BLAME--FURY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Indeed it is."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh sir--Mr. Boldwood!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Deny that he has kissed you."

"I shall not."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NIGHT--HORSES TRAMPING

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

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

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

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

"Hark!" said Gabriel.

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

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

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

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

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

"Which pair?"

"Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Like a hero!" said Jan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's the matter?" said Gabriel.

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

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

"How do you know?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Lame," said Oak.

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

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

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

"We shall have him now!" he exclaimed.

"Where?"

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

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

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

"Amble on upon the grass," said Coggan.

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

"Hoy-a-hoy!  Gate!"

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

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

"Who?" said the turnpike-man.

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

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

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

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

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

"We thought--" began Gabriel.

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

"We thought the horse was stole."

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

"Why should we, miss?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," said Gabriel, shortly.

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

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

"I am of one and the same mind."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN THE SUN--A HARBINGER

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

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

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

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

"I wonder who that is?" he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Damn the boy!" said Gabriel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, all sorts."

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

"Yes."

"Well, what besides?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And what then?" murmured Gabriel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOME AGAIN--A TRICKSTER

That same evening at dusk Gabriel was leaning over Coggan's
garden-gate, taking an up-and-down survey before retiring to rest.

A vehicle of some kind was softly creeping along the grassy margin of
the lane.  From it spread the tones of two women talking.  The tones
were natural and not at all suppressed. Oak instantly knew the voices
to be those of Bathsheba and Liddy.

The carriage came opposite and passed by.  It was Miss Everdene's
gig, and Liddy and her mistress were the only occupants of the seat.
Liddy was asking questions about the city of Bath, and her companion
was answering them listlessly and unconcernedly.  Both Bathsheba and
the horse seemed weary.

The exquisite relief of finding that she was here again, safe and
sound, overpowered all reflection, and Oak could only luxuriate in
the sense of it.  All grave reports were forgotten.

He lingered and lingered on, till there was no difference between the
eastern and western expanses of sky, and the timid hares began to
limp courageously round the dim hillocks.  Gabriel might have been
there an additional half-hour when a dark form walked slowly by.
"Good-night, Gabriel," the passer said.

It was Boldwood.  "Good-night, sir," said Gabriel.

Boldwood likewise vanished up the road, and Oak shortly afterwards
turned indoors to bed.

Farmer Boldwood went on towards Miss Everdene's house.  He reached
the front, and approaching the entrance, saw a light in the parlour.
The blind was not drawn down, and inside the room was Bathsheba,
looking over some papers or letters.  Her back was towards Boldwood.
He went to the door, knocked, and waited with tense muscles and an
aching brow.

Boldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with
Bathsheba in the road to Yalbury.  Silent and alone, he had remained
in moody meditation on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the
whole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever
closely beheld.  By degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded
him, and this was the reason of his sally to-night.  He had come to
apologize and beg forgiveness of Bathsheba with something like a
sense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she
had returned--only from a visit to Liddy, as he supposed, the Bath
escapade being quite unknown to him.

He inquired for Miss Everdene.  Liddy's manner was odd, but he did
not notice it.  She went in, leaving him standing there, and in her
absence the blind of the room containing Bathsheba was pulled down.
Boldwood augured ill from that sign.  Liddy came out.

"My mistress cannot see you, sir," she said.

The farmer instantly went out by the gate.  He was unforgiven--that
was the issue of it all.  He had seen her who was to him
simultaneously a delight and a torture, sitting in the room he had
shared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little
earlier in the summer, and she had denied him an entrance there now.

Boldwood did not hurry homeward.  It was ten o'clock at least, when,
walking deliberately through the lower part of Weatherbury, he heard
the carrier's spring van entering the village.  The van ran to and
from a town in a northern direction, and it was owned and driven by
a Weatherbury man, at the door of whose house it now pulled up.  The
lamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded
form, who was the first to alight.

"Ah!" said Boldwood to himself, "come to see her again."

Troy entered the carrier's house, which had been the place of his
lodging on his last visit to his native place.  Boldwood was moved
by a sudden determination.  He hastened home.  In ten minutes he was
back again, and made as if he were going to call upon Troy at the
carrier's.  But as he approached, some one opened the door and came
out.  He heard this person say "Good-night" to the inmates, and the
voice was Troy's.  This was strange, coming so immediately after
his arrival.  Boldwood, however, hastened up to him.  Troy had what
appeared to be a carpet-bag in his hand--the same that he had brought
with him.  It seemed as if he were going to leave again this very
night.

