Far from the Madding Crowd
published till at any rate the girl had been in her grave for a few
days, when the interposing barriers of earth and time, and a sense that
the events had been somewhat shut into oblivion, would deaden the sting
that revelation and invidious remark would have for Bathsheba just now.
By the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence,
which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark. A man came from
the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown
flour—
“Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?”
Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson.
“The corpse is here, sir,” said Gabriel.
“I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the
reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to
be performed with proper decency. Have you the registrar’s
certificate?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “I expect Poorgrass has that; and he’s at the
Buck’s Head. I forgot to ask him for it.”
“Then that settles the matter. We’ll put off the funeral till to-morrow
morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left
here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited
more than an hour, and have now gone home.”
Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable
plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house
for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba’s uncle. Visions of
several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay flitted
before him. But his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of
his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. He found her in an
unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were suspicious and
perplexed as with some antecedent thought. Troy had not yet returned.
At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of indifference to his
proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their
burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she
swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny’s account, and
desired that the girl might be brought into the house. Oak argued upon
the convenience of leaving her in the waggon, just as she lay now, with
her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle
into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose. “It is unkind
and unchristian,” she said, “to leave the poor thing in a coach-house
all night.”
“Very well, then,” said the parson. “And I will arrange that the
funeral shall take place early to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Troy is right in
feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully.
We must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving
her home, she is still our sister: and it is to be believed that God’s
uncovenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member
of the flock of Christ.”
The parson’s words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed
cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr.
Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three
other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors,
placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little
sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.
Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively
lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly
ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to
Troy’s wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite
of his careful manœuvering all this day, the very worst event that
could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had
happened now. Oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this
afternoon’s work that might cast over Bathsheba’s life a shade which
the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently
lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove.
Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate,
immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the
chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one,
“_Fanny Robin and child_.” Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully
rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription
“_Fanny Robin_” only. He then left the room, and went out quietly by
the front door.
CHAPTER XLIII
FANNY’S REVENGE
“Do you want me any longer ma’am?” inquired Liddy, at a later hour the
same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her
hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large
parlour beside the first fire of the season.
“No more to-night, Liddy.”
“I’ll sit up for master if you like, ma’am. I am not at all afraid of
Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle. She was such a
childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn’t appear to anybody
if it tried, I’m quite sure.”
“Oh no, no! You go to bed. I’ll sit up for him myself till twelve
o’clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up
and go to bed too.”
“It is half-past ten now.”
“Oh! is it?”
“Why don’t you sit upstairs, ma’am?”
“Why don’t I?” said Bathsheba, desultorily. “It isn’t worth
while—there’s a fire here, Liddy.” She suddenly exclaimed in an
impulsive and excited whisper, “Have you heard anything strange said of
Fanny?” The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of
unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears.
“No—not a word!” said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with
astonishment. “What is it makes you cry so, ma’am; has anything hurt
you?” She came to Bathsheba’s side with a face full of sympathy.
“No, Liddy—I don’t want you any more. I can hardly say why I have taken
to crying lately: I never used to cry. Good-night.”
Liddy then left the parlour and closed the door.
Bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than she
had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of
the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a
cave. And within the last day or two had come these disquieting
thoughts about her husband’s past. Her wayward sentiment that evening
concerning Fanny’s temporary resting-place had been the result of a
strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba’s bosom. Perhaps it would
be more accurately described as a determined rebellion against her
prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct of uncharitableness,
which would have withheld all sympathy from the dead woman, because in
life she had preceded Bathsheba in the attentions of a man whom
Bathsheba had by no means ceased from loving, though her love was sick
to death just now with the gravity of a further misgiving.
In five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door. Liddy
reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at
length she said, “Maryann has just heard something very strange, but I
know it isn’t true. And we shall be sure to know the rights of it in a
day or two.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma’am. It is about Fanny. That
same thing you have heard.”
“I have heard nothing.”
“I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last
hour—that—” Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the
remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as
she spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay.
Bathsheba trembled from head to foot.
“I don’t believe it!” she said, excitedly. “And there’s only one name
written on the coffin-cover.”
“Nor I, ma’am. And a good many others don’t; for we should surely have
been told more about it if it had been true—don’t you think so, ma’am?”
“We might or we might not.”
Bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see her
face. Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy glided
out, closed the door softly, and went to bed.
Bathsheba’s face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening,
might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who
loved her least. The sadness of Fanny Robin’s fate did not make
Bathsheba’s glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor Vashti,
and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects as
contrasts to each other. When Liddy came into the room a second time
the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary look. When
she went out after telling the story they had expressed wretchedness in
full activity. Her simple country nature, fed on old-fashioned
principles, was troubled by that which would have troubled a woman of
the world very little, both Fanny and her child, if she had one, being
dead.
Bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own
history and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny’s end which Oak and
Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing. The meeting
with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been
unwitnessed and unspoken of. Oak may have had the best of intentions in
withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had
happened to Fanny; but had he known that Bathsheba’s perceptions had
already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to
lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the
certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected
after all.
She suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than
herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with
dignity and her lurking doubts with stoicism. Where could she find such
a friend? nowhere in the house. She was by far the coolest of the women
under her roof. Patience and suspension of judgement for a few hours
were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to teach her. Might
she but go to Gabriel Oak!—but that could not be. What a way Oak had,
she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper
and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt,
any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery
of by every turn and look he gave—that among the multitude of interests
by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal
well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak
meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any
special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she
would wish to be. But then Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the
inmost matter of his bosom, as she was at this moment. Oak knew all
about Fanny that he wished to know—she felt convinced of that. If she
were to go to him now at once and say no more than these few words,
“What is the truth of the story?” he would feel bound in honour to tell
her. It would be an inexpressible relief. No further speech would need
to be uttered. He knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in
her would alarm him.
She flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it. Every
blade, every twig was still. The air was yet thick with moisture,
though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady
smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost
musical in its soothing regularity. It seemed better to be out of the
house than within it, and Bathsheba closed the door, and walked slowly
down the lane till she came opposite to Gabriel’s cottage, where he now
lived alone, having left Coggan’s house through being pinched for room.
There was a light in one window only, and that was downstairs. The
shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or curtain drawn over the
window, neither robbery nor observation being a contingency which could
do much injury to the occupant of the domicile. Yes, it was Gabriel