CHAPTER XXXI
BLAME--FURY
The next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the wayof Mr. Boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her notein person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy somefew hours earlier. Bathsheba's companion, as a gauge of theirreconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit hersister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib-makerliving in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far beyondYalbury. The arrangement was that Miss Everdene should honourthem by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingeniouscontrivances which this man of the woods had introduced into hiswares.
Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann, that they were tosee everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of thehouse just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refinedthe air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneathwas dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the variedcontours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath;and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene. Before her, amongthe clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fiercelight which showed themselves in the neighbourhood of a hidden sun,lingering on to the farthest north-west corner of the heavens thatthis midsummer season allowed.
She had walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how theday was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietlymelting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to thetime of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over Yalburyhill the very man she sought so anxiously to elude. Boldwood wasstepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength whichwas his customary gait, in which he always seemed to be balancingtwo thoughts. His manner was stunned and sluggish now.
Boldwood had for the first time been awakened to woman's privilegesin tergiversation even when it involves another person's possibleblight. That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far lessinconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope;for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to astraight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though herfancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncriticallove. But the argument now came back as sorry gleams from a brokenmirror. The discovery was no less a scourge than a surprise.
He came on looking upon the ground, and did not see Bathsheba tillthey were less than a stone's throw apart. He looked up at the soundof her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted toher the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter.
"Oh; is it you, Mr. Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsingin her face.
Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it ameans more effective than words. There are accents in the eye whichare not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than canenter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remotermoods that they avoid the pathway of sound. Boldwood's look wasunanswerable.
Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are you afraid ofme?"
"Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba.
"I fancied you looked so," said he. "And it is most strange, becauseof its contrast with my feeling for you."
She regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited.
"You know what that feeling is," continued Boldwood, deliberately."A thing strong as death. No dismissal by a hasty letter affectsthat."
"I wish you did not feel so strongly about me," she murmured. "It isgenerous of you, and more than I deserve, but I must not hear itnow."
"Hear it? What do you think I have to say, then? I am not to marryyou, and that's enough. Your letter was excellently plain. I wantyou to hear nothing--not I."
Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove forfreeing herself from this fearfully awkward position. She confusedlysaid, "Good evening," and was moving on. Boldwood walked up to herheavily and dully.
"Bathsheba--darling--is it final indeed?"
"Indeed it is."
"Oh, Bathsheba--have pity upon me!" Boldwood burst out. "God's sake,yes--I am come to that low, lowest stage--to ask a woman for pity!Still, she is you--she is you."
Bathsheba commanded herself well. But she could hardly get a clearvoice for what came instinctively to her lips: "There is littlehonour to the woman in that speech." It was only whispered, forsomething unutterably mournful no less than distressing in thisspectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of apassion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.
"I am beyond myself about this, and am mad," he said. "I am no stoicat all to be supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you. I wishyou knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible,that. In bare human mercy to a lonely man, don't throw me off now!"
"I don't throw you off--indeed, how can I? I never had you." In hernoon-clear sense that she had never loved him she forgot for a momenther thoughtless angle on that day in February.
"But there was a time when you turned to me, before I thought of you!I don't reproach you, for even now I feel that the ignorant and colddarkness that I should have lived in if you had not attracted me bythat letter--valentine you call it--would have been worse than myknowledge of you, though it has brought this misery. But, I say,there was a time when I knew nothing of you, and cared nothingfor you, and yet you drew me on. And if you say you gave me noencouragement, I cannot but contradict you."
"What you call encouragement was the childish game of an idle minute.I have bitterly repented of it--ay, bitterly, and in tears. Can youstill go on reminding me?"
"I don't accuse you of it--I deplore it. I took for earnest whatyou insist was jest, and now this that I pray to be jest you say isawful, wretched earnest. Our moods meet at wrong places. I wishyour feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours! Oh,could I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was goingto lead me into, how I should have cursed you; but only having beenable to see it since, I cannot do that, for I love you too well! Butit is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this.... Bathsheba, youare the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked atto love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my ownthat makes this denial so hard to bear. How nearly you promised me!But I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve becauseof my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it; my pain would get noless by paining you."
"But I do pity you--deeply--O, so deeply!" she earnestly said.
"Do no such thing--do no such thing. Your dear love, Bathsheba, issuch a vast thing beside your pity, that the loss of your pity aswell as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does thegain of your pity make it sensibly less. O sweet--how dearly youspoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barnat the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at yourhome! Where are your pleasant words all gone--your earnest hope tobe able to love me? Where is your firm conviction that you would getto care for me very much? Really forgotten?--really?"
She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, andsaid in her low, firm voice, "Mr. Boldwood, I promised you nothing.Would you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest,highest compliment a man can pay a woman--telling her he loves her?I was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a gracelessshrew. Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day--the dayjust for the pleasure. How was I to know that what is a pastime toall other men was death to you? Have reason, do, and think morekindly of me!"
