Far from the Madding Crowd
descending Mellstock Hill another milestone appeared, and soon the
beginning of an iron-railed fence came into view. She staggered across
to the first post, clung to it, and looked around.
The Casterbridge lights were now individually visible. It was getting
towards morning, and vehicles might be hoped for, if not expected soon.
She listened. There was not a sound of life save that acme and
sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three hollow
notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a
funeral bell.
“Less than a mile!” the woman murmured. “No; more,” she added, after a
pause. “The mile is to the county hall, and my resting-place is on the
other side Casterbridge. A little over a mile, and there I am!” After
an interval she again spoke. “Five or six steps to a yard—six perhaps.
I have to go seventeen hundred yards. A hundred times six, six hundred.
Seventeen times that. O pity me, Lord!”
Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon the
rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her feet
on beneath.
This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling lessens
the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the strong. She
said again in the same tone, “I’ll believe that the end lies five posts
forward, and no further, and so get strength to pass them.”
This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned
and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.
She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.
“I’ll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next
fifth. I can do it.”
She passed five more.
“It lies only five further.”
She passed five more.
“But it is five further.”
She passed them.
“That stone bridge is the end of my journey,” she said, when the bridge
over the Froom was in view.
She crawled to the bridge. During the effort each breath of the woman
went into the air as if never to return again.
“Now for the truth of the matter,” she said, sitting down. “The truth
is, that I have less than half a mile.” Self-beguilement with what she
had known all the time to be false had given her strength to come over
half a mile that she would have been powerless to face in the lump. The
artifice showed that the woman, by some mysterious intuition, had
grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may operate more
vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted effect more than the
far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness, is needed for
striking a blow.
The half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like a stolid
Juggernaut. It was an impassive King of her world. The road here ran
across Durnover Moor, open to the road on either side. She surveyed the
wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay down against a
guard-stone of the bridge.
Never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller here exercised
hers. Every conceivable aid, method, stratagem, mechanism, by which
these last desperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed by a human
being unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain, and dismissed as
impracticable. She thought of sticks, wheels, crawling—she even thought
of rolling. But the exertion demanded by either of these latter two was
greater than to walk erect. The faculty of contrivance was worn out.
Hopelessness had come at last.
“No further!” she whispered, and closed her eyes.
From the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the bridge a portion
of shade seemed to detach itself and move into isolation upon the pale
white of the road. It glided noiselessly towards the recumbent woman.
She became conscious of something touching her hand; it was softness
and it was warmth. She opened her eyes, and the substance touched her
face. A dog was licking her cheek.
He was a huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standing darkly against the
low horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position of
her eyes. Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it
was impossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a
nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature.
Being thus assignable to no breed, he was the ideal embodiment of
canine greatness—a generalization from what was common to all. Night,
in its sad, solemn, and benevolent aspect, apart from its stealthy and
cruel side, was personified in this form. Darkness endows the small and
ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power, and even the suffering
woman threw her idea into figure.
In her reclining position she looked up to him just as in earlier times
she had, when standing, looked up to a man. The animal, who was as
homeless as she, respectfully withdrew a step or two when the woman
moved, and, seeing that she did not repulse him, he licked her hand
again.
A thought moved within her like lightning. “Perhaps I can make use of
him—I might do it then!”
She pointed in the direction of Casterbridge, and the dog seemed to
misunderstand: he trotted on. Then, finding she could not follow, he
came back and whined.
The ultimate and saddest singularity of woman’s effort and invention
was reached when, with a quickened breathing, she rose to a stooping
posture, and, resting her two little arms upon the shoulders of the
dog, leant firmly thereon, and murmured stimulating words. Whilst she
sorrowed in her heart she cheered with her voice, and what was stranger
than that the strong should need encouragement from the weak was that
cheerfulness should be so well stimulated by such utter dejection. Her
friend moved forward slowly, and she with small mincing steps moved
forward beside him, half her weight being thrown upon the animal.
Sometimes she sank as she had sunk from walking erect, from the
crutches, from the rails. The dog, who now thoroughly understood her
desire and her incapacity, was frantic in his distress on these
occasions; he would tug at her dress and run forward. She always called
him back, and it was now to be observed that the woman listened for
human sounds only to avoid them. It was evident that she had an object
in keeping her presence on the road and her forlorn state unknown.