Troy turned up the hill and quickened his pace.  Boldwood stepped
forward.

"Sergeant Troy?"

"Yes--I'm Sergeant Troy."

"Just arrived from up the country, I think?"

"Just arrived from Bath."

"I am William Boldwood."

"Indeed."

The tone in which this word was uttered was all that had been wanted
to bring Boldwood to the point.

"I wish to speak a word with you," he said.

"What about?"

"About her who lives just ahead there--and about a woman you have
wronged."

"I wonder at your impertinence," said Troy, moving on.

"Now look here," said Boldwood, standing in front of him, "wonder or
not, you are going to hold a conversation with me."

Troy heard the dull determination in Boldwood's voice, looked at his
stalwart frame, then at the thick cudgel he carried in his hand.  He
remembered it was past ten o'clock. It seemed worth while to be civil
to Boldwood.

"Very well, I'll listen with pleasure," said Troy, placing his bag on
the ground, "only speak low, for somebody or other may overhear us in
the farmhouse there."

"Well then--I know a good deal concerning your Fanny Robin's
attachment to you.  I may say, too, that I believe I am the only
person in the village, excepting Gabriel Oak, who does know it.  You
ought to marry her."

"I suppose I ought.  Indeed, I wish to, but I cannot."

"Why?"

Troy was about to utter something hastily; he then checked himself
and said, "I am too poor."  His voice was changed.  Previously it had
had a devil-may-care tone.  It was the voice of a trickster now.

Boldwood's present mood was not critical enough to notice tones.  He
continued, "I may as well speak plainly; and understand, I don't
wish to enter into the questions of right or wrong, woman's honour
and shame, or to express any opinion on your conduct.  I intend a
business transaction with you."

"I see," said Troy.  "Suppose we sit down here."

An old tree trunk lay under the hedge immediately opposite, and they
sat down.

"I was engaged to be married to Miss Everdene," said Boldwood, "but
you came and--"

"Not engaged," said Troy.

"As good as engaged."

"If I had not turned up she might have become engaged to you."

"Hang might!"

"Would, then."

"If you had not come I should certainly--yes, CERTAINLY--have been
accepted by this time.  If you had not seen her you might have been
married to Fanny.  Well, there's too much difference between Miss
Everdene's station and your own for this flirtation with her ever to
benefit you by ending in marriage.  So all I ask is, don't molest her
any more. Marry Fanny.  I'll make it worth your while."

"How will you?"

"I'll pay you well now, I'll settle a sum of money upon her, and
I'll see that you don't suffer from poverty in the future.  I'll put
it clearly.  Bathsheba is only playing with you: you are too poor
for her as I said; so give up wasting your time about a great match
you'll never make for a moderate and rightful match you may make
to-morrow; take up your carpet-bag, turn about, leave Weatherbury
now, this night, and you shall take fifty pounds with you.  Fanny
shall have fifty to enable her to prepare for the wedding, when you
have told me where she is living, and she shall have five hundred
paid down on her wedding-day."

In making this statement Boldwood's voice revealed only too clearly
a consciousness of the weakness of his position, his aims, and his
method.  His manner had lapsed quite from that of the firm and
dignified Boldwood of former times; and such a scheme as he had now
engaged in he would have condemned as childishly imbecile only a few
months ago.  We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks
whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free
man which in the lover we vainly seek.  Where there is much bias
there must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is
subtracted capacity.  Boldwood exemplified this to an abnormal
degree: he knew nothing of Fanny Robin's circumstances or
whereabouts, he knew nothing of Troy's possibilities, yet that was
what he said.

"I like Fanny best," said Troy; "and if, as you say, Miss Everdene is
out of my reach, why I have all to gain by accepting your money, and
marrying Fan.  But she's only a servant."

"Never mind--do you agree to my arrangement?"

"I do."

"Ah!" said Boldwood, in a more elastic voice.  "Oh, Troy, if you like
her best, why then did you step in here and injure my happiness?"

"I love Fanny best now," said Troy.  "But Bathsh--Miss Everdene
inflamed me, and displaced Fanny for a time.  It is over now."

"Why should it be over so soon?  And why then did you come here
again?"

"There are weighty reasons.  Fifty pounds at once, you said!"

"I did," said Boldwood, "and here they are--fifty sovereigns." He
handed Troy a small packet.

"You have everything ready--it seems that you calculated on my
accepting them," said the sergeant, taking the packet.

