SUSPICION--FANNY IS SENT FOR

Bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their
return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her.  He
exhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a
silent tongue.  The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the
same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church
both morning and afternoon.  This was the day before the Budmouth
races.  In the evening Troy said, suddenly--

"Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?"

Her countenance instantly sank. "Twenty pounds?" she said.

"The fact is, I want it badly."  The anxiety upon Troy's face was
unusual and very marked.  It was a culmination of the mood he had
been in all the day.

"Ah! for those races to-morrow."

Troy for the moment made no reply.  Her mistake had its advantages
to a man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now.
"Well, suppose I do want it for races?" he said, at last.

"Oh, Frank!" Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of
entreaty in the words.  "Only such a few weeks ago you said that I
was far sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that
you would give them all up for me; and now, won't you give up this
one, which is more a worry than a pleasure?  Do, Frank.  Come, let
me fascinate you by all I can do--by pretty words and pretty looks,
and everything I can think of--to stay at home.  Say yes to your
wife--say yes!"

The tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba's nature were prominent
now--advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the
disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she
was cool too frequently threw over them.  Few men could have resisted
the arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a
little back and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses
more than the words it accompanies, and which seems to have been
designed for these special occasions.  Had the woman not been his
wife, Troy would have succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he
would not deceive her longer.

"The money is not wanted for racing debts at all," he said.

"What is it for?" she asked.  "You worry me a great deal by these
mysterious responsibilities, Frank."

Troy hesitated.  He did not now love her enough to allow himself
to be carried too far by her ways.  Yet it was necessary to be
civil.  "You wrong me by such a suspicious manner," he said.  "Such
strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so
early a date."

"I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay," she said,
with features between a smile and a pout.

"Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the
latter.  Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don't go too far, or
you may have cause to regret something."

She reddened.  "I do that already," she said, quickly.

"What do you regret?"

"That my romance has come to an end."

"All romances end at marriage."

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that.  You grieve me to my soul by
being smart at my expense."

"You are dull enough at mine.  I believe you hate me."

"Not you--only your faults.  I do hate them."

"'Twould be much more becoming if you set yourself to cure them.
Come, let's strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends."

She gave a sigh of resignation.  "I have about that sum here for
household expenses.  If you must have it, take it."

"Very good.  Thank you.  I expect I shall have gone away before you
are in to breakfast to-morrow."

"And must you go?  Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have
taken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me.
You used to call me darling, then.  But it doesn't matter to you how
my days are passed now."

"I must go, in spite of sentiment."  Troy, as he spoke, looked at his
watch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened
the case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small
coil of hair.

Bathsheba's eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she
saw the action and saw the hair.  She flushed in pain and surprise,
and some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it
was wise to utter them.  "A woman's curl of hair!" she said.  "Oh,
Frank, whose is that?"

Troy had instantly closed his watch.  He carelessly replied, as one
who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred.  "Why, yours,
of course.  Whose should it be?  I had quite forgotten that I had
it."

"What a dreadful fib, Frank!"

"I tell you I had forgotten it!" he said, loudly.

"I don't mean that--it was yellow hair."

"Nonsense."

"That's insulting me.  I know it was yellow.  Now whose was it?  I
want to know."

"Very well--I'll tell you, so make no more ado.  It is the hair of a
young woman I was going to marry before I knew you."

"You ought to tell me her name, then."

"I cannot do that."

"Is she married yet?"

"No."

"Is she alive?"

"Yes."

"Is she pretty?"

"Yes."

"It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful
affliction!"

"Affliction--what affliction?" he inquired, quickly.

"Having hair of that dreadful colour."

"Oh--ho--I like that!" said Troy, recovering himself.  "Why, her hair
has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it
loose, which has not been long.  It is beautiful hair.  People used
to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!"

"Pooh! that's nothing--that's nothing!" she exclaimed, in incipient
accents of pique.  "If I cared for your love as much as I used to I
could say people had turned to look at mine."

"Bathsheba, don't be so fitful and jealous.  You knew what married
life would be like, and shouldn't have entered it if you feared these
contingencies."

Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in
her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full.  Ashamed
as she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:--

"This is all I get for loving you so well!  Ah! when I married you
your life was dearer to me than my own.  I would have died for
you--how truly I can say that I would have died for you!  And now
you sneer at my foolishness in marrying you.  O! is it kind to me to
throw my mistake in my face?  Whatever opinion you may have of my
wisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am
in your power."

"I can't help how things fall out," said Troy; "upon my heart, women
will be the death of me!"

