Far from the Madding Crowd (32 page)

The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another sex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped, “Leave me, sir — leave me! I am nothing to you. Let me go on!”

“Deny that he has kissed you.”

“I shall not.”

“Ha — then he has!” came hoarsely from the farmer.

“He has,” she said, slowly, and, in spite of her fear, defiantly. “I am not ashamed to speak the truth.”

“And has he gone further? Has he laid hands upon you, and seduced you, as he has many and many another?”

“For shame, sir! I will not hear him slandered so, nor my good name linked with his in such outrageous intimacy.”

But even as she spoke these defiant words, Bathsheba felt stabbed by pangs of the keenest longing, and a mad desire to set aside all womanly scruples, run to wherever Troy was, and to lay herself down naked beside the sergeant and have him do whatsoever he would with her.

“I regret I went too far. I spoke only because I dearly wish to preserve you from harm. But I still say curse him; and curse him!” said Boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury. “Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand, you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and — kiss you! Heaven's mercy — kiss you! … Ah, a time of his life shall come when he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he has caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn — as I do now!”

“Don't, don't, oh, don't pray down evil upon him!” she implored in a miserable cry. “Anything but that — anything. Oh, be kind to him, sir, for I love him true!”

Boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline and consistency entirely disappear. The impending night appeared to concentrate in his eye. He did not hear her at all now.

“I'll punish him — by my soul, that will I! I'll meet him, soldier or no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft of my one delight. If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him — ”

He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. “Bathsheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! I've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! … It is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment — that he's away up the country, and not here! I hope he may not return here just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted beyond myself. Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away — yes, keep him away from me!”

For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words. He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees.

Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were incomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to repression he was — what she had seen him.

The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a circumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was coming back to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two. Troy had not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in Bath, and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough.

She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel would be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when she thought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might become aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's anger might then take the direction of revenge.

With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this guileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now there was no reserve. Desire and terror were mingled in her bosom, and her mind was brimming full of images of Troy and Boldwood locked in mortal combat, while she stood by, naked and aroused, offering her breasts to Troy, or fleeing from the ramlike advances of Boldwood. In her distraction, instead of advancing further she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on her brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself. Then she sat down on a heap of stones by the wayside to think. There she remained long. Above the dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of coppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all. Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.

And Boldwood? That once proud, unassailable man returned to his house with shoulders bowed, his mind clouded with the blackness of deep despair. A turmoil of rage, humiliation, passion and the disappointment of love bestowed on an unworthy object, seethed in his bosom. That he should have been so close! That she had once given him cause to hope! Indeed, that she had once half-promised to become his wife, now smote him with bitter irony; his cherished hopes, his patient wooing, his constant heart, had all been flung aside like the cast-off toys of a spoiled child.

The house was cheerless, dark and empty. Lighting a candle, Boldwood slowly mounted the dark oak staircase to his bedchamber. The tumbled sheets, the unmade bed, the nightcap flung carelessly on the bedpost, all were signs to him of his increasing loss of dignity and worth, and every object not in its rightful place struck him afresh with a sense of a world disordered.

He unlocked his closet, and found no chaos there; instead, in boxes and wrapped packages, lay in tidy rows the tangible evidence of his fruitless and ever to be frustrated illusions. Dreams of a future where he would flesh out the longed for role of husband, no longer solitary and remote from feeling, a future garnished and adorned by the woman who so thoughtlessly and inconsistently had played upon his feelings and in doing so had begun to wreak the destruction of his manhood.