"I thought you might accept them," said Boldwood.

"You've only my word that the programme shall be adhered to, whilst
I at any rate have fifty pounds."

"I had thought of that, and I have considered that if I can't appeal
to your honour I can trust to your--well, shrewdness we'll call
it--not to lose five hundred pounds in prospect, and also make a
bitter enemy of a man who is willing to be an extremely useful
friend."

"Stop, listen!" said Troy in a whisper.

A light pit-pat was audible upon the road just above them.

"By George--'tis she," he continued.  "I must go on and meet her."

"She--who?"

"Bathsheba."

"Bathsheba--out alone at this time o' night!" said Boldwood in
amazement, and starting up. "Why must you meet her?"

"She was expecting me to-night--and I must now speak to her, and wish
her good-bye, according to your wish."

"I don't see the necessity of speaking."

"It can do no harm--and she'll be wandering about looking for me if
I don't.  You shall hear all I say to her.  It will help you in your
love-making when I am gone."

"Your tone is mocking."

"Oh no.  And remember this, if she does not know what has become of
me, she will think more about me than if I tell her flatly I have
come to give her up."

"Will you confine your words to that one point?--Shall I hear every
word you say?"

"Every word.  Now sit still there, and hold my carpet bag for me, and
mark what you hear."

The light footstep came closer, halting occasionally, as if the
walker listened for a sound.  Troy whistled a double note in a soft,
fluty tone.

"Come to that, is it!" murmured Boldwood, uneasily.

"You promised silence," said Troy.

"I promise again."

Troy stepped forward.

"Frank, dearest, is that you?" The tones were Bathsheba's.

"O God!" said Boldwood.

"Yes," said Troy to her.

"How late you are," she continued, tenderly.  "Did you come by the
carrier?  I listened and heard his wheels entering the village, but
it was some time ago, and I had almost given you up, Frank."

"I was sure to come," said Frank.  "You knew I should, did you not?"

"Well, I thought you would," she said, playfully; "and, Frank, it
is so lucky!  There's not a soul in my house but me to-night.  I've
packed them all off so nobody on earth will know of your visit to
your lady's bower.  Liddy wanted to go to her grandfather's to tell
him about her holiday, and I said she might stay with them till
to-morrow--when you'll be gone again."

"Capital," said Troy.  "But, dear me, I had better go back for my
bag, because my slippers and brush and comb are in it; you run home
whilst I fetch it, and I'll promise to be in your parlour in ten
minutes."

"Yes." She turned and tripped up the hill again.

During the progress of this dialogue there was a nervous twitching
of Boldwood's tightly closed lips, and his face became bathed in a
clammy dew.  He now started forward towards Troy.  Troy turned to
him and took up the bag.

"Shall I tell her I have come to give her up and cannot marry her?"
said the soldier, mockingly.

"No, no; wait a minute.  I want to say more to you--more to you!"
said Boldwood, in a hoarse whisper.

"Now," said Troy, "you see my dilemma.  Perhaps I am a bad man--the
victim of my impulses--led away to do what I ought to leave undone.
I can't, however, marry them both.  And I have two reasons for
choosing Fanny.  First, I like her best upon the whole, and second,
you make it worth my while."

At the same instant Boldwood sprang upon him, and held him by the
neck.  Troy felt Boldwood's grasp slowly tightening. The move was
absolutely unexpected.

"A moment," he gasped.  "You are injuring her you love!"

"Well, what do you mean?" said the farmer.

"Give me breath," said Troy.

Boldwood loosened his hand, saying, "By Heaven, I've a mind to kill
you!"

"And ruin her."

"Save her."

"Oh, how can she be saved now, unless I marry her?"

Boldwood groaned.  He reluctantly released the soldier, and flung him
back against the hedge.  "Devil, you torture me!" said he.

Troy rebounded like a ball, and was about to make a dash at the
farmer; but he checked himself, saying lightly--

"It is not worth while to measure my strength with you.  Indeed it
is a barbarous way of settling a quarrel.  I shall shortly leave the
army because of the same conviction.  Now after that revelation of
how the land lies with Bathsheba, 'twould be a mistake to kill me,
would it not?"

"'Twould be a mistake to kill you," repeated Boldwood, mechanically,
with a bowed head.

"Better kill yourself."

"Far better."

"I'm glad you see it."

"Troy, make her your wife, and don't act upon what I arranged just
now.  The alternative is dreadful, but take Bathsheba; I give her up!
She must love you indeed to sell soul and body to you so utterly as
she has done.  Wretched woman--deluded woman--you are, Bathsheba!"