"Well you shouldn't keep people's hair.  You'll burn it, won't you,
Frank?"

Frank went on as if he had not heard her.  "There are considerations
even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made--ties
you know nothing of.  If you repent of marrying, so do I."

Trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled
tones of wretchedness and coaxing, "I only repent it if you don't
love me better than any woman in the world!  I don't otherwise,
Frank.  You don't repent because you already love somebody better
than you love me, do you?"

"I don't know.  Why do you say that?"

"You won't burn that curl.  You like the woman who owns that pretty
hair--yes; it is pretty--more beautiful than my miserable black mane!
Well, it is no use; I can't help being ugly.  You must like her best,
if you will!"

"Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon
that bit of hair for several months--that I am ready to swear."

"But just now you said 'ties'; and then--that woman we met?"

"'Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair."

"Is it hers, then?"

"Yes.  There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are
content."

"And what are the ties?"

"Oh! that meant nothing--a mere jest."

"A mere jest!" she said, in mournful astonishment.  "Can you jest
when I am so wretchedly in earnest?  Tell me the truth, Frank.  I
am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman's
moments.  Come! treat me fairly," she said, looking honestly and
fearlessly into his face.  "I don't want much; bare justice--that's
all!  Ah! once I felt I could be content with nothing less than the
highest homage from the husband I should choose.  Now, anything
short of cruelty will content me.  Yes! the independent and spirited
Bathsheba is come to this!"

"For Heaven's sake don't be so desperate!" Troy said, snappishly,
rising as he did so, and leaving the room.

Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs--dry-eyed sobs,
which cut as they came, without any softening by tears.  But she
determined to repress all evidences of feeling.  She was conquered;
but she would never own it as long as she lived.  Her pride was
indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by
marriage with a less pure nature than her own.  She chafed to and fro
in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms,
and the blood fired her face.  Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had
been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to
know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth--that her
waist had never been encircled by a lover's arm.  She hated herself
now.  In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret
contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking
young fellow who should choose to salute them.  She had never taken
kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of
women she saw about her.  In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover
she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied
her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice
than of promotion and honour.  Although she scarcely knew the
divinity's name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively
adored.  That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man
to approach her--that she had felt herself sufficient to herself,
and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was
a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden
existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial
whole--were facts now bitterly remembered.  Oh, if she had never
stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only
stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy
or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference!

The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse
saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way.  When she
came in at half-past eight--their usual hour for breakfasting--she
was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and
driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.

After breakfast she was cool and collected--quite herself in
fact--and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another
quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as
well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however,
finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she
began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister.  Of course,
she sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had
momentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have
been like; also of life with Boldwood under the same conditions.
But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile
dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely
confined to the times when Troy's neglect was more than ordinarily
evident.

She saw coming up the road a man like Mr. Boldwood.  It was Mr.
Boldwood.  Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched.  The farmer
stopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel
Oak, who was in a footpath across the field.  The two men then
approached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation.

Thus they continued for a long time.  Joseph Poorgrass now passed
near them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba's
residence.  Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a
few minutes, and then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming
up the hill with his barrow.

Bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise,
experienced great relief when Boldwood turned back again.  "Well,
what's the message, Joseph?" she said.

He set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect
that a conversation with a lady required, spoke to Bathsheba over the
gate.

"You'll never see Fanny Robin no more--use nor principal--ma'am."

"Why?"

"Because she's dead in the Union."

"Fanny dead--never!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What did she die from?"

"I don't know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was
from general neshness of constitution.  She was such a limber maid
that 'a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went
like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said.  She was took bad in the morning,
and, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening.  She
belongs by law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a
waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her."

"Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing--I shall do
it!  Fanny was my uncle's servant, and, although I only knew her
for a couple of days, she belongs to me.  How very, very sad this
is!--the idea of Fanny being in a workhouse."  Bathsheba had begun to
know what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling....  "Send
across to Mr. Boldwood's, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon
herself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family....  We
ought not to put her in a waggon; we'll get a hearse."

"There will hardly be time, ma'am, will there?"

"Perhaps not," she said, musingly.  "When did you say we must be at
the door--three o'clock?"

"Three o'clock this afternoon, ma'am, so to speak it."

"Very well--you go with it.  A pretty waggon is better than an ugly
hearse, after all.  Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue
body and red wheels, and wash it very clean.  And, Joseph--"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her
coffin--indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in
them.  Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew,
and boy's-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum.  And let old
Pleasant draw her, because she knew him so well."

