episode, assented, and they walked together further among the trees.

"But you had better come in, ma'am, and have something to eat.  You
will die of a chill!"

"I shall not come indoors yet--perhaps never."

"Shall I get you something to eat, and something else to put over
your head besides that little shawl?"

"If you will, Liddy."

Liddy vanished, and at the end of twenty minutes returned with a
cloak, hat, some slices of bread and butter, a tea-cup, and some hot
tea in a little china jug.

"Is Fanny gone?" said Bathsheba.

"No," said her companion, pouring out the tea.

Bathsheba wrapped herself up and ate and drank sparingly.  Her voice
was then a little clearer, and trifling colour returned to her face.
"Now we'll walk about again," she said.

They wandered about the wood for nearly two hours, Bathsheba replying
in monosyllables to Liddy's prattle, for her mind ran on one subject,
and one only.  She interrupted with--

"I wonder if Fanny is gone by this time?"

"I will go and see."

She came back with the information that the men were just taking
away the corpse; that Bathsheba had been inquired for; that she had
replied to the effect that her mistress was unwell and could not be
seen.

"Then they think I am in my bedroom?"

"Yes."  Liddy then ventured to add: "You said when I first found you
that you might never go home again--you didn't mean it, ma'am?"

"No; I've altered my mind.  It is only women with no pride in them
who run away from their husbands.  There is one position worse than
that of being found dead in your husband's house from his ill usage,
and that is, to be found alive through having gone away to the house
of somebody else.  I've thought of it all this morning, and I've
chosen my course.  A runaway wife is an encumbrance to everybody,
a burden to herself and a byword--all of which make up a heap of
misery greater than any that comes by staying at home--though this
may include the trifling items of insult, beating, and starvation.
Liddy, if ever you marry--God forbid that you ever should!--you'll
find yourself in a fearful situation; but mind this, don't you
flinch. Stand your ground, and be cut to pieces.  That's what I'm
going to do."

"Oh, mistress, don't talk so!" said Liddy, taking her hand; "but I
knew you had too much sense to bide away.  May I ask what dreadful
thing it is that has happened between you and him?"

"You may ask; but I may not tell."

In about ten minutes they returned to the house by a circuitous
route, entering at the rear.  Bathsheba glided up the back stairs to
a disused attic, and her companion followed.

"Liddy," she said, with a lighter heart, for youth and hope had
begun to reassert themselves; "you are to be my confidante for the
present--somebody must be--and I choose you.  Well, I shall take up
my abode here for a while.  Will you get a fire lighted, put down
a piece of carpet, and help me to make the place comfortable.
Afterwards, I want you and Maryann to bring up that little stump
bedstead in the small room, and the bed belonging to it, and a table,
and some other things....  What shall I do to pass the heavy time
away?"

"Hemming handkerchiefs is a very good thing," said Liddy.

"Oh no, no!  I hate needlework--I always did."

"Knitting?"

"And that, too."

"You might finish your sampler.  Only the carnations and peacocks
want filling in; and then it could be framed and glazed, and hung
beside your aunt's ma'am."

"Samplers are out of date--horribly countrified.  No Liddy, I'll
read.  Bring up some books--not new ones.  I haven't heart to read
anything new."

"Some of your uncle's old ones, ma'am?"

"Yes.  Some of those we stowed away in boxes."  A faint gleam
of humour passed over her face as she said: "Bring Beaumont and
Fletcher's _Maid's Tragedy_, and the _Mourning Bride_, and--let
me see--_Night Thoughts_, and the _Vanity of Human Wishes_."

"And that story of the black man, who murdered his wife Desdemona?
It is a nice dismal one that would suit you excellent just now."

"Now, Liddy, you've been looking into my books without telling me;
and I said you were not to!  How do you know it would suit me?  It
wouldn't suit me at all."

"But if the others do--"

"No, they don't; and I won't read dismal books.  Why should
I read dismal books, indeed?  Bring me _Love in a Village_,
and _Maid of the Mill_, and _Doctor Syntax_, and some volumes of
the _Spectator-_."

All that day Bathsheba and Liddy lived in the attic in a state of
barricade; a precaution which proved to be needless as against Troy,
for he did not appear in the neighbourhood or trouble them at all.
Bathsheba sat at the window till sunset, sometimes attempting to
read, at other times watching every movement outside without much
purpose, and listening without much interest to every sound.

The sun went down almost blood-red that night, and a livid cloud
received its rays in the east.  Up against this dark background the
west front of the church tower--the only part of the edifice visible
from the farm-house windows--rose distinct and lustrous, the vane
upon the summit bristling with rays.  Hereabouts, at six o'clock, the
young men of the village gathered, as was their custom, for a game
of Prisoners' base.  The spot had been consecrated to this ancient
diversion from time immemorial, the old stocks conveniently forming
a base facing the boundary of the churchyard, in front of which the
ground was trodden hard and bare as a pavement by the players.  She
could see the brown and black heads of the young lads darting about
right and left, their white shirt-sleeves gleaming in the sun;
whilst occasionally a shout and a peal of hearty laughter varied the
stillness of the evening air.  They continued playing for a quarter
of an hour or so, when the game concluded abruptly, and the players
leapt over the wall and vanished round to the other side behind a
yew-tree, which was also half behind a beech, now spreading in one
mass of golden foliage, on which the branches traced black lines.