"But about Fanny?"

"Bathsheba is a woman well to do," continued Boldwood, in nervous
anxiety, "and, Troy, she will make a good wife; and, indeed, she is
worth your hastening on your marriage with her!"

"But she has a will--not to say a temper, and I shall be a mere slave
to her.  I could do anything with poor Fanny Robin."

"Troy," said Boldwood, imploringly, "I'll do anything for you, only
don't desert her; pray don't desert her, Troy."

"Which, poor Fanny?"

"No; Bathsheba Everdene.  Love her best!  Love her tenderly!  How
shall I get you to see how advantageous it will be to you to secure
her at once?"

"I don't wish to secure her in any new way."

Boldwood's arm moved spasmodically towards Troy's person again.  He
repressed the instinct, and his form drooped as with pain.

Troy went on--

"I shall soon purchase my discharge, and then--"

"But I wish you to hasten on this marriage!  It will be better for
you both.  You love each other, and you must let me help you to do
it."

"How?"

"Why, by settling the five hundred on Bathsheba instead of Fanny, to
enable you to marry at once.  No; she wouldn't have it of me.  I'll
pay it down to you on the wedding-day."

Troy paused in secret amazement at Boldwood's wild infatuation.  He
carelessly said, "And am I to have anything now?"

"Yes, if you wish to.  But I have not much additional money with me.
I did not expect this; but all I have is yours."

Boldwood, more like a somnambulist than a wakeful man, pulled out the
large canvas bag he carried by way of a purse, and searched it.

"I have twenty-one pounds more with me," he said.  "Two notes and a
sovereign.  But before I leave you I must have a paper signed--"

"Pay me the money, and we'll go straight to her parlour, and make any
arrangement you please to secure my compliance with your wishes.  But
she must know nothing of this cash business."

"Nothing, nothing," said Boldwood, hastily.  "Here is the sum, and
if you'll come to my house we'll write out the agreement for the
remainder, and the terms also."

"First we'll call upon her."

"But why?  Come with me to-night, and go with me to-morrow to the
surrogate's."

"But she must be consulted; at any rate informed."

"Very well; go on."

They went up the hill to Bathsheba's house.  When they stood at the
entrance, Troy said, "Wait here a moment."  Opening the door, he
glided inside, leaving the door ajar.

Boldwood waited.  In two minutes a light appeared in the passage.
Boldwood then saw that the chain had been fastened across the door.
Troy appeared inside, carrying a bedroom candlestick.

"What, did you think I should break in?" said Boldwood,
contemptuously.

"Oh, no, it is merely my humour to secure things.  Will you read this
a moment?  I'll hold the light."

Troy handed a folded newspaper through the slit between door and
doorpost, and put the candle close.  "That's the paragraph," he said,
placing his finger on a line.

Boldwood looked and read--

   MARRIAGES.

   On the 17th inst., at St. Ambrose's Church, Bath, by the
   Rev. G. Mincing, B.A., Francis Troy, only son of the late
   Edward Troy, Esq., M.D., of Weatherbury, and sergeant with
   Dragoon Guards, to Bathsheba, only surviving daughter of
   the late Mr. John Everdene, of Casterbridge.

"This may be called Fort meeting Feeble, hey, Boldwood?" said Troy.
A low gurgle of derisive laughter followed the words.

The paper fell from Boldwood's hands.  Troy continued--

"Fifty pounds to marry Fanny.  Good.  Twenty-one pounds not to marry
Fanny, but Bathsheba.  Good.  Finale: already Bathsheba's husband.
Now, Boldwood, yours is the ridiculous fate which always attends
interference between a man and his wife.  And another word.  Bad as I
am, I am not such a villain as to make the marriage or misery of any
woman a matter of huckster and sale.  Fanny has long ago left me.  I
don't know where she is.  I have searched everywhere.  Another word
yet.  You say you love Bathsheba; yet on the merest apparent evidence
you instantly believe in her dishonour.  A fig for such love!  Now
that I've taught you a lesson, take your money back again."

"I will not; I will not!" said Boldwood, in a hiss.

"Anyhow I won't have it," said Troy, contemptuously.  He wrapped the
packet of gold in the notes, and threw the whole into the road.

Boldwood shook his clenched fist at him.  "You juggler of Satan!  You
black hound!  But I'll punish you yet; mark me, I'll punish you yet!"