"I will, ma'am.  I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of
four labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate,
and take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of
Guardians, as by law ordained."

"Dear me--Casterbridge Union--and is Fanny come to this?" said
Bathsheba, musing.  "I wish I had known of it sooner.  I thought she
was far away.  How long has she lived there?"

"On'y been there a day or two."

"Oh!--then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?"

"No.  She first went to live in a garrison-town t'other side o'
Wessex, and since then she's been picking up a living at seampstering
in Melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable
widow-woman who takes in work of that sort.  She only got handy the
Union-house on Sunday morning 'a b'lieve, and 'tis supposed here and
there that she had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester.
Why she left her place, I can't say, for I don't know; and as to a
lie, why, I wouldn't tell it.  That's the short of the story, ma'am."

"Ah-h!"

No gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than
changed the young wife's countenance whilst this word came from her
in a long-drawn breath.  "Did she walk along our turnpike-road?" she
said, in a suddenly restless and eager voice.

"I believe she did....  Ma'am, shall I call Liddy?  You bain't well,
ma'am, surely?  You look like a lily--so pale and fainty!"

"No; don't call her; it is nothing.  When did she pass Weatherbury?"

"Last Saturday night."

"That will do, Joseph; now you may go."

"Certainly, ma'am."

"Joseph, come hither a moment.  What was the colour of Fanny Robin's
hair?"

"Really, mistress, now that 'tis put to me so judge-and-jury like, I
can't call to mind, if ye'll believe me!"

"Never mind; go on and do what I told you.  Stop--well no, go on."

She turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the
mood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors
with a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow.  About an
hour after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still
with a painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look.
Joseph, dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse
to start.  The shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as
she had directed; Bathsheba hardly saw them now.

"Died of what? did you say, Joseph?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Yes, ma'am, quite sure."

"Sure of what?"

"I'm sure that all I know is that she arrived in the morning and died
in the evening without further parley.  What Oak and Mr. Boldwood
told me was only these few words.  'Little Fanny Robin is dead,
Joseph,' Gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way.
I was very sorry, and I said, 'Ah!--and how did she come to die?'
'Well, she's dead in Casterbridge Union,' he said, 'and perhaps
'tisn't much matter about how she came to die.  She reached the
Union early Sunday morning, and died in the afternoon--that's clear
enough.' Then I asked what she'd been doing lately, and Mr. Boldwood
turned round to me then, and left off spitting a thistle with the end
of his stick.  He told me about her having lived by seampstering in
Melchester, as I mentioned to you, and that she walked therefrom at
the end of last week, passing near here Saturday night in the dusk.
They then said I had better just name a hint of her death to you, and
away they went.  Her death might have been brought on by biding in
the night wind, you know, ma'am; for people used to say she'd go off
in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time.  However,
'tisn't much odds to us about that now, for 'tis all over."

"Have you heard a different story at all?" She looked at him so
intently that Joseph's eyes quailed.

"Not a word, mistress, I assure 'ee!" he said.  "Hardly anybody in
the parish knows the news yet."

"I wonder why Gabriel didn't bring the message to me himself.  He
mostly makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand."
These words were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the
ground.

"Perhaps he was busy, ma'am," Joseph suggested.  "And sometimes he
seems to suffer from things upon his mind, connected with the time
when he was better off than 'a is now.  'A's rather a curious item,
but a very understanding shepherd, and learned in books."

"Did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about
this?"

"I cannot but say that there did, ma'am.  He was terrible down, and
so was Farmer Boldwood."

"Thank you, Joseph.  That will do.  Go on now, or you'll be late."

Bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again.  In the course of the
afternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence,
"What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin's hair?  Do you know?  I
cannot recollect--I only saw her for a day or two."

"It was light, ma'am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away
under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it.  But I have seen
her let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful
then.  Real golden hair."

"Her young man was a soldier, was he not?"

"Yes.  In the same regiment as Mr. Troy.  He says he knew him very
well."

"What, Mr. Troy says so?  How came he to say that?"

"One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny's
young man.  He said, 'Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he
knew himself, and that there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked
better.'"

"Ah!  Said that, did he?"

"Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the
other young man, so that sometimes people mistook them--"

"Liddy, for Heaven's sake stop your talking!" said Bathsheba, with
the nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.

