Far from the Madding Crowd
you run me through?—no, you have not! Whatever have you done!”
“I have not touched you,” said Troy, quietly. “It was mere sleight of
hand. The sword passed behind you. Now you are not afraid, are you?
Because if you are I can’t perform. I give my word that I will not only
not hurt you, but not once touch you.”
“I don’t think I am afraid. You are quite sure you will not hurt me?”
“Quite sure.”
“Is the sword very sharp?”
“O no—only stand as still as a statue. Now!”
In an instant the atmosphere was transformed to Bathsheba’s eyes. Beams
of light caught from the low sun’s rays, above, around, in front of
her, well-nigh shut out earth and heaven—all emitted in the marvellous
evolutions of Troy’s reflecting blade, which seemed everywhere at once,
and yet nowhere specially. These circling gleams were accompanied by a
keen rush that was almost a whistling—also springing from all sides of
her at once. In short, she was enclosed in a firmament of light, and of
sharp hisses, resembling a sky-full of meteors close at hand.
Never since the broadsword became the national weapon had there been
more dexterity shown in its management than by the hands of Sergeant
Troy, and never had he been in such splendid temper for the performance
as now in the evening sunshine among the ferns with Bathsheba. It may
safely be asserted with respect to the closeness of his cuts, that had
it been possible for the edge of the sword to leave in the air a
permanent substance wherever it flew past, the space left untouched
would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba’s figure.
Behind the luminous streams of this _aurora militaris_, she could see
the hue of Troy’s sword arm, spread in a scarlet haze over the space
covered by its motions, like a twanged harpstring, and behind all Troy
himself, mostly facing her; sometimes, to show the rear cuts, half
turned away, his eye nevertheless always keenly measuring her breadth
and outline, and his lips tightly closed in sustained effort. Next, his
movements lapsed slower, and she could see them individually. The
hissing of the sword had ceased, and he stopped entirely.
“That outer loose lock of hair wants tidying,” he said, before she had
moved or spoken. “Wait: I’ll do it for you.”
An arc of silver shone on her right side: the sword had descended. The
lock dropped to the ground.
“Bravely borne!” said Troy. “You didn’t flinch a shade’s thickness.
Wonderful in a woman!”
“It was because I didn’t expect it. Oh, you have spoilt my hair!”
“Only once more.”
“No—no! I am afraid of you—indeed I am!” she cried.
“I won’t touch you at all—not even your hair. I am only going to kill
that caterpillar settling on you. Now: still!”
It appeared that a caterpillar had come from the fern and chosen the
front of her bodice as his resting place. She saw the point glisten
towards her bosom, and seemingly enter it. Bathsheba closed her eyes in
the full persuasion that she was killed at last. However, feeling just
as usual, she opened them again.
“There it is, look,” said the sergeant, holding his sword before her
eyes.
The caterpillar was spitted upon its point.
“Why, it is magic!” said Bathsheba, amazed.
“Oh no—dexterity. I merely gave point to your bosom where the
caterpillar was, and instead of running you through checked the
extension a thousandth of an inch short of your surface.”
“But how could you chop off a curl of my hair with a sword that has no
edge?”
“No edge! This sword will shave like a razor. Look here.”
He touched the palm of his hand with the blade, and then, lifting it,
showed her a thin shaving of scarf-skin dangling therefrom.
“But you said before beginning that it was blunt and couldn’t cut me!”
“That was to get you to stand still, and so make sure of your safety.
The risk of injuring you through your moving was too great not to force
me to tell you a fib to escape it.”
She shuddered. “I have been within an inch of my life, and didn’t know
it!”
“More precisely speaking, you have been within half an inch of being
pared alive two hundred and ninety-five times.”
“Cruel, cruel, ’tis of you!”
“You have been perfectly safe, nevertheless. My sword never errs.” And
Troy returned the weapon to the scabbard.
Bathsheba, overcome by a hundred tumultuous feelings resulting from the
scene, abstractedly sat down on a tuft of heather.
“I must leave you now,” said Troy, softly. “And I’ll venture to take
and keep this in remembrance of you.”
