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.]

One of the ugly gargoyles of the church parapet jutted out over the area newly assigned for charity graves. This stony land had been uncared for, and as a heavy downpour developed, water gushed forth, falling upon the grave of Fanny Robin some seventy feet below. The carefully planted bulbs were washed away and floated off in the mud. When he awoke, Troy was stunned into disbelief "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." Not informing anyone, he left the village. Bathsheba remained imprisoned by her own choice. The night before, Liddy had noticed the light of Troy's lantern in the graveyard, and they both had watched it for a time, not knowing whose it was. In the morning both women commented on the heavy rain and the noise of the water coming from the spouts. Liddy noted that the water used to merely spatter on the stones, but "this was like the boiling of a pot." Asking whether Bathsheba wished to see the gravesite, Liddy also volunteered the information that the master must have gone to Budmouth, for Laban had seen him on that road. Bathsheba went to Fanny's corner of the churchyard. Here she saw the spattered tomb. Gabriel was standing nearby. He had already seen the inscription: "Erected by Francis Troy in Beloved Memory of Fanny Robin." He looked to see how Bathsheba would react to this. He himself was astonished, but Bathsheba was calm. She asked Gabriel to fill in the hole, and, picking up the plants, she carefully set back those that had been washed out. She requested Gabriel to ask the wardens to redirect the mouth of the gargoyle to a different angle. Before departing, she wiped the tomb clean.

Providence is often hostile to man in Hardy's world. Troy wants to change, as his gesture toward Fanny shows, "but to find that Providence, far from helping him into a new course . . . actually jeered his first trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature could bear."


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.

"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." Climbing a hill, he saw the sea. There was a small pool enclosed by the cliffs, and Troy was drawn to it for refreshment. He undressed and swam out between two projecting spires of rock, not knowing of a strong current there. He was carried out to sea and at that moment remembered hearing of danger in this area. He tried to direct his strokes toward shore but failed because of fatigue. Then a ship's boat appeared. Troy's vigor revived, and he hailed it and was rescued. The sailors were part of a brig's crew, coming ashore for sand. They lent him clothes and took him to their vessel.

Seeking solitude seems appropriate for Troy at this time. That a boat should appear at the moment when he is drowning is the author's manipulation of the plot, but the action moves so swiftly that the reader is not inclined to pause and meditate on the amount of coincidence Hardy utilizes.


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.

Bathsheba accepted Troy's absence with a mixture of surprise and relief. Sooner or later he would return, and she feared only the loss of the farm and the poverty which that would bring. To all else she was indifferent: "Perceiving clearly that her mistake had been a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for the end." The next Saturday, when she went to market, a man sought her out to say that Troy had drowned. Bathsheba fainted. Boldwood saw her and caught her as she fell. He questioned the man and learned that a coastguardsman had found Troy's clothes on the shore. Boldwood's eyes flashed excitedly as he carried Bathsheba to the King's Arms Inn, where he arranged for a woman to look after her. He then went out to get further particulars, but none were forthcoming. When he offered to drive Bathsheba home, she declined, preferring to drive herself. Word had already reached the farm, and Liddy met Bathsheba. A newspaper paragraph told how a physician had driven by the cliff and had seen a swimmer being carried off by the current. He doubted that even a strong swimmer could escape. This and the finding of Troy's clothing seemed to corroborate that Troy was dead. But when Liddy mentioned the need for mourning clothes, Bathsheba declined to wear them. She was convinced that Troy was still alive. Late at night "Bathsheba took Troy's watch into her hand. . . . She opened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago. There was the little coil of pale hair that had been as the fuse 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 held it to the fire but then pulled it back. "'No -- I'll not burn it -- I'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!' she added."

Circumstantial evidence satisfies most people that Troy is dead, but something will not permit Bathsheba to accept their conclusions. She appears able to withstand all that has happened and continues to go about her duties, albeit somewhat mechanically. The fact that her sympathy for Fanny outweighs her resentment testifies that she has retained at least some emotional equilibrium.


OAK'S ADVANCEMENT--A GREAT HOPE

The later autumn and the winter drew on apace, and the leaves lay
thick upon the turf of the glades and the mosses of the woods.
Bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended
feeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which
was not precisely peacefulness.  While she had known him to be alive
she could have thought of his death with equanimity; but now that it
might be she had lost him, she regretted that he was not hers still.
She kept the farm going, raked in her profits without caring keenly
about them, and expended money on ventures because she had done so
in bygone days, which, though not long gone by, seemed infinitely
removed from her present.  She looked back upon that past over a
great gulf, as if she were now a dead person, having the faculty of
meditation still left in her, by means of which, like the mouldering
gentlefolk of the poet's story, she could sit and ponder what a gift
life used to be.

However, one excellent result of her general apathy was the
long-delayed installation of Oak as bailiff; but he having virtually
exercised that function for a long time already, the change, beyond
the substantial increase of wages it brought, was little more than a
nominal one addressed to the outside world.

Boldwood lived secluded and inactive.  Much of his wheat and all his
barley of that season had been spoilt by the rain.  It sprouted,
grew into intricate mats, and was ultimately thrown to the pigs in
armfuls.  The strange neglect which had produced this ruin and waste
became the subject of whispered talk among all the people round; and
it was elicited from one of Boldwood's men that forgetfulness had
nothing to do with it, for he had been reminded of the danger to his
corn as many times and as persistently as inferiors dared to do.
The sight of the pigs turning in disgust from the rotten ears seemed
to arouse Boldwood, and he one evening sent for Oak.  Whether it
was suggested by Bathsheba's recent act of promotion or not, the
farmer proposed at the interview that Gabriel should undertake the
superintendence of the Lower Farm as well as of Bathsheba's, because
of the necessity Boldwood felt for such aid, and the impossibility
of discovering a more trustworthy man. Gabriel's malignant star was
assuredly setting fast.