Troy asked Bathsheba for money but would not say why he needed it. Bathsheba commented that his mysterious manner worried her. Troy responded: "Such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date." He warned her not to pry too far. Bathsheba said she felt that their romance was already at an end. Troy said, "All romances end at marriage." After more bickering, she gave him twenty pounds from her household money. He opened the back of his watch, and she saw a small coil of yellow hair. Troy admitted that it belonged to a young girl he had once planned to marry. Bathsheba was jealous, but Troy remained unmoved, saying prophetically, "I can't help how things fall out . . . upon my heart, women will be the death of me!" He left Bathsheba to her chagrin. "She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage . . . as did the majority of women. . . . In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours . . . was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour." Next morning, Bathsheba rode out to inspect the farm. When she returned for breakfast, she learned that Troy had gone to Casterbridge. She left on another tour of inspection, "finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister." She saw him across the fields, and saw also that Boldwood was approaching him. The two men talked earnestly, then called to Poorgrass and spoke with him. Later Poorgrass came toward her and "set down his barrow, and putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady required, spoke. . . . 'You'll never see Fanny Robin no more. . . . because she's dead in the Union."' Poorgrass speculated that the cause of death was a general weakness of constitution: "She . . . could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said. . . . Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her.' "'Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing -- I shall do it! Fanny was my uncle's servant . . . she belongs to me.'" Bathsheba arranged for a wagon to be filled with evergreens and flowers to cover the coffin. Later, Bathsheba questioned Liddy about Fanny. Fanny's hair had been golden. Troy had said he knew the soldier who was Fanny's friend "as well as he knew himself." They had served in the same regiment, and "there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked better."

This involved chapter has many undercurrents. Along with Bathsheba, we try to ascertain the facts. Boldwood, Oak, and Poorgrass are preoccupied and reluctant to talk with Bathsheba. They evade her questions. Liddy rambles on, suggesting things that Bathsheba is not yet willing to face, and so Bathsheba angrily silences her.


JOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN--BUCK'S HEAD

A wall bounded the site of Casterbridge Union-house, except along a
portion of the end.  Here a high gable stood prominent, and it was
covered like the front with a mat of ivy.  In this gable was no
window, chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind.  The single
feature appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves,
was a small door.

The situation of the door was peculiar.  The sill was three or four
feet above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an
explanation of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately
beneath suggested that the door was used solely for the passage of
articles and persons to and from the level of a vehicle standing on
the outside.  Upon the whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as
a species of Traitor's Gate translated to another sphere.  That entry
and exit hereby was only at rare intervals became apparent on noting
that tufts of grass were allowed to flourish undisturbed in the
chinks of the sill.

As the clock over the South-street Alms-house pointed to five minutes
to three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with red, and containing
boughs and flowers, passed the end of the street, and up towards this
side of the building.  Whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a
shattered form of "Malbrook," Joseph Poorgrass rang the bell, and
received directions to back his waggon against the high door under
the gable.  The door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly
thrust forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the
vehicle.

One of the men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump
of chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in
a large scrawling hand.  (We believe that they do these things more
tenderly now, and provide a plate.) He covered the whole with a
black cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tail-board of the waggon
was returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of
registry to Poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind
them.  Their connection with her, short as it had been, was over for
ever.

Joseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens
around the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the waggon
contained; he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car
crept down the hill, and along the road to Weatherbury.

The afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the right towards the
sea as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw strange clouds and
scrolls of mist rolling over the long ridges which girt the landscape
in that quarter.  They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently
crept across the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery
flags of the moor and river brinks.  Then their dank spongy forms
closed in upon the sky.  It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric
fungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time
that horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent
workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were
completely enveloped, this being the first arrival of the autumn
fogs, and the first fog of the series.

The air was as an eye suddenly struck blind.  The waggon and its load
rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and
opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor
throughout.  There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a
visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches,
and firs composing the wood on either side.  The trees stood in an
attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to
come and rock them.  A startling quiet overhung all surrounding
things--so completely, that the crunching of the waggon-wheels
was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained
a hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized.

Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed
faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable
gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and
spectre-like in their monochrome of grey.  He felt anything but
cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog.
Stopping the horse, he listened.  Not a footstep or wheel was audible
anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy
particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting
with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny.  The fog had by this
time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water
from the overbrimming leaves.  The hollow echo of its fall reminded
the waggoner painfully of the grim Leveller.  Then hard by came down
another drop, then two or three.  Presently there was a continual
tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and
the travellers.  The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the
greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red leaves of the beeches were
hung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair.