"Why did the base-players finish their game so suddenly?" Bathsheba
inquired, the next time that Liddy entered the room.

"I think 'twas because two men came just then from Casterbridge and
began putting up a grand carved tombstone," said Liddy.  "The lads
went to see whose it was."

"Do you know?" Bathsheba asked.

"I don't," said Liddy.

TROY'S ROMANTICISM

When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his
first act was to cover the dead from sight.  This done he ascended
the stairs, and throwing himself down upon the bed dressed as he was,
he waited miserably for the morning.

Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty
hours.  His day had been spent in a way which varied very materially
from his intentions regarding it.  There is always an inertia to
be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct--not more in
ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as
if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.

Twenty pounds having been secured from Bathsheba, he had managed to
add to the sum every farthing he could muster on his own account,
which had been seven pounds ten.  With this money, twenty-seven
pounds ten in all, he had hastily driven from the gate that morning
to keep his appointment with Fanny Robin.

On reaching Casterbridge he left the horse and trap at an inn, and
at five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the lower end
of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet.  The clocks struck
the hour, and no Fanny appeared.  In fact, at that moment she was
being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union
poorhouse--the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had
ever been honoured with.  The quarter went, the half hour.  A rush of
recollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time
she had broken a serious engagement with him.  In anger he vowed
it should be the last, and at eleven o'clock, when he had lingered
and watched the stone of the bridge till he knew every lichen upon
their face and heard the chink of the ripples underneath till they
oppressed him, he jumped from his seat, went to the inn for his
gig, and in a bitter mood of indifference concerning the past, and
recklessness about the future, drove on to Budmouth races.

He reached the race-course at two o'clock, and remained either there
or in the town till nine.  But Fanny's image, as it had appeared to
him in the sombre shadows of that Saturday evening, returned to his
mind, backed up by Bathsheba's reproaches.  He vowed he would not
bet, and he kept his vow, for on leaving the town at nine o'clock in
the evening he had diminished his cash only to the extent of a few
shillings.

He trotted slowly homeward, and it was now that he was struck for the
first time with a thought that Fanny had been really prevented by
illness from keeping her promise.  This time she could have made no
mistake.  He regretted that he had not remained in Casterbridge and
made inquiries.  Reaching home he quietly unharnessed the horse and
came indoors, as we have seen, to the fearful shock that awaited him.

As soon as it grew light enough to distinguish objects, Troy arose
from the coverlet of the bed, and in a mood of absolute indifference
to Bathsheba's whereabouts, and almost oblivious of her existence, he
stalked downstairs and left the house by the back door.  His walk was
towards the churchyard, entering which he searched around till he
found a newly dug unoccupied grave--the grave dug the day before for
Fanny.  The position of this having been marked, he hastened on to
Casterbridge, only pausing and musing for a while at the hill whereon
he had last seen Fanny alive.

Reaching the town, Troy descended into a side street and entered a
pair of gates surmounted by a board bearing the words, "Lester, stone
and marble mason."  Within were lying about stones of all sizes and
designs, inscribed as being sacred to the memory of unnamed persons
who had not yet died.

Troy was so unlike himself now in look, word, and deed, that the
want of likeness was perceptible even to his own consciousness.  His
method of engaging himself in this business of purchasing a tomb was
that of an absolutely unpractised man.  He could not bring himself
to consider, calculate, or economize.  He waywardly wished for
something, and he set about obtaining it like a child in a nursery.
"I want a good tomb," he said to the man who stood in a little office
within the yard.  "I want as good a one as you can give me for
twenty-seven pounds."

It was all the money he possessed.

"That sum to include everything?"

"Everything.  Cutting the name, carriage to Weatherbury, and
erection.  And I want it now, at once."

"We could not get anything special worked this week."

"I must have it now."

"If you would like one of these in stock it could be got ready
immediately."

"Very well," said Troy, impatiently.  "Let's see what you have."

"The best I have in stock is this one," said the stone-cutter, going
into a shed.  "Here's a marble headstone beautifully crocketed, with
medallions beneath of typical subjects; here's the footstone after
the same pattern, and here's the coping to enclose the grave.  The
polishing alone of the set cost me eleven pounds--the slabs are the
best of their kind, and I can warrant them to resist rain and frost
for a hundred years without flying."

"And how much?"

"Well, I could add the name, and put it up at Weatherbury for the sum
you mention."

"Get it done to-day, and I'll pay the money now."

The man agreed, and wondered at such a mood in a visitor who wore not
a shred of mourning.  Troy then wrote the words which were to form
the inscription, settled the account and went away.  In the afternoon
he came back again, and found that the lettering was almost done.  He
waited in the yard till the tomb was packed, and saw it placed in the
cart and starting on its way to Weatherbury, giving directions to the
two men who were to accompany it to inquire of the sexton for the
grave of the person named in the inscription.

It was quite dark when Troy came out of Casterbridge.  He carried
rather a heavy basket upon his arm, with which he strode moodily
along the road, resting occasionally at bridges and gates, whereon
he deposited his burden for a time.  Midway on his journey he met,
returning in the darkness, the men and the waggon which had conveyed
the tomb.  He merely inquired if the work was done, and, on being
assured that it was, passed on again.

