Far from the Madding Crowd (34 page)

The door opened to admit a smiling Bessy with hot shaving water, and Bathsheba's sense of shame showed in a deeper crimson flush on her cheek, as the brisk little servant gave her a saucy wink upon her exit.

“I am come here to tell you that we cannot go on as we are, Frank,” she began.

He took a small badger-hair shaving brush from the washstand and began lathering his chin, not looking back at her as she stumbled for words.

“I have been very foolish,” she essayed again, and he did turn then, no longer smiling.

“Indeed you have. Whatever you and I might know to be the truth, what do you imagine the world will construe from this incursion into my chamber?”

Now all her good intentions slipped from under her, unbalancing her as if she was carried along in fast flowing water, and she floundered in the millrace of passion, for his nakedness was to her both a distraction, and a call to action.

“I have never watched a man shaving.” She tried for a lighter tone, to recapture the spirit of their previous encounters. He had the long cutthroat blade in his hand, and with the same dexterity as he had shown her with his swordplay, he stroked the blade along the contours of his chin and jaw, smoothing where it had been, lifting his moustache and turning his head from side to side. Yet all was not serene in the bosom of Troy — his nakedness revealed his arousal, to himself if not to the innocent before him, and in a moment's carelessness, he nicked his skin and began to bleed.

“Quick, hold the cloth here” he cried, and she wasted no time in obeying. How thrilling it was to stand beside him, feeling the heat from his body and touching his face, now streaked with blood on her account.

“Thanks. You have staunched my wound.” But she did not move away. The clean smell of the shaving soap, and another, ranker, yet more enticing smell, fixed her next to him. He leaned suddenly over her, burying his face in her hair, and murmuring, “'Such sweet odours of the country you bring to this place. Why have I been so distracted by the beauties here, as to forget what could have fallen so sweetly into my lap?”

She could not help herself. She raised her face to his, and felt once again the thrill of his lips on hers. But not only his lips, his body, naked but for the shirt, was pressed against her, and she, in her turn, pressed against him. Slowly he took her hand and led it to that place under his shirt which was as hot as his words were cool. Gently he closed her hand around its magnificence.

“Now you hold my dearest weapon”' He felt her hand grow as hot as his rising member, heard her breathing fast and hard, and could no longer delay his inevitable satisfaction. In the country she had teased and flirted and kissed; in Bath she was come to do his bidding.

His hand, all too practised, loosened the cords of her skirt, and then her petticoats, and, questing with a gentle insistence, slipped between the open legs of her pantalettes and pressed, with loving ease, that place in her which Bathsheba had hitherto only suspected was hers. The power to resist, if she ever had imagined she had it, left her, and with a sobbing sigh she unlaced her corset, dropping it on the chair, while his fingers continued their gentle probing. Her breath was faster now, as she sought for his mouth and he sounded her with his tongue and hand, till she gasped for pleasure, and in her weakness and joy fell upon the unmade bed.

“Well, well. An unexpected start to the day”' he said , as he laid himself alongside her, having deftly removed his shirt, so they lay together naked as babes, but alas, in no wise as innocent.

“Did I say you were Beauty personified?” he murmured, running his finger teasingly along the contour of her small breast, pulling gently, with maddening insistence, at each of her small nipples, that now swelled and stood erect. She moaned and twisted as he kissed and tongued every inch of her breast so slowly, with such exquisite skill, that she felt she must soon melt in a torrent of desire.

“Now, my fine lady, having brought me thus far along the road, will you turn back , or will you go the journey with me?”

As he spoke, he let his hand rove — o, too slowly — over her belly, stroking downwards, and coming to rest lightly upon her mound, and though she wriggled and cried out for him to go lower, touch her deeper — he smilingly refused.

“Milady is saddled. Will you and I ride?”

She hardly knew what he asked, only that his need of her was as great as her desire of him, and with no more encouragement than her nod, he was upon her as lightly and easily as he mounted his horse.

Then there were no words, only the pressure of his hand upon her legs, to open them yet wider, his other hand still encompassing hers, clasping that dearest weapon as it moved towards its target.

O but she was wet — she had never known a moisture like it! And his desire gave her courage to give herself to him in the way he wanted, for now his face was as grave as Oak's when there was farming business to be done, as he eased himself into her with a gentleness she, being as yet a virgin, could not appreciate.

“Now we must canter a little,” he whispered, and his soft words helped her to bear the stinging heat of the movements below and within. So this was the business of a wife with a husband! This was what Boldwood dreamed of; this was what Oak had offered. But here in this lowly room, a place forever theirs, she loved and gave herself only to Frank with all her woman's heart, her inmost body, and her eyes.

It did not take long, for after cantering came the gallop, faster and harder, climaxing in a racing jump at the pinnacle of joy which had her crying out, and laughing, all together. Troy was an accomplished lover; he had known many women, and his skill and delight was in bringing them off along with him, taking his pleasure, as he did now, with no sound, only a brief convulsion, quieting the moans of her ecstasy with a kiss as he, his strength spent, collapsed upon her, while she, caught between the exquisite poles of pleasure and pain, marvelled at her own endurance, to take his whole weight on her body with so little discomfort.