Bathsheba, when she learnt of this proposal--for Oak was obliged to
consult her--at first languidly objected.  She considered that the
two farms together were too extensive for the observation of one
man.  Boldwood, who was apparently determined by personal rather than
commercial reasons, suggested that Oak should be furnished with a
horse for his sole use, when the plan would present no difficulty,
the two farms lying side by side.  Boldwood did not directly
communicate with her during these negotiations, only speaking to Oak,
who was the go-between throughout.  All was harmoniously arranged at
last, and we now see Oak mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting
the length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit
of surveillance, as if the crops all belonged to him--the actual
mistress of the one-half and the master of the other, sitting in
their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion.

Out of this there arose, during the spring succeeding, a talk in the
parish that Gabriel Oak was feathering his nest fast.

"Whatever d'ye think," said Susan Tall, "Gable Oak is coming it quite
the dand.  He now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two
or three times a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows
the name of smockfrock.  When I see people strut enough to be cut up
into bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more!"

It was eventually known that Gabriel, though paid a fixed wage by
Bathsheba independent of the fluctuations of agricultural profits,
had made an engagement with Boldwood by which Oak was to receive a
share of the receipts--a small share certainly, yet it was money of
a higher quality than mere wages, and capable of expansion in a way
that wages were not.  Some were beginning to consider Oak a "near"
man, for though his condition had thus far improved, he lived in no
better style than before, occupying the same cottage, paring his own
potatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed
with his own hands.  But as Oak was not only provokingly indifferent
to public opinion, but a man who clung persistently to old habits and
usages, simply because they were old, there was room for doubt as to
his motives.

A great hope had latterly germinated in Boldwood, whose unreasoning
devotion to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness
which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could
weaken or destroy.  This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain
of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture
that Troy was drowned.  He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned
the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the
wildness of the dream.  Bathsheba having at last been persuaded to
wear mourning, her appearance as she entered the church in that
guise was in itself a weekly addition to his faith that a time was
coming--very far off perhaps, yet surely nearing--when his waiting on
events should have its reward.  How long he might have to wait he had
not yet closely considered.  What he would try to recognize was that
the severe schooling she had been subjected to had made Bathsheba
much more considerate than she had formerly been of the feelings of
others, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the
future to marry any man at all, that man would be himself.  There was
a substratum of good feeling in her: her self-reproach for the injury
she had thoughtlessly done him might be depended upon now to a much
greater extent than before her infatuation and disappointment.  It
would be possible to approach her by the channel of her good nature,
and to suggest a friendly businesslike compact between them for
fulfilment at some future day, keeping the passionate side of his
desire entirely out of her sight.  Such was Boldwood's hope.

To the eyes of the middle-aged, Bathsheba was perhaps additionally
charming just now.  Her exuberance of spirit was pruned down; the
original phantom of delight had shown herself to be not too bright
for human nature's daily food, and she had been able to enter this
second poetical phase without losing much of the first in the
process.

Bathsheba's return from a two months' visit to her old aunt at
Norcombe afforded the impassioned and yearning farmer a pretext for
inquiring directly after her--now possibly in the ninth month of her
widowhood--and endeavouring to get a notion of her state of mind
regarding him.  This occurred in the middle of the haymaking, and
Boldwood contrived to be near Liddy, who was assisting in the fields.

"I am glad to see you out of doors, Lydia," he said pleasantly.

She simpered, and wondered in her heart why he should speak so
frankly to her.

"I hope Mrs. Troy is quite well after her long absence," he
continued, in a manner expressing that the coldest-hearted neighbour
could scarcely say less about her.

"She is quite well, sir."

"And cheerful, I suppose."

"Yes, cheerful."

"Fearful, did you say?"

"Oh no.  I merely said she was cheerful."

"Tells you all her affairs?"

"No, sir."

"Some of them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mrs. Troy puts much confidence in you, Lydia, and very wisely,
perhaps."

"She do, sir.  I've been with her all through her troubles, and was
with her at the time of Mr. Troy's going and all.  And if she were
to marry again I expect I should bide with her."

"She promises that you shall--quite natural," said the strategic
lover, throbbing throughout him at the presumption which Liddy's
words appeared to warrant--that his darling had thought of
re-marriage.

"No--she doesn't promise it exactly.  I merely judge on my own
account."

"Yes, yes, I understand.  When she alludes to the possibility of
marrying again, you conclude--"

"She never do allude to it, sir," said Liddy, thinking how very
stupid Mr. Boldwood was getting.

"Of course not," he returned hastily, his hope falling again.  "You
needn't take quite such long reaches with your rake, Lydia--short
and quick ones are best.  Well, perhaps, as she is absolute mistress
again now, it is wise of her to resolve never to give up her
freedom."

"My mistress did certainly once say, though not seriously, that she
supposed she might marry again at the end of seven years from last
year, if she cared to risk Mr. Troy's coming back and claiming her."