He took up a box with rough hands, sneering at the inscription upon it, and tore it open. A soft cascade of ivory silk and black lace fell in folds upon the bed; it was a nightgown, a garment he had hoped to see bestowed with a lingering kiss on their wedding night, draped upon the fair form of his beloved; now, alas, it was merely an empty vessel. He felt to his horror a sob of wracked self-pity rising to his lips, and in vain he sought for the manliness of anger that his earlier thoughts of Troy inspired. But no anger came, only, to his misery, a burning physical desire and a base need for satisfaction he had never before acknowledged. He groaned her name aloud; pulling open his breeches, he fell on the bed kissing and pawing the nightgown, holding it hard against his hot flesh, murmuring her name again and again as he writhed in his ecstasy of misery. The silken gown itself seemed to understand his state, for it yielded persuasively in his fierce embrace, almost seeming to embody the shape and substance of his tormentor. It was in vain to struggle any longer; with a pulsing of his sex and a roaring of blood in his ears, Boldwood let go the last of his control and spent himself with prodigal effusion over the ivory silk, staining its virginal tissues with the shameful outpouring of his own slippery delight. But even this was not enough to satisfy his urges. To his horror, the very sight of this profaning of his beloved's wedding garment brought on a fresh arousal, and now he stripped himself naked, wrestling with the nightgown, pulling it back and forth between his legs and thighs, stroking with its comforting silk his sex, until it once again grew taut and angry and sought its throbbing release. What a fall from grace was here! Boldwood, exhausted by his efforts, slept heavily that night, only to awaken tormented with hideous remembrances and bitter shame at his night's debauch.

NIGHT — HORSES TRAMPING

The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the click of the same at their close. The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things — flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.

Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba had set out to visit. A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. She was totally unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep. It led to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation that something had happened. She left her bed and looked out of the window. The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure approaching the horse that was feeding there. The figure seized the horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field. Here she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle, for after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light wheels.

Two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure. They were a woman and a gipsy man. A woman was out of the question in such an occupation at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might probably have known the weakness of the household on this particular night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt. Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies in Weatherbury Bottom.

Maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence, having seen him depart had no fear. She hastily slipped on her clothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred creaks, ran to Coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm. Coggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first, and together they went to the paddock. Beyond all doubt the horse was gone.

“Hark!” said Gabriel.

They listened. Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a trotting horse passing up Longpuddle Lane — just beyond the gipsies' encampment in Weatherbury Bottom.

“That's our Dainty — I'll swear to her step,” said Jan.

“Mighty me! Won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids when she comes back!” moaned Maryann. “How I wish it had happened when she was at home, and none of us had been answerable!”

“We must ride after,” said Gabriel, decisively. “I'll be responsible to Miss Everdene for what we do. Yes, we'll follow.”

“Faith, I don't see how,” said Coggan. “All our horses are too heavy for that trick except little Poppet, and what's she between two of us? — If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something.”

“Which pair?”

“Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll.”

“Then wait here till I come hither again,” said Gabriel. He ran down the hill towards Farmer Boldwood's.

“Farmer Boldwood is not at home,” said Maryann.

“All the better,” said Coggan. “I know what he's gone for.”

Less than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same pace, with two halters dangling from his hand.

“Where did you find ‘em?” said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon the hedge without waiting for an answer.

“Under the eaves. I knew where they were kept,” said Gabriel, following him. “Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to look for saddles.”

“Like a hero!” said Jan.

“Maryann, you go to bed,” Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the hedge.

Springing down into Boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely allowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were dexterously slipped on. Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and Coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case through the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side. Oak vaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by Bathsheba's horse and the robber. Whose vehicle the horse had been harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty.

Weatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes. They scanned the shady green patch by the roadside. The gipsies were gone.

“The villains!” said Gabriel. “Which way have they gone, I wonder?”

“Straight on, as sure as God made little apples,” said Jan.

“Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake em”, said Oak. “Now on at full speed!”

No sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered. The road-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left behind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat plastic, but not muddy state. They came to cross-roads. Coggan suddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off.

“What's the matter?” said Gabriel.

“We must try to track ‘em, since we can't hear ‘em,” said Jan, fumbling in his pockets. He struck a light, and held the match to the ground. The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which reflected the flame of the match like eyes. One set of tracks was fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty, and not small canals, like the others. The footprints forming this recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot of each pair being exactly opposite one another.