CHAPTER XXIX
PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK
We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the manyvarying particulars which made up the character of BathshebaEverdene. It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introducedas lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and colouredher whole constitution. Bathsheba, though she had too muchunderstanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had toomuch womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage.Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more thanin the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that sheknows to be false--except, indeed, in that of being utterly scepticalon strictures that she knows to be true.
Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant womenlove when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong womanrecklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak womanwho has never had any strength to throw away. One source of herinadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practicein making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak bybeing new.
Bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter. Though in onesense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylightcoteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd andwinds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives onthe other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybodyin the tything, and where calculation is confined to market-days.Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew butlittle, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.Had her utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (andby herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such amatter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than herdiscretion. Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm assummer it was fresh as spring. Her culpability lay in her makingno attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry intoconsequences. She could show others the steep and thorny way, but"reck'd not her own rede."
And Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilsthis embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting withhomely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whosevirtues were as metals in a mine.
The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in herconduct. Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with thegreatest freedom to Liddy, but she had only communed with her ownheart concerning Troy.
All this infatuation Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from thetime of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and onto the small hours of many a night. That he was not beloved hadhitherto been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting intothe toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one whichnearly obscured it. It was a result which paralleled the oft-quotedobservation of Hippocrates concerning physical pains.
That is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even thefear of breeding aversion in the bosom of the one beloved can deterfrom combating his or her errors. Oak determined to speak to hismistress. He would base his appeal on what he considered her unfairtreatment of Farmer Boldwood, now absent from home.
An opportunity occurred one evening when she had gone for a shortwalk by a path through the neighbouring cornfields. It was dusk whenOak, who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path andmet her returning, quite pensively, as he thought.
The wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way wasquite a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side.Two persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, andOak stood aside to let her pass.
"Oh, is it Gabriel?" she said. "You are taking a walk too.Good-night."
"I thought I would come to meet you, as it is rather late," said Oak,turning and following at her heels when she had brushed somewhatquickly by him.
"Thank you, indeed, but I am not very fearful."
"Oh no; but there are bad characters about."
"I never meet them."
Now Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce thegallant sergeant through the channel of "bad characters." But all atonce the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that thiswas rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with. He triedanother preamble.
"And as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away fromhome, too--I mean Farmer Boldwood--why, thinks I, I'll go," he said.
"Ah, yes." She walked on without turning her head, and for manysteps nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustleof her dress against the heavy corn-ears. Then she resumed rathertartly--
"I don't quite understand what you meant by saying that Mr. Boldwoodwould naturally come to meet me."
"I meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to takeplace between you and him, miss. Forgive my speaking plainly."
"They say what is not true." she returned quickly. "No marriage islikely to take place between us."
Gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment hadcome. "Well, Miss Everdene," he said, "putting aside what peoplesay, I never in my life saw any courting if his is not a courtingof you."
Bathsheba would probably have terminated the conversation there andthen by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weaknessof position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to betterit.
"Since this subject has been mentioned," she said very emphatically,"I am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is verycommon and very provoking. I didn't definitely promise Mr. Boldwoodanything. I have never cared for him. I respect him, and he hasurged me to marry him. But I have given him no distinct answer.As soon as he returns I shall do so; and the answer will be that Icannot think of marrying him."
"People are full of mistakes, seemingly."
"They are."
"The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almostproved that you were not; lately they have said that you be not, andyou straightway begin to show--"
"That I am, I suppose you mean."
"Well, I hope they speak the truth."
"They do, but wrongly applied. I don't trifle with him; but then, Ihave nothing to do with him."
Oak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood's rival in a wrongtone to her after all. "I wish you had never met that young SergeantTroy, miss," he sighed.
Bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic. "Why?" she asked.
"He is not good enough for 'ee."
"Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?"
"Nobody at all."
"Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here,"she said, intractably. "Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is aneducated man, and quite worthy of any woman. He is well born."
"His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiersis anything but a proof of his worth. It show's his course to bedown'ard."
"I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation. Mr. Troy'scourse is not by any means downward; and his superiority IS a proofof his worth!"