"Ah, six years from the present time.  Said that she might.  She
might marry at once in every reasonable person's opinion, whatever
the lawyers may say to the contrary."

"Have you been to ask them?" said Liddy, innocently.

"Not I," said Boldwood, growing red.  "Liddy, you needn't stay here
a minute later than you wish, so Mr. Oak says.  I am now going on a
little farther.  Good-afternoon."

He went away vexed with himself, and ashamed of having for this one
time in his life done anything which could be called underhand.  Poor
Boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he
was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid and,
what was worse, mean.  But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact
by way of repayment.  It was a singularly fresh and fascinating fact,
and though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real.  In
little more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly
marry him.  There was something definite in that hope, for admitting
that there might have been no deep thought in her words to Liddy
about marriage, they showed at least her creed on the matter.

This pleasant notion was now continually in his mind.  Six years were
a long time, but how much shorter than never, the idea he had for so
long been obliged to endure!  Jacob had served twice seven years for
Rachel: what were six for such a woman as this?  He tried to like the
notion of waiting for her better than that of winning her at once.
Boldwood felt his love to be so deep and strong and eternal, that
it was possible she had never yet known its full volume, and this
patience in delay would afford him an opportunity of giving sweet
proof on the point.  He would annihilate the six years of his life as
if they were minutes--so little did he value his time on earth beside
her love.  He would let her see, all those six years of intangible
ethereal courtship, how little care he had for anything but as it
bore upon the consummation.

Meanwhile the early and the late summer brought round the week in
which Greenhill Fair was held.  This fair was frequently attended by
the folk of Weatherbury.

Autumn passed and winter came. "Bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended feeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which was not precisely peacefulness." She kept the farm going, however, finally appointing Oak bailiff, a role he had, in fact, been filling anyway. Boldwood lost his crops through neglect; even the pigs rejected his rotted corn. He suggested that Gabriel administer his farm, as well as Bathsheba's, and Bathsheba languidly assented to this plan. "Gabriel's malignant star was assuredly setting fast." Oak could now be seen "mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting the length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit of surveillance . . . the actual mistress of the one half, and the master of the other, sitting in their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion." This led to talk that Oak was "feathering his nest fast." Actually, Bathsheba paid him a fixed wage, but Boldwood gave him a share of the profits. Gossips considered Oak miserly because he continued to live exactly as he had in the past. Boldwood's devotion to Bathsheba was becoming a madness. Bathsheba's mourning -- she had been prevailed upon to wear it -- let him hope that there would be a time, however far off, when his waiting would be rewarded. Shortly, Bathsheba paid a two-month visit to an old aunt in Corcombe, and on her return, Boldwood questioned Liddy as to his prospects. She told him that Bathsheba had once spoken of the seven-year period before the legal declaration of Troy's death. "Poor Boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid. . . . But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact by way of repayment. . . . though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real. In little more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly marry him." Meanwhile, late summer was approaching, bringing on the week of the Greenhill Fair.

This transitional chapter serves to show a change in Bathsheba, the reward for Gabriel, and the birth of new hope for Boldwood. Hardy alludes to the biblical story of Jacob serving for Rachel and the importance of the sacred number seven. He was obviously very familiar with the Bible, and his works are liberally sprinkled with such references. Note that the time has advanced from late autumn to the next summer.


THE SHEEP FAIR--TROY TOUCHES HIS WIFE'S HAND

Greenhill was the Nijni Novgorod of South Wessex; and the busiest,
merriest, noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of
the sheep fair.  This yearly gathering was upon the summit of a
hill which retained in good preservation the remains of an ancient
earthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment of an oval
form encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat broken down here
and there.  To each of the two chief openings on opposite sides a
winding road ascended, and the level green space of ten or fifteen
acres enclosed by the bank was the site of the fair.  A few permanent
erections dotted the spot, but the majority of visitors patronized
canvas alone for resting and feeding under during the time of their
sojourn here.

Shepherds who attended with their flocks from long distances started
from home two or three days, or even a week, before the fair, driving
their charges a few miles each day--not more than ten or twelve--and
resting them at night in hired fields by the wayside at previously
chosen points, where they fed, having fasted since morning.  The
shepherd of each flock marched behind, a bundle containing his kit
for the week strapped upon his shoulders, and in his hand his crook,
which he used as the staff of his pilgrimage.  Several of the sheep
would get worn and lame, and occasionally a lambing occurred on the
road.  To meet these contingencies, there was frequently provided, to
accompany the flocks from the remoter points, a pony and waggon into
which the weakly ones were taken for the remainder of the journey.

The Weatherbury Farms, however, were no such long distance from the
hill, and those arrangements were not necessary in their case.  But
the large united flocks of Bathsheba and Farmer Boldwood formed a
valuable and imposing multitude which demanded much attention, and
on this account Gabriel, in addition to Boldwood's shepherd and Cain
Ball, accompanied them along the way, through the decayed old town of
Kingsbere, and upward to the plateau,--old George the dog of course
behind them.

When the autumn sun slanted over Greenhill this morning and lighted
the dewy flat upon its crest, nebulous clouds of dust were to be seen
floating between the pairs of hedges which streaked the wide prospect
around in all directions.  These gradually converged upon the base of
the hill, and the flocks became individually visible, climbing the
serpentine ways which led to the top.  Thus, in a slow procession,
they entered the opening to which the roads tended, multitude after
multitude, horned and hornless--blue flocks and red flocks, buff
flocks and brown flocks, even green and salmon-tinted flocks,
according to the fancy of the colourist and custom of the farm.
Men were shouting, dogs were barking, with greatest animation, but
the thronging travellers in so long a journey had grown nearly
indifferent to such terrors, though they still bleated piteously at
the unwontedness of their experiences, a tall shepherd rising here
and there in the midst of them, like a gigantic idol amid a crowd
of prostrate devotees.

The great mass of sheep in the fair consisted of South Downs and the
old Wessex horned breeds; to the latter class Bathsheba's and Farmer
Boldwood's mainly belonged.  These filed in about nine o'clock, their
vermiculated horns lopping gracefully on each side of their cheeks in
geometrically perfect spirals, a small pink and white ear nestling
under each horn.  Before and behind came other varieties, perfect
leopards as to the full rich substance of their coats, and only
lacking the spots.  There were also a few of the Oxfordshire breed,
whose wool was beginning to curl like a child's flaxen hair, though
surpassed in this respect by the effeminate Leicesters, which were in
turn less curly than the Cotswolds.  But the most picturesque by far
was a small flock of Exmoors, which chanced to be there this year.
Their pied faces and legs, dark and heavy horns, tresses of wool
hanging round their swarthy foreheads, quite relieved the monotony
of the flocks in that quarter.

All these bleating, panting, and weary thousands had entered and were
penned before the morning had far advanced, the dog belonging to each
flock being tied to the corner of the pen containing it.  Alleys for
pedestrians intersected the pens, which soon became crowded with
buyers and sellers from far and near.

In another part of the hill an altogether different scene began
to force itself upon the eye towards midday.  A circular tent, of
exceptional newness and size, was in course of erection here.  As
the day drew on, the flocks began to change hands, lightening the
shepherd's responsibilities; and they turned their attention to
this tent and inquired of a man at work there, whose soul seemed
concentrated on tying a bothering knot in no time, what was going
on.

"The Royal Hippodrome Performance of Turpin's Ride to York and the
Death of Black Bess," replied the man promptly, without turning his
eyes or leaving off tying.

As soon as the tent was completed the band struck up highly
stimulating harmonies, and the announcement was publicly made, Black
Bess standing in a conspicuous position on the outside, as a living
proof, if proof were wanted, of the truth of the oracular utterances
from the stage over which the people were to enter.  These were so
convinced by such genuine appeals to heart and understanding both
that they soon began to crowd in abundantly, among the foremost being
visible Jan Coggan and Joseph Poorgrass, who were holiday keeping
here to-day.

"That's the great ruffen pushing me!" screamed a woman in front of
Jan over her shoulder at him when the rush was at its fiercest.

"How can I help pushing ye when the folk behind push me?" said
Coggan, in a deprecating tone, turning his head towards the aforesaid
folk as far as he could without turning his body, which was jammed as
in a vice.

There was a silence; then the drums and trumpets again sent forth
their echoing notes.  The crowd was again ecstasied, and gave another
lurch in which Coggan and Poorgrass were again thrust by those behind
upon the women in front.

"Oh that helpless feymels should be at the mercy of such ruffens!"
exclaimed one of these ladies again, as she swayed like a reed shaken
by the wind.

"Now," said Coggan, appealing in an earnest voice to the public at
large as it stood clustered about his shoulder-blades, "did ye ever
hear such onreasonable woman as that?  Upon my carcase, neighbours,
if I could only get out of this cheese-wring, the damn women might
eat the show for me!"

"Don't ye lose yer temper, Jan!" implored Joseph Poorgrass, in a
whisper.  "They might get their men to murder us, for I think by the
shine of their eyes that they be a sinful form of womankind."

Jan held his tongue, as if he had no objection to be pacified to
please a friend, and they gradually reached the foot of the ladder,
Poorgrass being flattened like a jumping-jack, and the sixpence, for
admission, which he had got ready half-an-hour earlier, having become
so reeking hot in the tight squeeze of his excited hand that the
woman in spangles, brazen rings set with glass diamonds, and with
chalked face and shoulders, who took the money of him, hastily
dropped it again from a fear that some trick had been played to burn
her fingers.  So they all entered, and the cloth of the tent, to the
eyes of an observer on the outside, became bulged into innumerable
pimples such as we observe on a sack of potatoes, caused by the
various human heads, backs, and elbows at high pressure within.

At the rear of the large tent there were two small dressing-tents.
One of these, alloted to the male performers, was partitioned into
halves by a cloth; and in one of the divisions there was sitting on
the grass, pulling on a pair of jack-boots, a young man whom we
instantly recognise as Sergeant Troy.