At the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond this wood,
was the old inn Buck's Head.  It was about a mile and a half from
Weatherbury, and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling
had been the place where many coaches changed and kept their relays
of horses.  All the old stabling was now pulled down, and little
remained besides the habitable inn itself, which, standing a little
way back from the road, signified its existence to people far up and
down the highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough of an
elm on the opposite side of the way.

Travellers--for the variety _tourist_ had hardly developed into a
distinct species at this date--sometimes said in passing, when they
cast their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond
of representing the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves
had never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working
order.  It was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which
Gabriel Oak crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to
the darkness, the sign and the inn had been unobserved.

The manners of the inn were of the old-established type.  Indeed,
in the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulae:
_e.g._--

   Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor.
   For tobacco, shout.
   In calling for the girl in waiting, say, "Maid!"
   Ditto for the landlady, "Old Soul!" etc., etc.

It was a relief to Joseph's heart when the friendly signboard came in
view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to
fulfil an intention made a long time before.  His spirits were oozing
out of him quite.  He turned the horse's head to the green bank, and
entered the hostel for a mug of ale.

Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a
step below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the
road outside, what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two
copper-coloured discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan
Coggan and Mr. Mark Clark.  These owners of the two most appreciative
throats in the neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were
now sitting face to face over a three-legged circular table, having
an iron rim to keep cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed
off; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the
full moon shining _vis-a-vis_ across the globe.

"Why, 'tis neighbour Poorgrass!" said Mark Clark.  "I'm sure your
face don't praise your mistress's table, Joseph."

"I've had a very pale companion for the last four miles," said
Joseph, indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation.  "And to
speak the truth, 'twas beginning to tell upon me.  I assure ye, I
ha'n't seed the colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time
this morning, and that was no more than a dew-bit afield."

"Then drink, Joseph, and don't restrain yourself!" said Coggan,
handing him a hooped mug three-quarters full.

Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time,
saying, as he lowered the jug, "'Tis pretty drinking--very pretty
drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to
speak it."

"True, drink is a pleasant delight," said Jan, as one who repeated a
truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage
over his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head
gradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul
might not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant
surroundings.

"Well, I must be on again," said Poorgrass.  "Not but that I should
like another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me
if I was seed here."

"Where be ye trading o't to to-day, then, Joseph?"

"Back to Weatherbury.  I've got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon
outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five
with her."

"Ay--I've heard of it.  And so she's nailed up in parish boards after
all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown."

"The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling,
because the bell's a luxery: but 'a can hardly do without the grave,
poor body.  However, I expect our mistress will pay all."

"A pretty maid as ever I see!  But what's yer hurry, Joseph?  The
pore woman's dead, and you can't bring her to life, and you may as
well sit down comfortable, and finish another with us."

"I don't mind taking just the least thimbleful ye can dream of more
with ye, sonnies.  But only a few minutes, because 'tis as 'tis."

"Of course, you'll have another drop.  A man's twice the man
afterwards.  You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at
your work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks
a-breaking.  Too much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man
in the smoky house; but after all, many people haven't the gift of
enjoying a wet, and since we be highly favoured with a power that
way, we should make the most o't."

"True," said Mark Clark.  "'Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully
bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the
parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the
merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs--upon my carcase,
they have!"

"Well, really, I must be onward again now," said Joseph.

"Now, now, Joseph; nonsense!  The poor woman is dead, isn't she, and
what's your hurry?"

"Well, I hope Providence won't be in a way with me for my doings,"
said Joseph, again sitting down.  "I've been troubled with weak
moments lately, 'tis true.  I've been drinky once this month already,
and I did not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two
yesterday; so I don't want to go too far for my safety.  Your next
world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand."

"I believe ye to be a chapelmember, Joseph.  That I do."

"Oh, no, no!  I don't go so far as that."

"For my part," said Coggan, "I'm staunch Church of England."

"Ay, and faith, so be I," said Mark Clark.

"I won't say much for myself; I don't wish to," Coggan continued,
with that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of
the barley-corn.  "But I've never changed a single doctrine: I've
stuck like a plaster to the old faith I was born in.  Yes; there's
this to be said for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and
bide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind
about doctrines at all.  But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel
in all winds and weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit.
Not but that chapel members be clever chaps enough in their way.
They can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about
their families and shipwrecks in the newspaper."

"They can--they can," said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling;
"but we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or,
dang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer
like the Lord than babes unborn."

"Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we," said
Joseph, thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Coggan.  "We know very well that if anybody do go to
heaven, they will.  They've worked hard for it, and they deserve to
have it, such as 'tis.  I bain't such a fool as to pretend that we
who stick to the Church have the same chance as they, because we
know we have not.  But I hate a feller who'll change his old ancient
doctrines for the sake of getting to heaven.  I'd as soon turn
king's-evidence for the few pounds you get.  Why, neighbours, when
every one of my taties were frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man
who gave me a sack for seed, though he hardly had one for his own
use, and no money to buy 'em.  If it hadn't been for him, I shouldn't
hae had a tatie to put in my garden.  D'ye think I'd turn after that?
No, I'll stick to my side; and if we be in the wrong, so be it: I'll
fall with the fallen!"

"Well said--very well said," observed Joseph.--"However, folks, I
must be moving now: upon my life I must.  Pa'son Thirdly will be
waiting at the church gates, and there's the woman a-biding outside
in the waggon."

"Joseph Poorgrass, don't be so miserable!  Pa'son Thirdly won't mind.
He's a generous man; he's found me in tracts for years, and I've
consumed a good many in the course of a long and shady life; but he's
never been the man to cry out at the expense.  Sit down."

The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was
troubled by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon.
The minutes glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began
perceptibly to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling
points on the surface of darkness.  Coggan's repeater struck six
from his pocket in the usual still small tones.

At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door
opened to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of
the inn bearing a candle.  He stared sternly at the one lengthy
and two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the
expressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans.  Joseph
Poorgrass blinked, and shrank several inches into the background.

"Upon my soul, I'm ashamed of you; 'tis disgraceful, Joseph,
disgraceful!" said Gabriel, indignantly.  "Coggan, you call yourself
a man, and don't know better than this."

Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes
occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not
a member, but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.

"Don't take on so, shepherd!" said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully
at the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest
for his eyes.

"Nobody can hurt a dead woman," at length said Coggan, with the
precision of a machine.  "All that could be done for her is
done--she's beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing
hurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don't know
what you do with her at all?  If she'd been alive, I would have been
the first to help her.  If she now wanted victuals and drink, I'd pay
for it, money down.  But she's dead, and no speed of ours will bring
her to life.  The woman's past us--time spent upon her is throwed
away: why should we hurry to do what's not required?  Drink,
shepherd, and be friends, for to-morrow we may be like her."

"We may," added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself,
to run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded
to, Jan meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a
song:--

                          To-mor-row, to-mor-row!
    And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board,
       With a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row,
    With my friends will I share what to-day may af-ford,
       And let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row.
                          To-mor-row', to-mor--

"Do hold thy horning, Jan!" said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, "as
for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy
ways, you are as drunk as you can stand."

"No, Shepherd Oak, no!  Listen to reason, shepherd.  All that's the
matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that's
how it is I look double to you--I mean, you look double to me."

"A multiplying eye is a very bad thing," said Mark Clark.

"It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little
time," said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly.  "Yes; I see two of every
sort, as if I were some holy man living in the times of King Noah
and entering into the ark....  Y-y-y-yes," he added, becoming much
affected by the picture of himself as a person thrown away, and
shedding tears; "I feel too good for England: I ought to have lived
in Genesis by rights, like the other men of sacrifice, and then I
shouldn't have b-b-been called a d-d-drunkard in such a way!"

"I wish you'd show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining
there!"

"Show myself a man of spirit? ...  Ah, well! let me take the name of
drunkard humbly--let me be a man of contrite knees--let it be!  I
know that I always do say 'Please God' afore I do anything, from my
getting up to my going down of the same, and I be willing to take as
much disgrace as there is in that holy act.  Hah, yes! ...  But not
a man of spirit?  Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted
against my hinder parts without groaning manfully that I question
the right to do so?  I inquire that query boldly?"

"We can't say that you have, Hero Poorgrass," admitted Jan.

"Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned!  Yet the
shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I be not a man
of spirit!  Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!"

Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take
charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply,
but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the
vehicle stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this
mildewy time.  He pulled the horse's head from the large patch of
turf it had eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and
drove along through the unwholesome night.

It had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be
brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate
Fanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge through
Melchester and onwards.  But, thanks to Boldwood's reticence
and Oak's generosity, the lover she had followed had never been
individualized as Troy.  Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the
matter might not be published till at any rate the girl had been in
her grave for a few days, when the interposing barriers of earth
and time, and a sense that the events had been somewhat shut into
oblivion, would deaden the sting that revelation and invidious
remark would have for Bathsheba just now.

By the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence,
which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark.  A man came
from the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like
blown flour--

"Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?"

Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson.

