Far from the Madding Crowd
“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.
CHAPTER XXXIII
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