Troy's appearance in this position may be briefly accounted for.  The
brig aboard which he was taken in Budmouth Roads was about to start
on a voyage, though somewhat short of hands.  Troy read the articles
and joined, but before they sailed a boat was despatched across the
bay to Lulwind cove; as he had half expected, his clothes were gone.
He ultimately worked his passage to the United States, where he made
a precarious living in various towns as Professor of Gymnastics,
Sword Exercise, Fencing, and Pugilism.  A few months were sufficient
to give him a distaste for this kind of life.  There was a certain
animal form of refinement in his nature; and however pleasant a
strange condition might be whilst privations were easily warded off,
it was disadvantageously coarse when money was short.  There was ever
present, too, the idea that he could claim a home and its comforts
did he but chose to return to England and Weatherbury Farm.  Whether
Bathsheba thought him dead was a frequent subject of curious
conjecture.  To England he did return at last; but the fact of
drawing nearer to Weatherbury abstracted its fascinations, and his
intention to enter his old groove at the place became modified.  It
was with gloom he considered on landing at Liverpool that if he
were to go home his reception would be of a kind very unpleasant
to contemplate; for what Troy had in the way of emotion was an
occasional fitful sentiment which sometimes caused him as much
inconvenience as emotion of a strong and healthy kind.  Bathsheba was
not a woman to be made a fool of, or a woman to suffer in silence;
and how could he endure existence with a spirited wife to whom at
first entering he would be beholden for food and lodging?  Moreover,
it was not at all unlikely that his wife would fail at her farming,
if she had not already done so; and he would then become liable for
her maintenance: and what a life such a future of poverty with her
would be, the spectre of Fanny constantly between them, harrowing
his temper and embittering her words!  Thus, for reasons touching on
distaste, regret, and shame commingled, he put off his return from
day to day, and would have decided to put it off altogether if he
could have found anywhere else the ready-made establishment which
existed for him there.

At this time--the July preceding the September in which we find
at Greenhill Fair--he fell in with a travelling circus which was
performing in the outskirts of a northern town.  Troy introduced
himself to the manager by taming a restive horse of the troupe,
hitting a suspended apple with a pistol-bullet fired from the
animal's back when in full gallop, and other feats.  For his
merits in these--all more or less based upon his experiences as a
dragoon-guardsman--Troy was taken into the company, and the play
of Turpin was prepared with a view to his personation of the chief
character.  Troy was not greatly elated by the appreciative spirit in
which he was undoubtedly treated, but he thought the engagement might
afford him a few weeks for consideration.  It was thus carelessly,
and without having formed any definite plan for the future, that Troy
found himself at Greenhill Fair with the rest of the company on this
day.

And now the mild autumn sun got lower, and in front of the pavilion
the following incident had taken place.  Bathsheba--who was driven
to the fair that day by her odd man Poorgrass--had, like every one
else, read or heard the announcement that Mr. Francis, the Great
Cosmopolitan Equestrian and Roughrider, would enact the part of
Turpin, and she was not yet too old and careworn to be without a
little curiosity to see him.  This particular show was by far the
largest and grandest in the fair, a horde of little shows grouping
themselves under its shade like chickens around a hen.  The crowd had
passed in, and Boldwood, who had been watching all the day for an
opportunity of speaking to her, seeing her comparatively isolated,
came up to her side.

"I hope the sheep have done well to-day, Mrs. Troy?" he said,
nervously.

"Oh yes, thank you," said Bathsheba, colour springing up in the
centre of her cheeks.  "I was fortunate enough to sell them all just
as we got upon the hill, so we hadn't to pen at all."

"And now you are entirely at leisure?"

"Yes, except that I have to see one more dealer in two hours' time:
otherwise I should be going home.  He was looking at this large tent
and the announcement.  Have you ever seen the play of 'Turpin's Ride
to York'?  Turpin was a real man, was he not?"

"Oh yes, perfectly true--all of it.  Indeed, I think I've heard Jan
Coggan say that a relation of his knew Tom King, Turpin's friend,
quite well."

"Coggan is rather given to strange stories connected with his
relations, we must remember.  I hope they can all be believed."

"Yes, yes; we know Coggan.  But Turpin is true enough.  You have
never seen it played, I suppose?"

"Never.  I was not allowed to go into these places when I was young.
Hark!  What's that prancing?  How they shout!"

"Black Bess just started off, I suppose.  Am I right in supposing
you would like to see the performance, Mrs. Troy?  Please excuse my
mistake, if it is one; but if you would like to, I'll get a seat for
you with pleasure."  Perceiving that she hesitated, he added, "I
myself shall not stay to see it: I've seen it before."

Now Bathsheba did care a little to see the show, and had only
withheld her feet from the ladder because she feared to go in alone.
She had been hoping that Oak might appear, whose assistance in such
cases was always accepted as an inalienable right, but Oak was
nowhere to be seen; and hence it was that she said, "Then if you will
just look in first, to see if there's room, I think I will go in for
a minute or two."

And so a short time after this Bathsheba appeared in the tent with
Boldwood at her elbow, who, taking her to a "reserved" seat, again
withdrew.

This feature consisted of one raised bench in a very conspicuous
part of the circle, covered with red cloth, and floored with a piece
of carpet, and Bathsheba immediately found, to her confusion, that
she was the single reserved individual in the tent, the rest of
the crowded spectators, one and all, standing on their legs on the
borders of the arena, where they got twice as good a view of the
performance for half the money.  Hence as many eyes were turned upon
her, enthroned alone in this place of honour, against a scarlet
background, as upon the ponies and clown who were engaged in
preliminary exploits in the centre, Turpin not having yet appeared.
Once there, Bathsheba was forced to make the best of it and remain:
she sat down, spreading her skirts with some dignity over the
unoccupied space on each side of her, and giving a new and feminine
aspect to the pavilion.  In a few minutes she noticed the fat red
nape of Coggan's neck among those standing just below her, and Joseph
Poorgrass's saintly profile a little further on.

The interior was shadowy with a peculiar shade.  The strange luminous
semi-opacities of fine autumn afternoons and eves intensified into
Rembrandt effects the few yellow sunbeams which came through holes
and divisions in the canvas, and spirted like jets of gold-dust
across the dusky blue atmosphere of haze pervading the tent, until
they alighted on inner surfaces of cloth opposite, and shone like
little lamps suspended there.