She saw him stoop to the grass, pick up the winding lock which he had
severed from her manifold tresses, twist it round his fingers, unfasten
a button in the breast of his coat, and carefully put it inside. She
felt powerless to withstand or deny him. He was altogether too much for
her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing a reviving wind, finds it
blow so strongly that it stops the breath. He drew near and said, “I
must be leaving you.”
He drew nearer still. A minute later and she saw his scarlet form
disappear amid the ferny thicket, almost in a flash, like a brand
swiftly waved.
That minute’s interval had brought the blood beating into her face, set
her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and enlarged
emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought. It had brought upon
her a stroke resulting, as did that of Moses in Horeb, in a liquid
stream—here a stream of tears. She felt like one who has sinned a great
sin.
The circumstance had been the gentle dip of Troy’s mouth downwards upon
her own. He had kissed her.
CHAPTER XXIX
PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK
We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many
varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba Everdene.
It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introduced as lymph on
the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured her whole
constitution. Bathsheba, though she had too much understanding to be
entirely governed by her womanliness, had too much womanliness to use
her understanding to the best advantage. Perhaps in no minor point does
woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she
possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false—except,
indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical on strictures that she knows
to be true.
Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when
they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws
away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any
strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of
the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a
condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.
Bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter. Though in one
sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight
coteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and
winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on
the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody in
the tything, and where calculation is confined to market-days. Of the
fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but little, and
of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all. Had her
utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (and by
herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such a
matter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than her
discretion. Her love was entire as a child’s, and though warm as summer
it was fresh as spring. Her culpability lay in her making no attempt to
control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into consequences. She
could show others the steep and thorny way, but “reck’d not her own
rede.”
And Troy’s deformities lay deep down from a woman’s vision, whilst his
embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely
Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were
as metals in a mine.
The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her
conduct. Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the
greatest freedom to Liddy, but she had only communed with her own heart
concerning Troy.
All this infatuation Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the
time of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on to
the small hours of many a night. That he was not beloved had hitherto
been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting into the toils was
now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which nearly obscured it.
It was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted observation of
Hippocrates concerning physical pains.
That is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even the
fear of breeding aversion in the bosom of the one beloved can deter
from combating his or her errors. Oak determined to speak to his
mistress. He would base his appeal on what he considered her unfair
treatment of Farmer Boldwood, now absent from home.
An opportunity occurred one evening when she had gone for a short walk
by a path through the neighbouring cornfields. It was dusk when Oak,
who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path and met her
returning, quite pensively, as he thought.
The wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way was quite
a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side. Two
persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and Oak stood
aside to let her pass.
“Oh, is it Gabriel?” she said. “You are taking a walk too. Good-night.”
“I thought I would come to meet you, as it is rather late,” said Oak,
turning and following at her heels when she had brushed somewhat
quickly by him.
“Thank you, indeed, but I am not very fearful.”
“Oh no; but there are bad characters about.”
“I never meet them.”
Now Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce the
gallant sergeant through the channel of “bad characters.” But all at
once the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that this was
rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with. He tried another
preamble.
“And as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away from home,
too—I mean Farmer Boldwood—why, thinks I, I’ll go,” he said.
“Ah, yes.” She walked on without turning her head, and for many steps
nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustle of her dress
against the heavy corn-ears. Then she resumed rather tartly—
“I don’t quite understand what you meant by saying that Mr. Boldwood
would naturally come to meet me.”
“I meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to take
place between you and him, miss. Forgive my speaking plainly.”
“They say what is not true.” she returned quickly. “No marriage is
likely to take place between us.”
Gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment had come.
“Well, Miss Everdene,” he said, “putting aside what people say, I never
in my life saw any courting if his is not a courting of you.”
Bathsheba would probably have terminated the conversation there and
then by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weakness
of position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to better it.
“Since this subject has been mentioned,” she said very emphatically, “I
am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is very
common and very provoking. I didn’t definitely promise Mr. Boldwood
anything. I have never cared for him. I respect him, and he has urged
me to marry him. But I have given him no distinct answer. As soon as he
returns I shall do so; and the answer will be that I cannot think of
marrying him.”
“People are full of mistakes, seemingly.”
“They are.”
“The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost