Far from the Madding Crowd (41 page)

“Please, sir, do you know at what time Casterbridge Union-house closes at night?”

The woman said these words to Troy over his shoulder.

Troy started visibly at the sound of the voice; yet he seemed to recover presence of mind sufficient to prevent himself from giving way to his impulse to suddenly turn and face her. He said, slowly —

“I don't know.”

The woman, on hearing him speak, quickly looked up, examined the side of his face, and recognized the soldier under the yeoman's garb. Her face was drawn into an expression which had gladness and agony both among its elements. She uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down.

“Oh, poor thing!” exclaimed Bathsheba, instantly preparing to alight.

“Stay where you are, and attend to the horse!” said Troy, peremptorily throwing her the reins and the whip. “Walk the horse to the top: I'll see to the woman.”

“But I — ”

“Do you hear? Clk — Poppet!”

The horse, gig, and Bathsheba moved on.

“How on earth did you come here? I thought you were miles away, or dead! Why didn't you write to me?” said Troy to the woman, in a strangely gentle, yet hurried voice, as he lifted her up.

“I feared to.”

“Have you any money?”

“None.”

“Good Heaven — I wish I had more to give you! Here's — wretched — the merest trifle. It is every farthing I have left. I have none but what my wife gives me, you know, and I can't ask her now.”

The woman made no answer.

“I have only another moment,” continued Troy; “and now listen. Where are you going to-night? Casterbridge Union?”

“Yes; I thought to go there.”

“You shan't go there; yet, wait. Yes, perhaps for to-night; I can do nothing better — worse luck! Sleep there to-night, and stay there to-morrow. Monday is the first free day I have; and on Monday morning, at ten exactly, meet me on Grey's Bridge just out of the town. I'll bring all the money I can muster. You shan't want — I'll see that, Fanny; then I'll get you a lodging somewhere. Good-bye till then. I am a brute — but good-bye!”

After advancing the distance which completed the ascent of the hill, Bathsheba turned her head. The woman was upon her feet, and Bathsheba saw her withdrawing from Troy, and going feebly down the hill by the third milestone from Casterbridge. Troy then came on towards his wife, stepped into the gig, took the reins from her hand, and without making any observation whipped the horse into a trot. He was rather agitated.

“Do you know who that woman was?” said Bathsheba, looking searchingly into his face.

“I do,” he said, looking boldly back into hers.

“I thought you did,” said she, with angry hauteur, and still regarding him. “Who is she?”

He suddenly seemed to think that frankness would benefit neither of the women.

“Nothing to either of us,” he said. “I know her by sight.”

“What is her name?”

“How should I know her name?”

“I think you do.”

“Think if you will, and be — ” The sentence was completed by a smart cut of the whip round Poppet's flank, which caused the animal to start forward at a wild pace. No more was said.

ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY

For a considerable time the woman walked on. Her steps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbræ of night. At length her onward walk dwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gate within which was a haystack. Underneath this she sat down and presently slept.

When
in extremis
, the mind is all the more inclined to extravagancies, and embroiders its dreams with detail so rich and vivid the wealthiest man in Wessex could not but envy them. Thus it was that night for this poor creature. She dreamed of a little room, the walls painted pink, cosy with warm firelight, and a man in scarlet coat kneeling, blowing on the wood, which glowed ardently.

“See there, my sweetheart,” he said, leaning back, “as I blow on this fire, and bring it to a flame, so will I tonight blow your desire into a flame of passion you have never before known. And I promise you, that together we shall enter that blissful fire and be purged of everything save our pure love in its fierce heat, until we melt entirely with the pleasure. Love is the flame. Our bodies are the fuel. Our hearts are already joined forever. Let us worship each other with our bodies, tonight and every night, for all time, dearest love.”

He had undressed her then, slowly and with kisses on every part of her slight and girlish body. Her heart was thudding, her breaths were shallow and fast, and her pale cheeks grew rosy. He laid her on the bed, and took off his breeches and shirt, and she saw how his stiffening manhood sprang alert, and took courage to stroke it till he bid her desist, for he wished to hold off from his pleasure. Then he knelt at her feet, and bent his head to her belly, kissing her so softly she thought she must die with bliss, then lower his head went, his lips upon her mound, then — o heavens! His soft tongue was probing, exploring, finding with delicious moisture that part she had never touched herself, making it tremble, then stiffen at his gentle insistence; he played her body like an instrument of music, and as the rhythm increased, her modesty left her, so that when he briefly ceased his efforts, and asked, “will I go on? do you want more?” she had whispered, “please, Frank, please! do not stop now, go on, go further, go faster, I cannot hold back, it is coming, it is coming … ”

When the woman awoke it was to find herself in the depths of a moonless and starless night. A heavy unbroken crust of cloud stretched across the sky, shutting out every speck of heaven; and a distant halo which hung over the town of Casterbridge was visible against the black concave, the luminosity appearing the brighter by its great contrast with the circumscribing darkness. Towards this weak, soft glow the woman turned her eyes.

“If I could only get there!” she said. “Meet him the day after to-morrow: God help me! Perhaps I shall be in my grave before then.”

A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone. After midnight the voice of a clock seems to lose in breadth as much as in length, and to diminish its sonorousness to a thin falsetto.