Troy, on peeping from his dressing-tent through a slit for a
reconnoitre before entering, saw his unconscious wife on high before
him as described, sitting as queen of the tournament.  He started
back in utter confusion, for although his disguise effectually
concealed his personality, he instantly felt that she would be sure
to recognize his voice.  He had several times during the day thought
of the possibility of some Weatherbury person or other appearing and
recognizing him; but he had taken the risk carelessly.  If they see
me, let them, he had said.  But here was Bathsheba in her own person;
and the reality of the scene was so much intenser than any of his
prefigurings that he felt he had not half enough considered the
point.

She looked so charming and fair that his cool mood about Weatherbury
people was changed.  He had not expected her to exercise this power
over him in the twinkling of an eye.  Should he go on, and care
nothing?  He could not bring himself to do that.  Beyond a politic
wish to remain unknown, there suddenly arose in him now a sense of
shame at the possibility that his attractive young wife, who already
despised him, should despise him more by discovering him in so mean a
condition after so long a time.  He actually blushed at the thought,
and was vexed beyond measure that his sentiments of dislike towards
Weatherbury should have led him to dally about the country in this
way.

But Troy was never more clever than when absolutely at his wit's end.
He hastily thrust aside the curtain dividing his own little dressing
space from that of the manager and proprietor, who now appeared as
the individual called Tom King as far down as his waist, and as the
aforesaid respectable manager thence to his toes.

"Here's the devil to pay!" said Troy.

"How's that?"

"Why, there's a blackguard creditor in the tent I don't want to see,
who'll discover me and nab me as sure as Satan if I open my mouth.
What's to be done?"

"You must appear now, I think."

"I can't."

"But the play must proceed."

"Do you give out that Turpin has got a bad cold, and can't speak his
part, but that he'll perform it just the same without speaking."

The proprietor shook his head.

"Anyhow, play or no play, I won't open my mouth," said Troy, firmly.

"Very well, then let me see.  I tell you how we'll manage," said the
other, who perhaps felt it would be extremely awkward to offend his
leading man just at this time.  "I won't tell 'em anything about your
keeping silence; go on with the piece and say nothing, doing what
you can by a judicious wink now and then, and a few indomitable nods
in the heroic places, you know.  They'll never find out that the
speeches are omitted."

This seemed feasible enough, for Turpin's speeches were not many or
long, the fascination of the piece lying entirely in the action; and
accordingly the play began, and at the appointed time Black Bess
leapt into the grassy circle amid the plaudits of the spectators.
At the turnpike scene, where Bess and Turpin are hotly pursued at
midnight by the officers, and the half-awake gatekeeper in his
tasselled nightcap denies that any horseman has passed, Coggan
uttered a broad-chested "Well done!" which could be heard all over
the fair above the bleating, and Poorgrass smiled delightedly with a
nice sense of dramatic contrast between our hero, who coolly leaps
the gate, and halting justice in the form of his enemies, who must
needs pull up cumbersomely and wait to be let through.  At the death
of Tom King, he could not refrain from seizing Coggan by the hand,
and whispering, with tears in his eyes, "Of course he's not really
shot, Jan--only seemingly!"  And when the last sad scene came on, and
the body of the gallant and faithful Bess had to be carried out on a
shutter by twelve volunteers from among the spectators, nothing could
restrain Poorgrass from lending a hand, exclaiming, as he asked
Jan to join him, "Twill be something to tell of at Warren's in
future years, Jan, and hand down to our children."  For many a year
in Weatherbury, Joseph told, with the air of a man who had had
experiences in his time, that he touched with his own hand the hoof
of Bess as she lay upon the board upon his shoulder.  If, as some
thinkers hold, immortality consists in being enshrined in others'
memories, then did Black Bess become immortal that day if she never
had done so before.

Meanwhile Troy had added a few touches to his ordinary make-up for
the character, the more effectually to disguise himself, and though
he had felt faint qualms on first entering, the metamorphosis
effected by judiciously "lining" his face with a wire rendered him
safe from the eyes of Bathsheba and her men.  Nevertheless, he was
relieved when it was got through.

There was a second performance in the evening, and the tent was
lighted up.  Troy had taken his part very quietly this time,
venturing to introduce a few speeches on occasion; and was just
concluding it when, whilst standing at the edge of the circle
contiguous to the first row of spectators, he observed within a
yard of him the eye of a man darted keenly into his side features.
Troy hastily shifted his position, after having recognized in the
scrutineer the knavish bailiff Pennyways, his wife's sworn enemy,
who still hung about the outskirts of Weatherbury.

At first Troy resolved to take no notice and abide by circumstances.
That he had been recognized by this man was highly probable; yet
there was room for a doubt.  Then the great objection he had felt to
allowing news of his proximity to precede him to Weatherbury in the
event of his return, based on a feeling that knowledge of his present
occupation would discredit him still further in his wife's eyes,
returned in full force.  Moreover, should he resolve not to return at
all, a tale of his being alive and being in the neighbourhood would
be awkward; and he was anxious to acquire a knowledge of his wife's
temporal affairs before deciding which to do.

In this dilemma Troy at once went out to reconnoitre.  It occurred
to him that to find Pennyways, and make a friend of him if possible,
would be a very wise act.  He had put on a thick beard borrowed from
the establishment, and in this he wandered about the fair-field.  It
was now almost dark, and respectable people were getting their carts
and gigs ready to go home.

The largest refreshment booth in the fair was provided by an
innkeeper from a neighbouring town.  This was considered an
unexceptionable place for obtaining the necessary food and rest:
Host Trencher (as he was jauntily called by the local newspaper)
being a substantial man of high repute for catering through all the
country round.  The tent was divided into first and second-class
compartments, and at the end of the first-class division was a yet
further enclosure for the most exclusive, fenced off from the body
of the tent by a luncheon-bar, behind which the host himself stood
bustling about in white apron and shirt-sleeves, and looking as if
he had never lived anywhere but under canvas all his life.  In these
penetralia were chairs and a table, which, on candles being lighted,
made quite a cozy and luxurious show, with an urn, plated tea and
coffee pots, china teacups, and plum cakes.

Troy stood at the entrance to the booth, where a gipsy-woman was
frying pancakes over a little fire of sticks and selling them at a
penny a-piece, and looked over the heads of the people within.  He
could see nothing of Pennyways, but he soon discerned Bathsheba
through an opening into the reserved space at the further end.  Troy
thereupon retreated, went round the tent into the darkness, and
listened.  He could hear Bathsheba's voice immediately inside the
canvas; she was conversing with a man.  A warmth overspread his
face: surely she was not so unprincipled as to flirt in a fair!
He wondered if, then, she reckoned upon his death as an absolute
certainty.  To get at the root of the matter, Troy took a penknife
from his pocket and softly made two little cuts crosswise in the
cloth, which, by folding back the corners left a hole the size of a
wafer.  Close to this he placed his face, withdrawing it again in a
movement of surprise; for his eye had been within twelve inches of
the top of Bathsheba's head.  It was too near to be convenient.  He
made another hole a little to one side and lower down, in a shaded
place beside her chair, from which it was easy and safe to survey
her by looking horizontally.

Troy took in the scene completely now.  She was leaning back, sipping
a cup of tea that she held in her hand, and the owner of the male
voice was Boldwood, who had apparently just brought the cup to her,
Bathsheba, being in a negligent mood, leant so idly against the
canvas that it was pressed to the shape of her shoulder, and she was,
in fact, as good as in Troy's arms; and he was obliged to keep his
breast carefully backward that she might not feel its warmth through
the cloth as he gazed in.

Troy found unexpected chords of feeling to be stirred again within
him as they had been stirred earlier in the day.  She was handsome
as ever, and she was his.  It was some minutes before he could
counteract his sudden wish to go in, and claim her.  Then he thought
how the proud girl who had always looked down upon him even whilst it
was to love him, would hate him on discovering him to be a strolling
player.  Were he to make himself known, that chapter of his life
must at all risks be kept for ever from her and from the Weatherbury
people, or his name would be a byword throughout the parish.  He
would be nicknamed "Turpin" as long as he lived.  Assuredly before
he could claim her these few past months of his existence must be
entirely blotted out.

"Shall I get you another cup before you start, ma'am?" said Farmer
Boldwood.

"Thank you," said Bathsheba.  "But I must be going at once.  It was
great neglect in that man to keep me waiting here till so late.  I
should have gone two hours ago, if it had not been for him.  I had no
idea of coming in here; but there's nothing so refreshing as a cup of
tea, though I should never have got one if you hadn't helped me."

Troy scrutinized her cheek as lit by the candles, and watched each
varying shade thereon, and the white shell-like sinuosities of her
little ear.  She took out her purse and was insisting to Boldwood on
paying for her tea for herself, when at this moment Pennyways entered
the tent.  Troy trembled: here was his scheme for respectability
endangered at once.  He was about to leave his hole of espial,
attempt to follow Pennyways, and find out if the ex-bailiff had
recognized him, when he was arrested by the conversation, and found
he was too late.

"Excuse me, ma'am," said Pennyways; "I've some private information
for your ear alone."

"I cannot hear it now," she said, coldly.  That Bathsheba could not
endure this man was evident; in fact, he was continually coming to
her with some tale or other, by which he might creep into favour at
the expense of persons maligned.

"I'll write it down," said Pennyways, confidently.  He stooped over
the table, pulled a leaf from a warped pocket-book, and wrote upon
the paper, in a round hand--

"YOUR HUSBAND IS HERE.  I'VE SEEN HIM.  WHO'S THE FOOL NOW?"

This he folded small, and handed towards her.  Bathsheba would not
read it; she would not even put out her hand to take it.  Pennyways,
then, with a laugh of derision, tossed it into her lap, and, turning
away, left her.

From the words and action of Pennyways, Troy, though he had not been
able to see what the ex-bailiff wrote, had not a moment's doubt that
the note referred to him.  Nothing that he could think of could be
done to check the exposure.  "Curse my luck!" he whispered, and
added imprecations which rustled in the gloom like a pestilent wind.
Meanwhile Boldwood said, taking up the note from her lap--

"Don't you wish to read it, Mrs. Troy?  If not, I'll destroy it."

"Oh, well," said Bathsheba, carelessly, "perhaps it is unjust not to
read it; but I can guess what it is about.  He wants me to recommend
him, or it is to tell me of some little scandal or another connected
with my work-people.  He's always doing that."