"Well, never mind arguing--never mind. One thing is sure: youwere all but mine, and now you are not nearly mine. Everything ischanged, and that by you alone, remember. You were nothing to meonce, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and howdifferent the second nothing is from the first! Would to God youhad never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!"
Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel unmistakable signsthat she was inheren
tly the weaker vessel. She strove miserablyagainst this femininity which would insist upon supplying unbiddenemotions in stronger and stronger current. She had tried to eludeagitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial objectbefore her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could notsave her now.
"I did not take you up--surely I did not!" she answered as heroicallyas she could. "But don't be in this mood with me. I can endurebeing told I am in the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently!O sir, will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it cheerfully?"
"Cheerfully! Can a man fooled to utter heart-burning find a reasonfor being merry? If I have lost, how can I be as if I had won?Heavens you must be heartless quite! Had I known what a fearfullybitter sweet this was to be, how I would have avoided you, and neverseen you, and been deaf of you. I tell you all this, but what do youcare! You don't care."
She returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayedher head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they cameshowering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in theclimax of life, with his bronzed Roman face and fine frame.
"Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between the two oppositesof recklessly renouncing you, and labouring humbly for you again.Forget that you have said No, and let it be as it was! Say,Bathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun--come, sayit to me!"
"It would be untrue, and painful to both of us. You overrate mycapacity for love. I don't possess half the warmth of nature youbelieve me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world hasbeaten gentleness out of me."
He immediately said with more resentment: "That may be true,somewhat; but ah, Miss Everdene, it won't do as a reason! You arenot the cold woman you would have me believe. No, no! It isn'tbecause you have no feeling in you that you don't love me. Younaturally would have me think so--you would hide from me that youhave a burning heart like mine. You have love enough, but it isturned into a new channel. I know where."
The swift music of her heart became hubbub now, and she throbbedto extremity. He was coming to Troy. He did then know what hadoccurred! And the name fell from his lips the next moment.
"Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked, fiercely."When I had no thought of injuring him, why did he force himself uponyour notice! Before he worried you your inclination was to have me;when next I should have come to you your answer would have been Yes.Can you deny it--I ask, can you deny it?"
She delayed the reply, but was too honest to withhold it. "Icannot," she whispered.
"I know you cannot. But he stole in in my absence and robbed me.Why didn't he win you away before, when nobody would have beengrieved?--when nobody would have been set tale-bearing. Now thepeople sneer at me--the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till Iblush shamefully for my folly. I have lost my respect, my good name,my standing--lost it, never to get it again. Go and marry yourman--go on!"
"Oh sir--Mr. Boldwood!"
"You may as well. I have no further claim upon you. As for me, Ihad better go somewhere alone, and hide--and pray. I loved a womanonce. I am now ashamed. When I am dead they'll say, miserablelove-sick man that he was. Heaven--heaven--if I had got jiltedsecretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept! Butno matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained. Shame uponhim--shame!"
His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him,without obviously moving, as she said, "I am only a girl--do notspeak to me so!"
"All the time you knew--how very well you knew--that your new freakwas my misery. Dazzled by brass and scarlet--Oh, Bathsheba--this iswoman's folly indeed!"
She fired up at once. "You are taking too much upon yourself!" shesaid, vehemently. "Everybody is upon me--everybody. It is unmanlyto attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my battlesfor me; but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer andsay things against me, I WILL NOT be put down!"
"You'll chatter with him doubtless about me. Say to him, 'Boldwoodwould have died for me.' Yes, and you have given way to him, knowinghim to be not the man for you. He has kissed you--claimed you ashis. Do you hear--he has kissed you. Deny it!"
The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwoodwas, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into anothersex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped, "Leave me, sir--leaveme! 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. "Iam not ashamed to speak the truth."
"Then curse him; and curse him!" said Boldwood, breaking into awhispered 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 comewhen he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he hascaused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, andyearn--as I do now!"
"Don't, don't, oh, don't pray down evil upon him!" she implored in amiserable 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 outlineand consistency entirely disappear. The impending night appeared toconcentrate 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 orno, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theftof 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. Hestole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ... It is afortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment--thathe's away up the country, and not here! I hope he may not returnhere just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I maybe tempted beyond myself. Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away--yes, keephim away from me!"
For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soulseemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of hispassionate words. He turned his face away, and withdrew, and hisform was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixedin with the low hiss of the leafy trees.
Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all thislatter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted toponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astoundingwells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood wereincomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained torepression he was--what she had seen him.
The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to acircumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was comingback to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two. Troyhad not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and otherssupposed, 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 thisnick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrelwould be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when shethought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindlethe farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose hisself-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might becomeaggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood'sanger might then take the direction of revenge.
With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, thisguileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner ofcarelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now therewas no reserve. In her distraction, instead of advancing further shewalked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on herbrow, and sobbing brokenly to herself. Then she sat down on a heapof stones by the wayside to think. There she remained long. Abovethe dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promon
tories ofcoppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the westernsky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unrestingworld wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in theshape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon theirsilent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all.Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.