Troy entered Weatherbury churchyard about ten o'clock and went
immediately to the corner where he had marked the vacant grave early
in the morning.  It was on the obscure side of the tower, screened to
a great extent from the view of passers along the road--a spot which
until lately had been abandoned to heaps of stones and bushes of
alder, but now it was cleared and made orderly for interments, by
reason of the rapid filling of the ground elsewhere.

Here now stood the tomb as the men had stated, snow-white and shapely
in the gloom, consisting of head and foot-stone, and enclosing border
of marble-work uniting them.  In the midst was mould, suitable for
plants.

Troy deposited his basket beside the tomb, and vanished for a few
minutes.  When he returned he carried a spade and a lantern, the
light of which he directed for a few moments upon the marble, whilst
he read the inscription.  He hung his lantern on the lowest bough
of the yew-tree, and took from his basket flower-roots of several
varieties.  There were bundles of snow-drop, hyacinth and crocus
bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early
spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley,
forget-me-not, summer's farewell, meadow-saffron and others, for
the later seasons of the year.

Troy laid these out upon the grass, and with an impassive face set
to work to plant them.  The snowdrops were arranged in a line on the
outside of the coping, the remainder within the enclosure of the
grave.  The crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of
the summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and
forget-me-nots over her heart.  The remainder were dispersed in the
spaces between these.

Troy, in his prostration at this time, had no perception that in the
futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction
from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity.
Deriving his idiosyncrasies from both sides of the Channel, he showed
at such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the Englishman,
together with that blindness to the line where sentiment verges on
mawkishness, characteristic of the French.

It was a cloudy, muggy, and very dark night, and the rays from Troy's
lantern spread into the two old yews with a strange illuminating
power, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of cloud
above.  He felt a large drop of rain upon the back of his hand, and
presently one came and entered one of the holes of the lantern,
whereupon the candle sputtered and went out.  Troy was weary and
it being now not far from midnight, and the rain threatening to
increase, he resolved to leave the finishing touches of his labour
until the day should break.  He groped along the wall and over the
graves in the dark till he found himself round at the north side.
Here he entered the porch, and, reclining upon the bench within,
fell asleep.

THE GURGOYLE: ITS DOINGS

The tower of Weatherbury Church was a square erection of
fourteenth-century date, having two stone gurgoyles on each of the
four faces of its parapet.  Of these eight carved protuberances
only two at this time continued to serve the purpose of their
erection--that of spouting the water from the lead roof within.  One
mouth in each front had been closed by bygone church-wardens as
superfluous, and two others were broken away and choked--a matter not
of much consequence to the wellbeing of the tower, for the two mouths
which still remained open and active were gaping enough to do all the
work.

It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the
vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits
of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic
art there is no disputing the proposition.  Weatherbury tower was a
somewhat early instance of the use of an ornamental parapet in parish
as distinct from cathedral churches, and the gurgoyles, which are the
necessary correlatives of a parapet, were exceptionally prominent--of
the boldest cut that the hand could shape, and of the most original
design that a human brain could conceive.  There was, so to speak,
that symmetry in their distortion which is less the characteristic
of British than of Continental grotesques of the period.  All the
eight were different from each other.  A beholder was convinced that
nothing on earth could be more hideous than those he saw on the north
side until he went round to the south.  Of the two on this latter
face, only that at the south-eastern corner concerns the story.  It
was too human to be called like a dragon, too impish to be like a
man, too animal to be like a fiend, and not enough like a bird to be
called a griffin.  This horrible stone entity was fashioned as if
covered with a wrinkled hide; it had short, erect ears, eyes starting
from their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the
corners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pull open to give
free passage to the water it vomited.  The lower row of teeth was
quite washed away, though the upper still remained.  Here and thus,
jutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested
as a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the
surrounding landscape, voicelessly in dry weather, and in wet with a
gurgling and snorting sound.

Troy slept on in the porch, and the rain increased outside. Presently
the gurgoyle spat.  In due time a small stream began to trickle
through the seventy feet of aerial space between its mouth and
the ground, which the water-drops smote like duckshot in their
accelerated velocity.  The stream thickened in substance, and
increased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from
the side of the tower.  When the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless
torrent the stream dashed downward in volumes.

We follow its course to the ground at this point of time. The end of
the liquid parabola has come forward from the wall, has advanced over
the plinth mouldings, over a heap of stones, over the marble border,
into the midst of Fanny Robin's grave.

The force of the stream had, until very lately, been received upon
some loose stones spread thereabout, which had acted as a shield to
the soil under the onset.  These during the summer had been cleared
from the ground, and there was now nothing to resist the down-fall
but the bare earth.  For several years the stream had not spouted
so far from the tower as it was doing on this night, and such a
contingency had been over-looked.  Sometimes this obscure corner
received no inhabitant for the space of two or three years, and
then it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or other sinner of
undignified sins.