Bathsheba held the note in her right hand.  Boldwood handed towards
her a plate of cut bread-and-butter; when, in order to take a slice,
she put the note into her left hand, where she was still holding
the purse, and then allowed her hand to drop beside her close to
the canvas.  The moment had come for saving his game, and Troy
impulsively felt that he would play the card.  For yet another time
he looked at the fair hand, and saw the pink finger-tips, and the
blue veins of the wrist, encircled by a bracelet of coral chippings
which she wore: how familiar it all was to him!  Then, with the
lightning action in which he was such an adept, he noiselessly
slipped his hand under the bottom of the tent-cloth, which was far
from being pinned tightly down, lifted it a little way, keeping his
eye to the hole, snatched the note from her fingers, dropped the
canvas, and ran away in the gloom towards the bank and ditch, smiling
at the scream of astonishment which burst from her.  Troy then slid
down on the outside of the rampart, hastened round in the bottom of
the entrenchment to a distance of a hundred yards, ascended again,
and crossed boldly in a slow walk towards the front entrance of
the tent.  His object was now to get to Pennyways, and prevent a
repetition of the announcement until such time as he should choose.

Troy reached the tent door, and standing among the groups there
gathered, looked anxiously for Pennyways, evidently not wishing to
make himself prominent by inquiring for him.  One or two men were
speaking of a daring attempt that had just been made to rob a young
lady by lifting the canvas of the tent beside her.  It was supposed
that the rogue had imagined a slip of paper which she held in her
hand to be a bank note, for he had seized it, and made off with
it, leaving her purse behind.  His chagrin and disappointment at
discovering its worthlessness would be a good joke, it was said.
However, the occurrence seemed to have become known to few, for it
had not interrupted a fiddler, who had lately begun playing by the
door of the tent, nor the four bowed old men with grim countenances
and walking-sticks in hand, who were dancing "Major Malley's Reel"
to the tune.  Behind these stood Pennyways.  Troy glided up to him,
beckoned, and whispered a few words; and with a mutual glance of
concurrence the two men went into the night together.

Greenhill, the summit of a hill with an ancient rampart, was an ideal fair site. There were permanent buildings and also tents. Shepherds who had traveled with their flocks for days thronged in. The colors identifying the owners of the sheep formed a pleasing pattern. A pony wagon for first-aid to the sheep wove in and out. The sheep of Gabriel's two employers were admired for their breeding, beauty, and grooming. As the day wore on and the sheep were sold, the shepherds turned their attention to a huge tent that would house the Royal Hippodrome's performances. Bands were playing and the crowds were tremendous, with folks like Poorgrass and Coggan adding to the shoving. Two performers' dressing rooms were at the rear of the tent. In one was a young man -- Sergeant Troy. Troy had signed on with the ship that had rescued him and "ultimately worked his passage to the United States, where he made a precarious living . . . as Professor of Gymnastics, Sword Exercise, Fencing, and Pugilism. A few months were sufficient to give him a distaste for this kind of life. . . . There was ever present, too, the idea that he could claim a home and its comforts did he but choose to return to England." He often wondered whether Bathsheba thought him dead. Back in England now, he was reluctant to return to her; he expected her to be vengeful. He fell in with a traveling circus and became a daring rider. Billed as "Mr. Francis, The Great Cosmopolitan Equestrian and Roughrider," he found himself at Greenhill. Here he played the highwayman in an old love story. Boldwood asked Bathsheba whether her sheep had done well. All were sold. Save for an appointment with a dealer, she was ready to leave. She inquired whether Boldwood had seen the play "Turpin's Ride to York" and whether the story was authentic. He assured her that it was and politely offered to get her a seat for the performance. This "reserved seat" proved to be on a raised bench covered with red cloth in a conspicuous section of the tent, and Bathsheba was the only person sitting there. She sat selfconsciously enthroned, her black skirts draped about her. Peeping from the dressing room, Troy saw her. Troy explained to the show's manager that he could not go on because a creditor of his was in the audience. The manager, afraid to offend his leading man at this point, made a suggestion. "Go on with the piece and say nothing, doing what you can by a judicious wink now and then. . . . They'll never find out the speeches are omitted." Thus the "creditor" did not recognize him by his voice, and makeup and a beard disguised his appearance. However, at the next performance Troy suspected that he had been recognized by his wife's former bailiff, Pennyways. Troy resolved to find the man and speak to him. When it was almost dark, he donned a thick beard and wandered about the grounds. Then he spied Bathsheba sitting in the refreshment tent. He found a point outside the tent where he could hear her, and he cut a small hole through the canvas so that he could see her. He saw Pennyways approach Bathsheba, who refused to listen to him. Pennyways then wrote her a note that said that her husband was alive. Impulsively, Troy reached under the edge of the canvas and snatched the note from Bathsheba's hand. Then he ran away. In the confusion, Troy found Pennyways, whispered with him, "and with a mutual glance of concurrence, the two men went into the night together."

Hardy terms Greenhill the "Nijni Novgorod" of South Wessex; this refers to a town in Russia once famous for its annual fair. Hardy's avowed purpose was to preserve all the culture and traditions of his countryside, and he put loving care into the planning of this elaborate chapter. One could argue that it contains too many coincidences, but it must be acknowledged that there are, as well, many colorful and realistic passages. Troy is still impulsive and shrewd, but he lacks some of his former cockiness. He does not want Bathsheba to see him in his present circumstances. Although surprised at how attractive she still is to him, he wants to discover what he can about her financial situation before deciding whether or not to reveal that he is alive.