Afterwards a light — two lights — arose from the remote shade, and grew larger. A carriage rolled along the toad, and passed the gate. It probably contained some late diners-out. The beams from one lamp shone for a moment upon the crouching woman, and threw her face into vivid relief. The face was young in the groundwork, old in the finish; the general contours were flexuous and childlike, but the finer lineaments had begun to be sharp and thin.

The pedestrian stood up, apparently with revived determination, and looked around. The road appeared to be familiar to her, and she carefully scanned the fence as she slowly walked along. Presently there became visible a dim white shape; it was another milestone. She drew her fingers across its face to feel the marks.

“Two more!” she said.

She leant against the stone as a means of rest for a short interval, then bestirred herself, and again pursued her way. For a slight distance she bore up bravely, afterwards flagging as before. This was beside a lone copsewood, wherein heaps of white chips strewn upon the leafy ground showed that woodmen had been faggoting and making hurdles during the day. Now there was not a rustle, not a breeze, not the faintest clash of twigs to keep her company. The woman looked over the gate, opened it, and went in. Close to the entrance stood a row of faggots, bound and un-bound, together with stakes of all sizes.

For a few seconds the wayfarer stood with that tense stillness which signifies itself to be not the end, but merely the suspension, of a previous motion. Her attitude was that of a person who listens, either to the external world of sound, or to the imagined discourse of thought. A close criticism might have detected signs proving that she was intent on the latter alternative. Moreover, as was shown by what followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty of invention upon the speciality of the clever Jacquet Droz, the designer of automatic substitutes for human limbs.

By the aid of the Casterbridge aurora, and by feeling with her hands, the woman selected two sticks from the heaps. These sticks were nearly straight to the height of three or four feet, where each branched into a fork like the letter Y. She sat down, snapped off the small upper twigs, and carried the remainder with her into the road. She placed one of these forks under each arm as a crutch, tested them, timidly threw her whole weight upon them — so little that it was — and swung herself forward. The girl had made for herself a material aid.

The crutches answered well. The pat of her feet, and the tap of her sticks upon the highway, were all the sounds that came from the traveller now. She had passed the last milestone by a good long distance, and began to look wistfully towards the bank as if calculating upon another milestone soon. The crutches, though so very useful, had their limits of power. Mechanism only transfers labour, being powerless to supersede it, and the original amount of exertion was not cleared away; it was thrown into the body and arms. She was exhausted, and each swing forward became fainter. At last she swayed sideways, and fell.

Here she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes and more. The morning wind began to boom dully over the flats, and to move afresh dead leaves which had lain still since yesterday. The woman desperately turned round upon her knees, and next rose to her feet. Steadying herself by the help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then another, then a third, using the crutches now as walking-sticks only. Thus she progressed till descending Mellstock Hill another milestone appeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed fence came into view. She staggered across to the first post, clung to it, and looked around.

The Casterbridge lights were now individually visible, It was getting towards morning, and vehicles might be hoped for, if not expected soon. She listened. There was not a sound of life save that acme and sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three hollow notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a funeral bell.

“Less than a mile!” the woman murmured. “No; more,” she added, after a pause. “The mile is to the county hall, and my resting-place is on the other side Casterbridge. A little over a mile, and there I am!” After an interval she again spoke. “Five or six steps to a yard — six perhaps. I have to go seventeen hundred yards. A hundred times six, six hundred. Seventeen times that. O pity me, Lord!”

Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon the rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her feet on beneath.

This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling lessens the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the strong. She said again in the same tone, “I'll believe that the end lies five posts forward, and no further, and so get strength to pass them.”

This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.

She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.

“I'll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next fifth. I can do it.”

She passed five more.

“It lies only five further.”

She passed five more.

“But it is five further.”

She passed them.

“That stone bridge is the end of my journey,” she said, when the bridge over the Froom was in view.

She crawled to the bridge. During the effort each breath of the woman went into the air as if never to return again.

“Now for the truth of the matter,” she said, sitting down. “The truth is, that I have less than half a mile.” Self-beguilement with what she had known all the time to be false had given her strength to come over half a mile that she would have been powerless to face in the lump. The artifice showed that the woman, by some mysterious intuition, had grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may operate more vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted effect more than the far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness, is needed for striking a blow.

The half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like a stolid Juggernaut. It was an impassive King of her world. The road here ran across Durnover Moor, open to the road on either side. She surveyed the wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay down against a guard-stone of the bridge.

Never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller here exercised hers. Every conceivable aid, method, stratagem, mechanism, by which these last desperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed by a human being unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain, and dismissed as impracticable. She thought of sticks, wheels, crawling — she even thought of rolling. But the exertion demanded by either of these latter two was greater than to walk erect. The faculty of contrivance was worn out. Hopelessness had come at last.

“No further!” she whispered, and closed her eyes.

From the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the bridge a portion of shade seemed to detach itself and move into isolation upon the pale white of the road. It glided noiselessly towards the recumbent woman.

She became conscious of something touching her hand; it was softness and it was warmth. She opened her eyes, and the substance touched her face. A dog was licking her cheek.

He was a huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standing darkly against the low horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position of her eyes. Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was impossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature. Being thus assignable to no breed, he was the ideal embodiment of canine greatness — a generalization from what was common to all. Night, in its sad, solemn, and benevolent aspect, apart from its stealthy and cruel side, was personified in this form. Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power, and even the suffering woman threw her idea into figure.