Far from the Madding Crowd (40 page)

Coming to the bedroom, he heard no sound within. He flung open the door.

Bathsheba, still dressed, was standing by the window in an attitude of sorrow, gazing out toward the barn.

“There are straws in your hair,” he began, but she turned on him with a spark of anger.

“Is it any wonder? O, Frank, I have been awake all night, working — ”

“And so you come in this disarray to our chamber, reeking of the midden!”

“I was climbing the ricks to save the wheat and barley — ”

“Oho, and were you now? With your gallant swain Oak to pull you close and put his arm through yours?”

Her cheek flushed crimson as she recalled the touch of her arm on Gabriel's; their shared warmth.

“Indeed, Frank, it was only for work that was sorely neglected that I was beside him — ”

Troy laughed, with a flash of the teeth in his red mouth that had nothing in it of man, but rather the rank lust of the fox.

“Did I ask my wife to work? Your place last night was here, in our bed, sleeping like a Christian, not toiling like a milkmaid and sweating in the barn with that gawkhammer and his ricking rod.”

Bathsheba shrank away from his hard look and sank on the bed, her voice growing weak and despairing.

“O my dear Frank, I beg you, leave off this distemper and let me alone — ”

“Let you alone? These are not words a husband should hear from any wife.”

Troy grasped impatiently at the waist of her dress, dragging the fine silk in his hands.

“Off, off with all your tawdry finery, my lady of the dunghill.”

He wrenched the straw hat from her hair, scattering pins as he flung it toward the chair, where it perched like a bird, its red feathers quivering.

Trembling, she undid the front hooks of her corset, and stood uncertain in her white shift as Troy pulled off his red coat and his sweat-darkened shirt, and threw himself into the small armchair.

“Now take these off.”

He offered her his boots as carelessly as if she had been a servant and beneath his notice. He was unfastening his trouser lacings, but as she turned away from him, his voice called her back.

“Off, off, everything; I want you naked as the animal you are. I will show you country ways, my fine Lady Disdain.”

And now they stood, face to face; how she trembled afresh as he pressed his hot red mouth against hers; how her flesh, as always, unwillingly kindled to his.

“On the bed, wife. No, not thus, not lying back at your ease. Kneel. Kneel and be taken like the beast that you are.”

She braced herself against the headboard of the bed and Troy fell against her, pulling himself over her as a ram covers a ewe.

“O, dear Heavens — Frank!”

Troy's hand across her mouth cut short whatever prayer it was she tried to utter.

“No more of your fine ways and airs. We will couple like
brutes
, with
grunts
and
groans.”

At every coarse word he plunged his dearest weapon further in her, and she cried out with the terror, the pain, and the shame of her deepening pleasure. His aim was so true, so cruel, so exact, that she felt her centre must crack with its force.

Again and again he thrust into her, gripping her breasts so hard she felt their thrills of pain, and finally he spent himself, with a veritable bull's bellow of rage and triumph blasting upon the air.

Troy tore himself from her, and she fell face down upon the pillow, too weak to move, panting and yet unsatisfied.

Now he ran his hands over her hair, pulling her to face him, not gently, but with a certainty that she was his again.

“This it is, to be a wife of mine. To couple like sheep or dogs, to be beastly in all things, because I choose it. Do you hear me and obey?”

“O Frank — ”

“Do you hear me? Obey me you will, in all things.!”

“I cannot but obey,” she murmured, lying on her back, while he carelessly ran his hands wherever he would on her white skin and shuddering flesh. With a sneer and a few careless strokes of his fingers between her thighs, he broke down the dam of her pleasure, laughing to see her lost to all but the dizzying quiverings of her tambourine, its skin stretched beyond all bearing.

“So, was this not well done? he said, more tranquil now. “I play the husband's part, do I not?”

Bathsheba could not meet his eyes, so full of scorn and loveless dislike toward her were they.

“Yes. I cannot deny it, Frank.”

He was brisk now, buttoning his old red soldier's coat; the campaign was won.

“So, Bathsheba. No more of your virtuous reproaches as I take my ease. No more interference from your sharp tongue with those simple men whose heads ache still from last night's revelry. I am no booby in a shepherd's smock. I am your husband, and I will be your master here.”

There was a noisy gathering of boots and belts, and Troy passed from the chamber.

Oak went homeward, alone and pensive. In front of him against the wet glazed surface of the lane he saw a person walking yet more slowly than himself under an umbrella. The man turned and plainly started; he was Boldwood.

“How are you this morning, sir?” said Oak.

“Yes, it is a wet day. — Oh, I am well, very well, I thank you; quite well.”

“I am glad to hear it, sir.”

Boldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees. “You look tired and ill, Oak,” he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.

“I am tired. You look strangely altered, sir.”

“I? Not a bit of it: I am well enough. What put that into your head?”

“I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to, that was all.”

“Indeed, then you are mistaken,” said Boldwood, shortly. “Nothing hurts me. My constitution is an iron one.”

“I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was barely in time. Never had such a struggle in my life … Yours of course are safe, sir.”

“Oh yes,” Boldwood added, after an interval of silence: “What did you ask, Oak?”

“Your ricks are all covered before this time?”

“No.”

“At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?”

“They are not.”

“Them under the hedge?”

“No. I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it.”

“Nor the little one by the stile?”

“Nor the little one by the stile. I overlooked the ricks this year.”

“Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir.”

“Possibly not.”

“Overlooked them,” repeated Gabriel slowly to himself.

It is difficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcement had upon Oak at such a moment. All the night he had been feeling that the neglect he was labouring to repair was abnormal and isolated — the only instance of the kind within the circuit of the county. Yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greater waste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded. A few months earlier Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as preposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship. Oak was just thinking that whatever he himself might have suffered from Bathsheba's marriage, here was a man who had suffered more, when Boldwood spoke in a changed voice — that of one who yearned to make a confidence and relieve his heart by an outpouring.

“Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with me lately. I may as well own it. I was going to get a little settled in life; but in some way my plan has come to nothing.”

“I thought my mistress would have married you,” said Gabriel, not knowing enough of the full depths of Boldwood's love to keep silence on the farmer's account, and determined not to evade discipline by doing so on his own. “However, it is so sometimes, and nothing happens that we expect,” he added, with the repose of a man whom misfortune had inured rather than subdued.

“I daresay I am a joke about the parish,” said Boldwood, as if the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable lightness meant to express his indifference.

“Oh no — I don't think that.”

“ — But the real truth of the matter is that there was not, as some fancy, any jilting on — her part. No engagement ever existed between me and Miss Everdene. People say so, but it is untrue: she never promised me!” Boldwood stood still now and turned his wild face to Oak. “Oh, Gabriel,” he continued, “I am weak and foolish, and I don't know what, and I can't fend off my miserable grief! … I had some faint belief in the mercy of God till I lost that woman. Yes, He prepared a gourd to shade me, and like the prophet I thanked Him and was glad. But the next day He prepared a worm to smite the gourd and wither it; and I feel it is better to die than to live!”

A silence followed. Boldwood aroused himself from the momentary mood of confidence into which he had drifted, and walked on again, resuming his usual reserve.

“No, Gabriel,” he resumed, with a carelessness which was like the smile on the countenance of a skull: “it was made more of by other people than ever it was by us. I do feel a little regret occasionally, but no woman ever had power over me for any length of time. Well, good morning; I can trust you not to mention to others what has passed between us two here.”

COMING HOME — A CRY

On the turnpike road, between Casterbridge and Weatherbury, and about three miles from the former place, is Yalbury Hill, one of those steep long ascents which pervade the highways of this undulating part of South Wessex. In returning from market it is usual for the farmers and other gig-gentry to alight at the bottom and walk up.

One Saturday evening in the month of October Bathsheba's vehicle was duly creeping up this incline. She was sitting listlessly in the second seat of the gig, whilst walking beside her in a farmer's marketing suit of unusually fashionable cut was an erect, well-made young man. Though on foot, he held the reins and whip, and occasionally aimed light cuts at the horse's ear with the end of the lash, as a recreation. This man was her husband, formerly Sergeant Troy, who, having bought his discharge with Bathsheba's money, was gradually transforming himself into a farmer of a spirited and very modern school. People of unalterable ideas still insisted upon calling him “Sergeant” when they met him, which was in some degree owing to his having still retained the well-shaped moustache of his military days, and the soldierly bearing inseparable from his form and training.

“Yes, if it hadn't been for that wretched rain I should have cleared two hundred as easy as looking, my love,” he was saying. “Don't you see, it altered all the chances? To speak like a book I once read, wet weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our country's history; now, isn't that true?”

“But the time of year is come for changeable weather.”

“Well, yes. The fact is, these autumn races are the ruin of everybody. Never did I see such a day as ‘twas! ‘Tis a wild open place, just out of Budmouth, and a drab sea rolled in towards us like liquid misery. Wind and rain — good Lord! Dark? Why, ‘twas as black as my hat before the last race was run. ‘Twas five o'clock, and you couldn't see the horses till they were almost in, leave alone colours. The ground was as heavy as lead, and all judgment from a fellow's experience went for nothing. Horses, riders, people, were all blown about like ships at sea. Three booths were blown over, and the wretched folk inside crawled out upon their hands and knees; and in the next field were as many as a dozen hats at one time. Ay, Pimpernel regularly stuck fast, when about sixty yards off, and when I saw Policy stepping on, it did knock my heart against the lining of my ribs, I assure you, my love!”

“And you mean, Frank,” said Bathsheba, sadly — her voice was painfully lowered from the fullness and vivacity of the previous summer — “that you have lost more than a hundred pounds in a month by this dreadful horse-racing? O, Frank, it is cruel; it is foolish of you to take away my money so. We shall have to leave the farm; that will be the end of it!”

“Humbug about cruel. Now, there ‘tis again — turn on the waterworks; that's just like you.”

“But you'll promise me not to go to Budmouth second meeting, won't you?” she implored. Bathsheba was at the full depth for tears, but she maintained a dry eye.

“I don't see why I should; in fact, if it turns out to be a fine day, I was thinking of taking you.”

“Never, never! I'll go a hundred miles the other way first. I hate the sound of the very word!”

“But the question of going to see the race or staying at home has very little to do with the matter. Bets are all booked safely enough before the race begins, you may depend. Whether it is a bad race for me or a good one, will have very little to do with our going there next Monday.”

“But you don't mean to say that you have risked anything on this one too!” she exclaimed, with an agonized look.

“There now, don't you be a little fool. Wait till you are told. Why, Bathsheba, you have lost all the pluck and sauciness you formerly had, and upon my life if I had known what a chicken-hearted creature you were under all your boldness, I'd never have — I know what.”

A flash of indignation might have been seen in Bathsheba's dark eyes as she looked resolutely ahead after this reply. They moved on without further speech, some early-withered leaves from the trees which hooded the road at this spot occasionally spinning downward across their path to the earth.

A woman appeared on the brow of the hill. The ridge was in a cutting, so that she was very near the husband and wife before she became visible. Troy had turned towards the gig to remount, and whilst putting his foot on the step the woman passed behind him.

Though the overshadowing trees and the approach of eventide enveloped them in gloom, Bathsheba could see plainly enough to discern the extreme poverty of the woman's garb, and the sadness of her face.