Far from the Madding Crowd
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.
CHAPTER XXXIV
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