"The corpse is here, sir," said Gabriel.

"I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the
reason of the delay.  I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral
to be performed with proper decency.  Have you the registrar's
certificate?"

"No," said Gabriel.  "I expect Poorgrass has that; and he's at the
Buck's Head.  I forgot to ask him for it."

"Then that settles the matter.  We'll put off the funeral till
to-morrow morning.  The body may be brought on to the church, or
it may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the
morning. They waited more than an hour, and have now gone home."

Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable
plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house
for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba's uncle.  Visions
of several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay
flitted before him.  But his will was not law, and he went indoors
to inquire of his mistress what were her wishes on the subject.  He
found her in an unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were
suspicious and perplexed as with some antecedent thought.  Troy
had not yet returned.  At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of
indifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church
at once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following
Gabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on
Fanny's account, and desired that the girl might be brought into the
house.  Oak argued upon the convenience of leaving her in the waggon,
just as she lay now, with her flowers and green leaves about her,
merely wheeling the vehicle into the coach-house till the morning,
but to no purpose.  "It is unkind and unchristian," she said, "to
leave the poor thing in a coach-house all night."

"Very well, then," said the parson.  "And I will arrange that the
funeral shall take place early to-morrow.  Perhaps Mrs. Troy is
right in feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too
thoughtfully.  We must remember that though she may have erred
grievously in leaving her home, she is still our sister: and it is
to be believed that God's uncovenanted mercies are extended towards
her, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ."

The parson's words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet
unperturbed cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear.  Bathsheba
seemed unmoved.  Mr. Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted
a lantern.  Fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the
unconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the
middle of a little sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.

Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room.  He still
indecisively lingered beside the body.  He was deeply troubled at the
wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with
regard to Troy's wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract
them.  In spite of his careful manoeuvering all this day, the very
worst event that could in any way have happened in connection with
the burial had happened now.  Oak imagined a terrible discovery
resulting from this afternoon's work that might cast over Bathsheba's
life a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but
indifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether
remove.

Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate,
immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the
chalk writing upon the coffin-lid.  The scrawl was this simple one,
"FANNY ROBIN AND CHILD."  Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully
rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription
"FANNY ROBIN" only.  He then left the room, and went out quietly by
the front door.

The workhouse had a small rear door three or four feet from the ground. Here, at about three o'clock, a bright wagon containing flowers drew up. Joseph Poorgrass backed the wagon to the door, and a plain coffin was lifted into it. A man wrote on the coffin with chalk, then covered it with a worn black cloth, and someone handed Joseph a certificate. He placed the flowers over the coffin and drove off. A heavy mist was falling, and gray gloom and quiet enveloped the wagon. Passing through Roy-Town, Joseph came to Buck's Head Inn, a mile and a half from his destination. With great relief, he stopped at the inn. There, to his delight, were "two coppercoloured discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark Clark. These owners of the most appreciative throats in the neighborhood, within the pale of respectability," hailed him as he entered. Joseph explained that his peaked look was caused by the load he was driving. They drank, and drank again. Joseph said he had to be at the churchyard at a quarter to five, but the men went on discussing life, death, and theology. Poorgrass grew less concerned with time. As the clock struck six, Oak arrived. He reproved the men, but, with drunken logic, Coggan explained that all the hurrying in the world couldn't help a dead woman. Joseph was now singing. He denied being drunk but said his malady of a "multiplying eye" had caught up with him. Oak drove the wagon back, reflecting on the rumor that Fanny had run away to follow a soldier. Due to Oak's and Boldwood's tact, Troy had not been identified as the man, and Oak hoped the secret would be kept. When Gabriel reached Bathsheba's house, it was too late for the burial, and so Bathsheba ordered the coffin brought into the house, for to leave it in the coach-house seemed unfeeling. Troy had not yet returned. Oak and three other men carried the coffin in, Gabriel lingered on alone, overcome by the irony of it all, and looked again at the writing on the lid. The scrawl said simply, "Fanny Robin and child." He took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the last two words, leaving visible only the inscription "Fanny Robin."

Even in death it seems that there can be no rest for Fanny. In her coffin, she still travels the roads of Wessex. Appropriately, it is Oak who comes to her aid in death, just as he once did in life; and, finally, her body is given lodging within a house. Though their behavior seems rather callous, the men at the inn are merely accepting Fanny's death  as the will of Nature. These people, instinctively close to Nature, accept the results of her actions without question.


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.