The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its
vengeance into the grave.  The rich tawny mould was stirred into
motion, and boiled like chocolate.  The water accumulated and washed
deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the
night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created
by the deluging rain.  The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny's
repentant lover began to move and writhe in their bed.  The
winter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of
mud.  Soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass
like ingredients in a cauldron.  Plants of the tufted species were
loosened, rose to the surface, and floated off.

Troy did not awake from his comfortless sleep till it was broad day.
Not having been in bed for two nights his shoulders felt stiff, his
feet tender, and his head heavy.  He remembered his position, arose,
shivered, took the spade, and again went out.

The rain had quite ceased, and the sun was shining through the
green, brown, and yellow leaves, now sparkling and varnished by the
raindrops to the brightness of similar effects in the landscapes of
Ruysdael and Hobbema, and full of all those infinite beauties that
arise from the union of water and colour with high lights.  The air
was rendered so transparent by the heavy fall of rain that the autumn
hues of the middle distance were as rich as those near at hand, and
the remote fields intercepted by the angle of the tower appeared in
the same plane as the tower itself.

He entered the gravel path which would take him behind the tower.
The path, instead of being stony as it had been the night before, was
browned over with a thin coating of mud.  At one place in the path
he saw a tuft of stringy roots washed white and clean as a bundle
of tendons.  He picked it up--surely it could not be one of the
primroses he had planted?  He saw a bulb, another, and another as
he advanced.  Beyond doubt they were the crocuses.  With a face of
perplexed dismay Troy turned the corner and then beheld the wreck
the stream had made.

The pool upon the grave had soaked away into the ground, and in its
place was a hollow.  The disturbed earth was washed over the grass
and pathway in the guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and it
spotted the marble tombstone with the same stains.  Nearly all the
flowers were washed clean out of the ground, and they lay, roots
upwards, on the spots whither they had been splashed by the stream.

Troy's brow became heavily contracted.  He set his teeth closely,
and his compressed lips moved as those of one in great pain.  This
singular accident, by a strange confluence of emotions in him, was
felt as the sharpest sting of all.  Troy's face was very expressive,
and any observer who had seen him now would hardly have believed him
to be a man who had laughed, and sung, and poured love-trifles into
a woman's ear.  To curse his miserable lot was at first his impulse,
but even that lowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whose
absence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of the morbid
misery which wrung him.  The sight, coming as it did, superimposed
upon the other dark scenery of the previous days, formed a sort of
climax to the whole panorama, and it was more than he could endure.
Sanguine by nature, Troy had a power of eluding grief by simply
adjourning it.  He could put off the consideration of any particular
spectre till the matter had become old and softened by time.  The
planting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species
of elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention
had been known and circumvented.

Almost for the first time in his life, Troy, as he stood by this
dismantled grave, wished himself another man.  It is seldom that a
person with much animal spirit does not feel that the fact of his
life being his own is the one qualification which singles it out as a
more hopeful life than that of others who may actually resemble him
in every particular.  Troy had felt, in his transient way, hundreds
of times, that he could not envy other people their condition,
because the possession of that condition would have necessitated a
different personality, when he desired no other than his own.  He had
not minded the peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his
life, the meteor-like uncertainty of all that related to him, because
these appertained to the hero of his story, without whom there would
have been no story at all for him; and it seemed to be only in the
nature of things that matters would right themselves at some proper
date and wind up well.  This very morning the illusion completed its
disappearance, and, as it were, all of a sudden, Troy hated himself.
The suddenness was probably more apparent than real.  A coral reef
which just comes short of the ocean surface is no more to the horizon
than if it had never been begun, and the mere finishing stroke is
what often appears to create an event which has long been potentially
an accomplished thing.

He stood and meditated--a miserable man.  Whither should he
go?  "He that is accursed, let him be accursed still," was the
pitiless anathema written in this spoliated effort of his new-born
solicitousness.  A man who has spent his primal strength in
journeying in one direction has not much spirit left for reversing
his course.  Troy had, since yesterday, faintly reversed his; but the
merest opposition had disheartened him.  To turn about would have
been hard enough under the greatest providential encouragement; but
to find that Providence, far from helping him into a new course, or
showing any wish that he might adopt one, actually jeered his first
trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature
could bear.

He slowly withdrew from the grave.  He did not attempt to fill up the
hole, replace the flowers, or do anything at all.  He simply threw up
his cards and forswore his game for that time and always.  Going out
of the churchyard silently and unobserved--none of the villagers
having yet risen--he passed down some fields at the back, and emerged
just as secretly upon the high road.  Shortly afterwards he had gone
from the village.

Meanwhile, Bathsheba remained a voluntary prisoner in the attic.  The
door was kept locked, except during the entries and exits of Liddy,
for whom a bed had been arranged in a small adjoining room.  The
light of Troy's lantern in the churchyard was noticed about ten
o'clock by the maid-servant, who casually glanced from the window in
that direction whilst taking her supper, and she called Bathsheba's
attention to it.  They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time,
until Liddy was sent to bed.

Bathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night.  When her attendant
was unconscious and softly breathing in the next room, the mistress
of the house was still looking out of the window at the faint gleam
spreading from among the trees--not in a steady shine, but blinking
like a revolving coast-light, though this appearance failed to
suggest to her that a person was passing and repassing in front
of it.  Bathsheba sat here till it began to rain, and the light
vanished, when she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed and re-enact
in a worn mind the lurid scene of yesternight.