"I believe him to have no conscience at all. And I cannot helpbegging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him. Listen to me thisonce--only this once! I don't say he's such a bad man as I havefancied--I pray to God he is not. But since we don't exactly knowwhat he is, why not behave as if he MIGHT be bad, simply for your ownsafety? Don't trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so."
"Why, pray?"
"I like soldiers, but this one I do not like," he said, sturdily."His cleverness in his calling may have tempted him astray, and whatis mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman. When he tries totalk to 'ee again, why not turn away with a short 'Good day'; andwhen you see him coming one way, turn the other. When he saysanything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speakof him before those who will report your talk as 'that fantasticalman,' or 'that Sergeant What's-his-name.' 'That man of a familythat has come to the dogs.' Don't be unmannerly towards en, bu
tharmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man."
No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as didBathsheba now.
"I say--I say again--that it doesn't become you to talk abouthim. Why he should be mentioned passes me quite!" she exclaimeddesperately. "I know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughlyconscientious man--blunt sometimes even to rudeness--but alwaysspeaking his mind about you plain to your face!"
"Oh."
"He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular,too, about going to church--yes, he is!"
"I am afeard nobody saw him there. I never did, certainly."
"The reason of that is," she said eagerly, "that he goes in privatelyby the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits atthe back of the gallery. He told me so."
This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel ears likethe thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. It was not only received withutter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all theassurances that had preceded it.
Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him. He brimmedwith deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness ofwhich was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep itso:--
"You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always.I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I wouldwish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside. I have lost inthe race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as topretend to 'ee now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me.But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider--that, bothto keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in commongenerosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, youshould be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier."
"Don't, don't, don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.
"Are ye not more to me than my own affairs, and even life!" he wenton. "Come, listen to me! I am six years older than you, and Mr.Boldwood is ten years older than I, and consider--I do beg of 'ee toconsider before it is too late--how safe you would be in his hands!"
Oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, heranger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him forletting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good,any more than for his slighting treatment of Troy.
"I wish you to go elsewhere," she commanded, a paleness of faceinvisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words. "Do notremain on this farm any longer. I don't want you--I beg you to go!"
"That's nonsense," said Oak, calmly. "This is the second time youhave pretended to dismiss me; and what's the use o' it?"
"Pretended! You shall go, sir--your lecturing I will not hear! I ammistress here."
"Go, indeed--what folly will you say next? Treating me like Dick,Tom and Harry when you know that a short time ago my position was asgood as yours! Upon my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced. Youknow, too, that I can't go without putting things in such a strait asyou wouldn't get out of I can't tell when. Unless, indeed, you'llpromise to have an understanding man as bailiff, or manager, orsomething. I'll go at once if you'll promise that."
"I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my own manager," shesaid decisively.
"Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for biding. How wouldthe farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman? But mind this, Idon't wish 'ee to feel you owe me anything. Not I. What I do, I do.Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place--fordon't suppose I'm content to be a nobody. I was made for betterthings. However, I don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, asthey must if you keep in this mind.... I hate taking my own measureso plain, but, upon my life, your provoking ways make a man saywhat he wouldn't dream of at other times! I own to being ratherinterfering. But you know well enough how it is, and who she is thatI like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil toher!"
It is more than probable that she privately and unconsciouslyrespected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shownin his tone even more than in his words. At any rate she murmuredsomething to the effect that he might stay if he wished. She saidmore distinctly, "Will you leave me alone now? I don't order itas a mistress--I ask it as a woman, and I expect you not to be souncourteous as to refuse."
"Certainly I will, Miss Everdene," said Gabriel, gently. He wonderedthat the request should have come at this moment, for the strife wasover, and they were on a most desolate hill, far from every humanhabitation, and the hour was getting late. He stood still andallowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her formupon the sky.
A distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at thatpoint now ensued. A figure apparently rose from the earth besideher. The shape beyond all doubt was Troy's. Oak would not be evena possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundredyards were between the lovers and himself.
Gabriel went home by way of the churchyard. In passing the towerhe thought of what she had said about the sergeant's virtuous habitof entering the church unperceived at the beginning of service.Believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused,he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of whichit stood, and examined it. The pale lustre yet hanging in thenorth-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy hadgrown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot,delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb. It was a decisiveproof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy came backto Weatherbury.