Another peal of laughter.  Troy then closed the door, and locked
himself in.

Throughout the whole of that night Boldwood's dark form might have
been seen walking about the hills and downs of Weatherbury like an
unhappy Shade in the Mournful Fields by Acheron.

Bathsheba leaves one evening soon afterward with the intention of visiting Liddy. She has written to Boldwood to refuse him and does not want to see him when he returns from his trip. Troy is in Bath and is planning to return to Weatherbury in the next day or two. On her way to Liddy's, Bathsheba runs into Boldwood, who has received her letter but will not accept her refusal. The two of them have a heated discussion, in which he reminds her of the valentine she sent, and she tries to persuade him that it meant nothing. Finally, she claims that she lacks warmth. Boldwood responds by telling her that he knows she loves Troy, and he chastises her for being "dazzled by brass and scarlet. " She admits that she does love Troy and has kissed him. He flies into a jealous rage, declaring, "I pray God he may not come into my sight for I may be tempted beyond myself." Bathsheba fears greatly for Troy. Chapter 32 opens in the perspective of the wife of one of Bathsheba's farm laborers, a woman by the name of Maryann Money. After Bathsheba has left, Maryann sees someone take a horse from the stable. Thinking it is a thief she alerts Gabriel and Coggan, and the two set off after the rider. When they finally catch up to him or her, after a long chase, they discover it is Bathsheba, secretly following Troy to Bath. They agree not to tell anyone what they have seen, but Gabriel warns Bathsheba that women generally should not travel alone at night. The chapter ends with a summary of the events from Bathsheba's perspective, explaining that she was so frightened by Boldwood's words that she determined to warn Troy not to return to Weatherbury. The next chapter spans two weeks at the farm during the oak harvest. No news of Bathsheba comes, except when Cainy Ball, one of the farm hands, comes back from seeing a doctor in Bath. He tells a group of farm workers that he saw the mistress enter a park arm-in-arm with a soldier. That night Gabriel hears voices and realizes that Liddy and Bathsheba have returned. Boldwood is also walking nearby, and he sees Sergeant Troy return to the carriage house. Boldwood tries to bribe Troy to marry Fanny Robin and leave Bathsheba alone. Troy claims to agree to the bribe but persuades Boldwood to wait and overhear his conversation with Bathsheba first, whom he now awaits. She comes and Boldwood hears her invite Troy back to the house, and she calls him by his first name, Frank. At this, Boldwood abandons all hope, thinking she has now lost all sense of propriety. When Bathsheba has gone back to the house, Boldwood tells Troy he will now pay him to marry Bathsheba rather than Fanny, reasoning that marriage will be more honorable than the current state of affairs. At this, however, Troy brings Boldwood back to the farm and shows him a newspaper announcement revealing that he and Bathsheba are, in fact, already married. He refuses Boldwood's money but has utterly humiliated him. Boldwood wanders the fields all night after Troy locks him out of the house.

Commentary Aside from advancing the plot with the off-stage marriage of Bathsheba and Troy, this short section provides crucial insights into the characters of Bathsheba, Boldwood, and Troy. Having shown us the effect of a series of meetings with Troy on Bathsheba's feelings, Hardy now takes Troy away and shows us how his absence affects her. Interestingly, very little of this section is shown from her point of view. Instead, we see her behavior as it strikes people who know her only distantly, such as Maryann Money and the farm workers. Chapter 32 is a particularly good example. Maryann watches someone take the horse from the stables and has no idea that Bathsheba would act so rashly as to ride to Bath at night without telling anyone. Thus, rather than seeing the series of decisions that lead up to her strange act, we see the act from afar. Hardy's use of perspective here makes the strange irrationality of Bathsheba's actions much more clear to us than it would be if we were inside Bathsheba's consciousness. Hardy does not allow us to sympathize with her but rather asks us to evaluate her behavior; the information with which he provides us gives us little choice but to judge this once strong and independent woman as increasingly foolish. A similar transformation occurs in Boldwood, as shown in particular through his desperate dealings with Troy. Troy has some perspective and is emotionally removed enough from the situation to manipulate Boldwood and utterly humiliate the man who once was above all weakness. After showing him the wedding announcement, Troy mocks him, calling him ridiculous. This scene reveals a cruel and heartless aspect of Troy's character that makes the reader fear for Bathsheba. Cainy Ball's report about Bath is a comic scene, in which the farm laborers serve a dual role, acting both as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on what has happened, and also as a kind of comic relief.