Almost before the first faint sign of dawn appeared she arose again,
and opened the window to obtain a full breathing of the new morning
air, the panes being now wet with trembling tears left by the night
rain, each one rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose-hued
slashes through a cloud low down in the awakening sky.  From the
trees came the sound of steady dripping upon the drifted leaves under
them, and from the direction of the church she could hear another
noise--peculiar, and not intermittent like the rest, the purl of
water falling into a pool.

Liddy knocked at eight o'clock, and Bathsheba un-locked the door.

"What a heavy rain we've had in the night, ma'am!" said Liddy, when
her inquiries about breakfast had been made.

"Yes, very heavy."

"Did you hear the strange noise from the churchyard?"

"I heard one strange noise.  I've been thinking it must have been the
water from the tower spouts."

"Well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am.  He's now gone on
to see."

"Oh!  Gabriel has been here this morning!"

"Only just looked in in passing--quite in his old way, which I
thought he had left off lately.  But the tower spouts used to spatter
on the stones, and we are puzzled, for this was like the boiling of a
pot."

Not being able to read, think, or work, Bathsheba asked Liddy to stay
and breakfast with her.  The tongue of the more childish woman still
ran upon recent events.  "Are you going across to the church, ma'am?"
she asked.

"Not that I know of," said Bathsheba.

"I thought you might like to go and see where they have put Fanny.
The trees hide the place from your window."

Bathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting her husband.  "Has
Mr. Troy been in to-night?" she said.

"No, ma'am; I think he's gone to Budmouth."

Budmouth!  The sound of the word carried with it a much diminished
perspective of him and his deeds; there were thirteen miles interval
betwixt them now.  She hated questioning Liddy about her husband's
movements, and indeed had hitherto sedulously avoided doing so; but
now all the house knew that there had been some dreadful disagreement
between them, and it was futile to attempt disguise.  Bathsheba had
reached a stage at which people cease to have any appreciative regard
for public opinion.

"What makes you think he has gone there?" she said.

"Laban Tall saw him on the Budmouth road this morning before
breakfast."

Bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward heaviness of the
past twenty-four hours which had quenched the vitality of youth in
her without substituting the philosophy of maturer years, and she
resolved to go out and walk a little way.  So when breakfast was
over, she put on her bonnet, and took a direction towards the church.
It was nine o'clock, and the men having returned to work again from
their first meal, she was not likely to meet many of them in the
road.  Knowing that Fanny had been laid in the reprobates' quarter
of the graveyard, called in the parish "behind church," which was
invisible from the road, it was impossible to resist the impulse to
enter and look upon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she at
the same time dreaded to see.  She had been unable to overcome an
impression that some connection existed between her rival and the
light through the trees.

Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole and the tomb, its
delicately veined surface splashed and stained just as Troy had seen
it and left it two hours earlier.  On the other side of the scene
stood Gabriel.  His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her
arrival having been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted his
attention.  Bathsheba did not at once perceive that the grand tomb
and the disturbed grave were Fanny's, and she looked on both sides
and around for some humbler mound, earthed up and clodded in the
usual way.  Then her eye followed Oak's, and she read the words with
which the inscription opened:--

     ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY
      IN BELOVED MEMORY OF
           FANNY ROBIN

Oak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly and learn how
she received this knowledge of the authorship of the work, which to
himself had caused considerable astonishment.  But such discoveries
did not much affect her now.  Emotional convulsions seemed to have
become the commonplaces of her history, and she bade him good
morning, and asked him to fill in the hole with the spade which
was standing by.  Whilst Oak was doing as she desired, Bathsheba
collected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic
manipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman's
gardening, and which flowers seem to understand and thrive upon.  She
requested Oak to get the churchwardens to turn the leadwork at the
mouth of the gurgoyle that hung gaping down upon them, that by this
means the stream might be directed sideways, and a repetition of the
accident prevented.  Finally, with the superfluous magnanimity of
a woman whose narrower instincts have brought down bitterness upon
her instead of love, she wiped the mud spots from the tomb as if she
rather liked its words than otherwise, and went again home. [2]

   [Footnote 2: The local tower and churchyard do not answer
   precisely to the foregoing description.]

ADVENTURES BY THE SHORE

Troy wandered along towards the south.  A composite feeling, made up
of disgust with the, to him, humdrum tediousness of a farmer's life,
gloomy images of her who lay in the churchyard, remorse, and a
general averseness to his wife's society, impelled him to seek a
home in any place on earth save Weatherbury.  The sad accessories of
Fanny's end confronted him as vivid pictures which threatened to be
indelible, and made life in Bathsheba's house intolerable.  At three
in the afternoon he found himself at the foot of a slope more than
a mile in length, which ran to the ridge of a range of hills lying
parallel with the shore, and forming a monotonous barrier between
the basin of cultivated country inland and the wilder scenery of the
coast.  Up the hill stretched a road nearly straight and perfectly
white, the two sides approaching each other in a gradual taper till
they met the sky at the top about two miles off.  Throughout the
length of this narrow and irksome inclined plane not a sign of life
was visible on this garish afternoon.  Troy toiled up the road with a
languor and depression greater than any he had experienced for many a
day and year before.  The air was warm and muggy, and the top seemed
to recede as he approached.