Bathsheba questioned Liddy again about Fanny. Liddy didn't know any more, but said that Maryann had heard tales. Bathsheba refused to believe what Liddy whispered to her, arguing that there was but one name on the coffin. Feeling that she must draw strength from another to see her through what lay ahead, Bathsheba went to Oak's cottage. Through the window she watched him close the book he had been reading and realized that he was about to retire. Unable to bring herself to ask him about the matter that troubled her, Bathsheba returned home. Standing near the coffin, she sobbed, "I hope, hope it is not true that there are two of you!" Finally she fetched a screwdriver and opened the coffin. "It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!" The tears came, "tears of a complicated origin." Unable to refrain from hating Fanny, Bathsheba knelt beside the coffin and prayed. When she arose, she was calmer. The slamming door of the coach-house announced Troy's arrival. He asked what had happened, but Bathsheba would not tell him. The two approached the coffin. A candle illuminated the bodies. Overcome, Troy sank to his knees, then kissed Fanny's face. Bathsheba cried out to him. He pushed her away and told her, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be." Turning to Fanny, he said, "In the sight of Heaven you are my very, very wife!" Bathsheba turned and ran from the house.

Intuitively, Bathsheba knew the truth and, impelled by guilt feelings caused by the initial surge of hatred and jealousy that she had felt, she showed her pity toward mother and child by placing flowers around their bodies. Troy's emotion and remorse reinforce her realization that her marriage is over. The title that Hardy gave to this chapter, "Fanny's Revenge," suggests something of the Greek tragedies, as does the dramatic revelation of truth that the chapter contains. But it is not Fanny who is vengeful -- it is fate.


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.

"Bathsheba went along the dark road, neither knowing nor caring about the direction or issue of her flight." Finally she sank down in a brake of ferns. At daybreak, unsure whether or not she had slept, she felt calmer. Eventually Liddy found her, and the two women decided to walk about until Fanny had been taken away. Liddy went back to the house to check, telling those who asked that her mistress was unwell so that people would assume Bathsheba was in her room. When Liddy returned, Bathsheba lectured her, warning, "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." They re-entered the rear of the house, Bathsheba withdrawing into an unused attic. Liddy brought in a piece of carpet and laid a fire. From the window Bathsheba viewed the farm and saw the young men at play in the sunset. Suddenly they stopped. Liddy said, "I think 'twas because two men came just then from Casterbridge and began putting up a grand carved tombstone." The young men had gone to see whom the stone was for. "'Do you know?' Bathsheba asked. "'I don't,' said Liddy."

Hardy does not use nature as mere setting: It is an integral part of his story. Bathsheba discovers before her a hollow in which there is a swamp: "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. . . . Bathsheba arose with a tremor at the thought of having passed the night on the brink of so dismal a place." Thus Bathsheba's physical surroundings reflect the dark happenings in her life. She has been brought to the edge of an evil abyss, but she has not fallen into it.


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.

"When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight." He then went upstairs to wait for morning. "Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty hours." He had taken the twenty pounds from Bathsheba and another seven pounds ten that he was able to muster and had gone to meet Fanny. To his chagrin, she again failed to appear. He waited until the stroke of eleven -- "in fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse." Having watched the bridge and parapet until his patience ran out, Troy called for his gig and went to the racetrack, but he kept his vow not to wager. Leaving town at nine, he regretted not having inquired about Fanny. His return home was a shock. In the morning he arose, indifferent to Bathsheba's whereabouts. He walked to the vacant grave, then hastened to Casterbridge, where he sought out the stonemason. He asked for the best stone they had for twenty-seven pounds. He paid for it and gave directions for the inscription. In the afternoon he returned and saw the stone placed in the cart that would take it to Weatherbury. Toward dusk he traveled homeward, carrying a heavy basket. In the course of his journey he met the mason's men returning from the graveyard. They assured him that the stone had been set. At ten, Troy entered the cemetery and found the grave near the rear tower of the Weatherbury church where the land had recently been cleared of rubble to make room for new charity graves. Troy fetched a spade and lantern and read the inscription on the stone. Then he opened the basket and took out several bulbs. He had chosen a variety so that there would be blossoms from early spring until late fall. "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." Just as he was finishing the planting, he felt rain and his lantern candle sputtered out. He groped his way to the north porch of the church and there fell asleep.

Troy's reversal to remorse is interesting. Where he had been callous and heedless, he is now precipitate in his contrition. Gravestone, planting -- all must be done at once, and he spends every penny he has on them . Nor is it surprising to have him remain in the churchyard, intent on completing his service to the departed as soon as he wakes.