A few moments they lay together, and then he slipped from her, and all too soon for Bathsheba, he rose from the bed and was dressed.

“We shall breakfast at the Pump Rooms,”' he announced, “and then we shall take a walk in Victoria Park, and you shall tell me what it is you came to say.”

IN THE SUN — A HARBINGER

A week passed, and there were no tidings of Bathsheba; nor was there any explanation of her disappearance.

Then a note came for Maryann, stating that the business which had called her mistress to Bath still detained her there; but that she hoped to return in the course of another week. Maryann guessed that what detained her mistress was no business, but pleasure; she awaited the proof.

Another week passed. The oat-harvest began, and all the men were a-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon. Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and cheeks. Drought was everywhere else.

They were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade of a tree in the fence, when Coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and brass buttons running to them across the field.

“I wonder who that is?” he said.

“I hope nothing is wrong about mistress,” said Maryann, who with some other women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this farm), “but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning. I went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the stone floor and broke into two pieces. Breaking a key is a dreadful bodement. I wish mis'ess was home.”

“'Tis Cain Ball,” said Gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook.

Oak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but the harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was Bathsheba's, so he lent a hand.

“He's dressed up in his best clothes,” said Matthew Moon. “He hev been away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon his finger; for ‘a said, since I can't work I'll have a hollerday.”

“A good time for one — a' excellent time,” said Joseph Poorgrass, straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons preternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in his Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude. “Twas a bad leg allowed me to read the
Pilgrim's Progress
, and Mark Clark learnt All-Fours in a whitlow.”

“Ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go courting,” said Jan Coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face with his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of his neck.

By this time Cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was perceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand, from which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a bandage. When he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and he began to cough violently.

“Now, Cainy!” said Gabriel, sternly. “How many more times must I tell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating? You'll choke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, Cain Ball.”

“Hok-hok-hok!” replied Cain. “A crumb of my victuals went the wrong way — hok-hok! That's what ‘tis, Mister Oak! And I've been visiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb; yes, and I've seen — ahok-hok!”

Directly Cain mentioned Bath, they all threw down their hooks and forks and drew round him. Unfortunately the erratic crumb did not improve his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that of a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which dangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise.

“Yes,” he continued, directing his thoughts to Bath and letting his eyes follow, “I've seed the world at last — yes — and I've seed our mis'ess — ahok-hok-hok!”

“Bother the boy!” said Gabriel. “Something is always going the wrong way down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be told.”

“Ahok! there! Please, Mister Oak, a gnat have just fleed into my stomach and brought the cough on again!”

“Yes, that's just it. Your mouth is always open, you young rascal!”

“'Tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!” said Matthew Moon.

“Well, at Bath you saw — ” prompted Gabriel.

“I saw our mistress,” continued the junior shepherd, “and a sojer, walking along. And bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they went arm-in-crook, like courting complete — hok-hok! like courting complete — hok! — courting complete — “ Losing the thread of his narrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their informant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to it. “Well, I see our mis'ess and a soldier — a-ha-a-wk!”

“Damn the boy!” said Gabriel.

“'Tis only my manner, Mister Oak, if ye'll excuse it,” said Cain Ball, looking reproachfully at Oak, with eyes drenched in their own dew.

“Here's some cider for him — that'll cure his throat,” said Jan Coggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying the hole to Cainy's mouth; Joseph Poorgrass in the meantime beginning to think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow Cainy Ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his Bath adventures dying with him.

“For my poor self, I always say ‘please God' afore I do anything,” said Joseph, in an unboastful voice; “and so should you, Cain Ball. ‘Tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked to death some day.”

Mr. Coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liberality at the suffering Cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of the flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside his throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being coughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the form of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a small exhalation.

“There's a great clumsy sneeze! Why can't ye have better manners, you young dog!” said Coggan, withdrawing the flagon.

“The cider went up my nose!” cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak; “and now ‘tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!”

“The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate,” said Matthew Moon. “And a great history on hand, too. Bump his back, shepherd.”

“'Tis my nater,” mourned Cain. “Mother says I always was so excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!”

“True, true,” said Joseph Poorgrass. “The Balls were always a very excitable family. I knowed the boy's grandfather — a truly nervous and modest man, even to genteel refinery. ‘Twas blush, blush with him, almost as much as ‘tis with me — not but that ‘tis a fault in me!”

“Not at all, Master Poorgrass,” said Coggan. “'Tis a very noble quality in ye.”

“Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad — nothing at all,” murmured Poorgrass, diffidently. “But we be born to things — that's true. Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts … But under your bushel, Joseph! under your bushel with ‘ee! A strange desire, neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due. Yet there is a Sermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and certain meek men may be named therein.”

“Cainy's grandfather was a very clever man,” said Matthew Moon. “Invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his name to this day — the Early Ball. You know ‘em, Jan? A Quarrenden grafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o' that again. ‘Tis trew ‘a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a ‘ooman in a way he had no business to by rights, but there — ‘a were a clever man in the sense of the term.”