At last he reached the summit, and a wide and novel prospect burst
upon him with an effect almost like that of the Pacific upon Balboa's
gaze.  The broad steely sea, marked only by faint lines, which had
a semblance of being etched thereon to a degree not deep enough to
disturb its general evenness, stretched the whole width of his front
and round to the right, where, near the town and port of Budmouth,
the sun bristled down upon it, and banished all colour, to substitute
in its place a clear oily polish.  Nothing moved in sky, land, or
sea, except a frill of milkwhite foam along the nearer angles of the
shore, shreds of which licked the contiguous stones like tongues.

He descended and came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs.
Troy's nature freshened within him; he thought he would rest and
bathe here before going farther.  He undressed and plunged in.
Inside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being
smooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean swell, Troy
presently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock which
formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean.
Unfortunately for Troy a current unknown to him existed outside,
which, unimportant to craft of any burden, was awkward for a swimmer
who might be taken in it unawares.  Troy found himself carried to
the left and then round in a swoop out to sea.

He now recollected the place and its sinister character.  Many
bathers had there prayed for a dry death from time to time, and, like
Gonzalo also, had been unanswered; and Troy began to deem it possible
that he might be added to their number.  Not a boat of any kind was
at present within sight, but far in the distance Budmouth lay upon
the sea, as it were quietly regarding his efforts, and beside the
town the harbour showed its position by a dim meshwork of ropes and
spars.  After well-nigh exhausting himself in attempts to get back to
the mouth of the cove, in his weakness swimming several inches deeper
than was his wont, keeping up his breathing entirely by his nostrils,
turning upon his back a dozen times over, swimming _en papillon_, and
so on, Troy resolved as a last resource to tread water at a slight
incline, and so endeavour to reach the shore at any point, merely
giving himself a gentle impetus inwards whilst carried on in the
general direction of the tide.  This, necessarily a slow process,
he found to be not altogether so difficult, and though there was no
choice of a landing-place--the objects on shore passing by him in a
sad and slow procession--he perceptibly approached the extremity of a
spit of land yet further to the right, now well defined against the
sunny portion of the horizon.  While the swimmer's eyes were fixed
upon the spit as his only means of salvation on this side of the
Unknown, a moving object broke the outline of the extremity, and
immediately a ship's boat appeared manned with several sailor lads,
her bows towards the sea.

All Troy's vigour spasmodically revived to prolong the struggle yet a
little further.  Swimming with his right arm, he held up his left to
hail them, splashing upon the waves, and shouting with all his might.
From the position of the setting sun his white form was distinctly
visible upon the now deep-hued bosom of the sea to the east of the
boat, and the men saw him at once.  Backing their oars and putting
the boat about, they pulled towards him with a will, and in five or
six minutes from the time of his first halloo, two of the sailors
hauled him in over the stern.

They formed part of a brig's crew, and had come ashore for sand.
Lending him what little clothing they could spare among them as a
slight protection against the rapidly cooling air, they agreed to
land him in the morning; and without further delay, for it was
growing late, they made again towards the roadstead where their
vessel lay.

And now night drooped slowly upon the wide watery levels in front;
and at no great distance from them, where the shoreline curved round,
and formed a long riband of shade upon the horizon, a series of
points of yellow light began to start into existence, denoting the
spot to be the site of Budmouth, where the lamps were being lighted
along the parade.  The cluck of their oars was the only sound of any
distinctness upon the sea, and as they laboured amid the thickening
shades the lamp-lights grew larger, each appearing to send a flaming
sword deep down into the waves before it, until there arose, among
other dim shapes of the kind, the form of the vessel for which they
were bound.

DOUBTS ARISE--DOUBTS LINGER

Bathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband's absence from
hours to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling
of relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the
level commonly designated as indifference.  She belonged to him: the
certainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable
probabilities of its issue so bounded that she could not speculate on
contingencies.  Taking no further interest in herself as a splendid
woman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in
contemplating her probable fate as a singular wretch; for Bathsheba
drew herself and her future in colours that no reality could exceed
for darkness.  Her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened,
and with it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since
anxiety recognizes a better and a worse alternative, and Bathsheba
had made up her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had
ceased for her.  Soon, or later--and that not very late--her husband
would be home again.  And then the days of their tenancy of the Upper
Farm would be numbered.  There had originally been shown by the agent
to the estate some distrust of Bathsheba's tenure as James Everdene's
successor, on the score of her sex, and her youth, and her beauty;
but the peculiar nature of her uncle's will, his own frequent
testimony before his death to her cleverness in such a pursuit, and
her vigorous marshalling of the numerous flocks and herds which came
suddenly into her hands before negotiations were concluded, had won
confidence in her powers, and no further objections had been raised.
She had latterly been in great doubt as to what the legal effects of
her marriage would be upon her position; but no notice had been taken
as yet of her change of name, and only one point was clear--that in
the event of her own or her husband's inability to meet the agent at
the forthcoming January rent-day, very little consideration would be
shown, and, for that matter, very little would be deserved.  Once out
of the farm, the approach of poverty would be sure.