Their progress was necessarily very slow. They reached the bottom of
the town, and the Casterbridge lamps lay before them like fallen
Pleiads as they turned to the left into the dense shade of a deserted
avenue of chestnuts, and so skirted the borough. Thus the town was
passed, and the goal was reached.
On this much-desired spot outside the town rose a picturesque building.
Originally it had been a mere case to hold people. The shell had been
so thin, so devoid of excrescence, and so closely drawn over the
accommodation granted, that the grim character of what was beneath
showed through it, as the shape of a body is visible under a
winding-sheet.
Then Nature, as if offended, lent a hand. Masses of ivy grew up,
completely covering the walls, till the place looked like an abbey; and
it was discovered that the view from the front, over the Casterbridge
chimneys, was one of the most magnificent in the county. A neighbouring
earl once said that he would give up a year’s rental to have at his own
door the view enjoyed by the inmates from theirs—and very probably the
inmates would have given up the view for his year’s rental.
This stone edifice consisted of a central mass and two wings, whereon
stood as sentinels a few slim chimneys, now gurgling sorrowfully to the
slow wind. In the wall was a gate, and by the gate a bellpull formed of
a hanging wire. The woman raised herself as high as possible upon her
knees, and could just reach the handle. She moved it and fell forwards
in a bowed attitude, her face upon her bosom.
It was getting on towards six o’clock, and sounds of movement were to
be heard inside the building which was the haven of rest to this
wearied soul. A little door by the large one was opened, and a man
appeared inside. He discerned the panting heap of clothes, went back
for a light, and came again. He entered a second time, and returned
with two women.
These lifted the prostrate figure and assisted her in through the
doorway. The man then closed the door.
“How did she get here?” said one of the women.
“The Lord knows,” said the other.
“There is a dog outside,” murmured the overcome traveller. “Where is he
gone? He helped me.”
“I stoned him away,” said the man.
The little procession then moved forward—the man in front bearing the
light, the two bony women next, supporting between them the small and
supple one. Thus they entered the house and disappeared.
CHAPTER XLI
SUSPICION—FANNY IS SENT FOR
Bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their
return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her. He
exhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a
silent tongue. The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the
same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church
both morning and afternoon. This was the day before the Budmouth races.
In the evening Troy said, suddenly—
“Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?”
Her countenance instantly sank. “Twenty pounds?” she said.
“The fact is, I want it badly.” The anxiety upon Troy’s face was
unusual and very marked. It was a culmination of the mood he had been
in all the day.
“Ah! for those races to-morrow.”
Troy for the moment made no reply. Her mistake had its advantages to a
man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now. “Well,
suppose I do want it for races?” he said, at last.
“Oh, Frank!” Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of entreaty
in the words. “Only such a few weeks ago you said that I was far
sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that you would
give them all up for me; and now, won’t you give up this one, which is
more a worry than a pleasure? Do, Frank. Come, let me fascinate you by
all I can do—by pretty words and pretty looks, and everything I can
think of—to stay at home. Say yes to your wife—say yes!”
The tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba’s nature were prominent
now—advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the
disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she was
cool too frequently threw over them. Few men could have resisted the
arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a little back
and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses more than the
words it accompanies, and which seems to have been designed for these
special occasions. Had the woman not been his wife, Troy would have
succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he would not deceive her
longer.
“The money is not wanted for racing debts at all,” he said.
“What is it for?” she asked. “You worry me a great deal by these
mysterious responsibilities, Frank.”
Troy hesitated. He did not now love her enough to allow himself to be
carried too far by her ways. Yet it was necessary to be civil. “You
wrong me by such a suspicious manner,” he said. “Such
strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so
early a date.”
“I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay,” she said,
with features between a smile and a pout.
“Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the latter.
Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don’t go too far, or you may have
cause to regret something.”
She reddened. “I do that already,” she said, quickly.
“What do you regret?”
“That my romance has come to an end.”
“All romances end at marriage.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You grieve me to my soul by being
smart at my expense.”
“You are dull enough at mine. I believe you hate me.”