Hence Bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken
off.  She was not a woman who could hope on without good materials
for the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and
energetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes
on as a sort of clockwork which the merest food and shelter are
sufficient to wind up; and perceiving clearly that her mistake had
been a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for
the end.

The first Saturday after Troy's departure she went to Casterbridge
alone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage.  On
this Saturday Bathsheba was passing slowly on foot through the crowd
of rural business-men gathered as usual in front of the market-house,
who were as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that
those healthy lives were dearly paid for by exclusion from possible
aldermanship, when a man, who had apparently been following her,
said some words to another on her left hand.  Bathsheba's ears were
keen as those of any wild animal, and she distinctly heard what the
speaker said, though her back was towards him.

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

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

"I have some awkward news to break to her.  Her husband is drowned."

As if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, Bathsheba gasped out, "No,
it is not true; it cannot be true!"  Then she said and heard no more.
The ice of self-command which had latterly gathered over her was
broken, and the currents burst forth again, and overwhelmed her.  A
darkness came into her eyes, and she fell.

But not to the ground.  A gloomy man, who had been observing her from
under the portico of the old corn-exchange when she passed through
the group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her
exclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down.

"What is it?" said Boldwood, looking up at the bringer of the big
news, as he supported her.

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

Thereupon a strange fire lighted up Boldwood's eye, and his face
flushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought.
Everybody's glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious
Bathsheba.  He lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down
the folds of her dress as a child might have taken a storm-beaten
bird and arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the
pavement to the King's Arms Inn.  Here he passed with her under the
archway into a private room; and by the time he had deposited--so
lothly--the precious burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her
eyes.  Remembering all that had occurred, she murmured, "I want to go
home!"

Boldwood left the room.  He stood for a moment in the passage to
recover his senses.  The experience had been too much for his
consciousness to keep up with, and now that he had grasped it it had
gone again.  For those few heavenly, golden moments she had been in
his arms.  What did it matter about her not knowing it?  She had been
close to his breast; he had been close to hers.

He started onward again, and sending a woman to her, went out to
ascertain all the facts of the case.  These appeared to be limited to
what he had already heard.  He then ordered her horse to be put into
the gig, and when all was ready returned to inform her.  He found
that, though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for
the Budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all
there was to know.

Being hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town,
Boldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get
her a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, which was more
comfortable than her own conveyance.  These proposals Bathsheba
gently declined, and the farmer at once departed.

About half-an-hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and
took her seat and the reins as usual--in external appearance much
as if nothing had happened.  She went out of the town by a tortuous
back street, and drove slowly along, unconscious of the road and the
scene.  The first shades of evening were showing themselves when
Bathsheba reached home, where, silently alighting and leaving the
horse in the hands of the boy, she proceeded at once upstairs.
Liddy met her on the landing.  The news had preceded Bathsheba to
Weatherbury by half-an-hour, and Liddy looked inquiringly into her
mistress's face.  Bathsheba had nothing to say.

She entered her bedroom and sat by the window, and thought and
thought till night enveloped her, and the extreme lines only of her
shape were visible.  Somebody came to the door, knocked, and opened
it.

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

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

"What do you mean?"

"Mourning."

"No, no, no," said Bathsheba, hurriedly.

"But I suppose there must be something done for poor--"

"Not at present, I think.  It is not necessary."

"Why not, ma'am?"

"Because he's still alive."

"How do you know that?" said Liddy, amazed.

"I don't know it.  But wouldn't it have been different, or shouldn't
I have heard more, or wouldn't they have found him, Liddy?--or--I
don't know how it is, but death would have been different from how
this is.  I am perfectly convinced that he is still alive!"

Bathsheba remained firm in this opinion till Monday, when two
circumstances conjoined to shake it.  The first was a short paragraph
in the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodizing
pen formidable presumptive evidence of Troy's death by drowning,
contained the important testimony of a young Mr. Barker, M.D., of
Budmouth, who spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident, in a
letter to the editor.  In this he stated that he was passing over the
cliff on the remoter side of the cove just as the sun was setting.
At that time he saw a bather carried along in the current outside the
mouth of the cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a
poor chance for him unless he should be possessed of unusual muscular
powers.  He drifted behind a projection of the coast, and Mr. Barker
followed along the shore in the same direction.  But by the time that
he could reach an elevation sufficiently great to command a view of
the sea beyond, dusk had set in, and nothing further was to be seen.

The other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became
necessary for her to examine and identify them--though this had
virtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in
his pockets.  It was so evident to her in the midst of her agitation
that Troy had undressed in the full conviction of dressing again
almost immediately, that the notion that anything but death could
have prevented him was a perverse one to entertain.

Then Bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their
opinion; strange that she should not be.  A strange reflection
occurred to her, causing her face to flush.  Suppose that Troy had
followed Fanny into another world. Had he done this intentionally,
yet contrived to make his death appear like an accident?
Nevertheless, this thought of how the apparent might differ from the
real--made vivid by her bygone jealousy of Fanny, and the remorse
he had shown that night--did not blind her to the perception of a
likelier difference, less tragic, but to herself far more disastrous.

When alone late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed
down, Bathsheba took Troy's watch into her hand, which had been
restored to her with the rest of the articles belonging to him.  She
opened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago.  There was
the little coil of pale hair which had been as the fuze to this great
explosion.

"He was hers and she was his; they should be gone together," she
said.  "I am nothing to either of them, and why should I keep
her hair?"  She took it in her hand, and held it over the fire.
"No--I'll not burn it--I'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!"
she added, snatching back her hand.

Liddy offers to sit up and watch over Fanny's coffin with Bathsheba until Troy gets home. Bathsheba refuses, asks Liddy if she has heard anything strange, and bursts into tears. Liddy leaves the room and returns, saying that a laborer's wife, Maryann Money, has heard that Fanny has had a baby . Bathsheba does not want to believe it. Alone, her first instinct is to seek Gabriel's advice. He has hidden the truth from her, not knowing that she has seen Fanny on the way back from Casterbridge. Bathsheba goes to Gabriel's cottage and looks in the window. She sees him praying and is too nervous to knock. When she returns, obsessed by the uncertainty of whether the coffin contains a baby or not, Bathsheba finally takes a screwdriver and opens the lid of the coffin. Inside lies Fanny, with hair the same color as the curl in Troy's watch, and a baby in her arms. In a stupor, Bathsheba puts flowers around her in the coffin and waits for her husband to return. When Troy enters the house, not yet having heard of Fanny's death, his first instinct is to wonder who in the house has died. When he approaches the coffin and sees Fanny, he leans down to kiss her; he tells Bathsheba he has been a bad, black-hearted man. He declares that Fanny is his wife in the eyes of Heaven, and tells Bathsheba, "I am not morally yours." Bathsheba leaves the room and runs out of the house. Bathsheba stays outside all night, and when Liddy comes looking for her in the morning, she has lost her voice. Liddy tells her that Troy has left, and Bathsheba barricades herself and Liddy in the attic to avoid Troy when he returns. Troy never returns, however, and later that day there is news that two men from Casterbridge are putting up a tombstone in Weatherbury. Chapter 45 backs up and tells us what has happened from Troy's point of view. He has gone on Monday morning to meet Fanny and, not finding her at the appointed place, gets angry and goes to the Budmouth races instead. While there, he reflects and regrets not having made more inquiries in Casterbridge. He comes home to find Bathsheba in the room with Fanny's open coffin and a dead baby by Fanny's side. Troy spends his last 27 pounds buying a gravestone for Fanny in Casterbridge. It is installed and he spends the evening planting an absurd number of flowers around her grave. Exhausted, he goes to sleep in the church overlooking Fanny's grave. Overnight, a strong rain comes. Through a twist of fate, the gargoyle on the church has a spout that, in heavy rain, pours directly onto Fanny's grave, displacing all the flowers and spattering the white gravestone with mud. When Troy awakes, he finds his hard work ruined. Discouraged, he does not attempt to fix it but leaves town. In the morning, Bathsheba learns that Troy has been seen leaving town, and she emerges from the attic. She visits Fanny's grave and sees the damage the rain has done. With Gabriel's help, Bathsheba replants the flowers, has the gargoyle spout altered, and cleans off the gravestone. The inscription reads, "Erected by Francis Troy in Beloved Memory of Fanny Robin. " Chapter 47 shows Troy wandering around the countryside. When he reaches the coast, he goes swimming, leaving his clothes and watch on the bank. As he swims a current pulls him from shore, and he nearly drowns. At the last minute, a boat of sailors picks him up and saves him. In the meantime, Bathsheba feels certain that Troy is coming back, and she worries distractedly about the farm. Despite Troy's heartlessness, she still feels bound to him. When she goes to the market a stranger tells her that he saw Troy drown, but Bathsheba cannot believe this is true. It is only when Troy's clothes arrive, with the watch still containing a curl of Fanny's hair, that Bathsheba begins to accept that he is dead.

Commentary This is a dramatic section, covering a great deal of action in a small space. Chapter 43 focuses on the intense emotional anxiety that leads Bathsheba first to open Fanny's coffin, then to confront Troy when he returns home. It is crucial that this whole section is told from Bathsheba's point of view, making us aware of her jealousy as it wars with her generosity. Bathsheba turns to Gabriel in the height of her trouble and gradually begins to realize Gabriel's selflessness, his intelligence and goodness. Hardy further builds the drama by waiting to disclose Troy's experiences on this fateful day. Troy has resolved to make amends to Fanny, but his decision comes too late, and in his self-reproach he behaves callously toward Bathsheba. Although Bathsheba resents Fanny, her sympathy toward her shows her to be far more sensitive than she has previously appeared; her dependence on Troy has brought her humility. The gargoyle's destruction of Fanny's carefully attended grave seems like a ridiculous contrivance on the part of Hardy, and it is one of the least credible coincidences in the novel. At the same time, there is significance to the fact that Bathsheba succeeds in tending Fanny's grave while Troy does not: Bathsheba has learned generosity and sympathy through her own weakness for Troy, a trait she did not possess at the beginning of the novel. Troy's regret does not benefit Fanny, serving only to hurt Bathsheba. Thus, he is not worthy to decorate Fanny's grave.