Far from the Madding Crowd

AT AN UPPER WINDOW

It was very early the next morning—a time of sun and dew. The confused
beginnings of many birds’ songs spread into the healthy air, and the
wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin webs of
incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day. All the
lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the shadows were
attenuated as to form. The creeping plants about the old manor-house
were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects
behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power.

Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the
village cross, and went on together to the fields. They were yet barely
in view of their mistress’s house, when Oak fancied he saw the opening
of a casement in one of the upper windows. The two men were at this
moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning to be
enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before emerging
from its shade.

A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice. He looked east and then
west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey. The man
was Sergeant Troy. His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but not
buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier taking
his ease.

Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window.

“She has married him!” he said.

Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his back
turned, making no reply.

“I fancied we should know something to-day,” continued Coggan. “I heard
wheels pass my door just after dark—you were out somewhere.” He glanced
round upon Gabriel. “Good heavens above us, Oak, how white your face
is; you look like a corpse!”

“Do I?” said Oak, with a faint smile.

“Lean on the gate: I’ll wait a bit.”

“All right, all right.”

They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the
ground. His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in years
of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this work of
haste. That they were married he had instantly decided. Why had it been
so mysteriously managed? It had become known that she had had a fearful
journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the distance: that the
horse had broken down, and that she had been more than two days getting
there. It was not Bathsheba’s way to do things furtively. With all her
faults, she was candour itself. Could she have been entrapped? The
union was not only an unutterable grief to him: it amazed him,
notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding week in a suspicion
that such might be the issue of Troy’s meeting her away from home. Her
quiet return with Liddy had to some extent dispersed the dread. Just as
that imperceptible motion which appears like stillness is infinitely
divided in its properties from stillness itself, so had his hope
undistinguishable from despair differed from despair indeed.

In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house. The sergeant
still looked from the window.

“Morning, comrades!” he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came up.

Coggan replied to the greeting. “Bain’t ye going to answer the man?” he
then said to Gabriel. “I’d say good morning—you needn’t spend a hapenny
of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil.”

Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the best
face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he loved.

“Good morning, Sergeant Troy,” he returned, in a ghastly voice.

“A rambling, gloomy house this,” said Troy, smiling.

“Why—they may not be married!” suggested Coggan. “Perhaps she’s not
there.”

Gabriel shook his head. The soldier turned a little towards the east,
and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow.

“But it is a nice old house,” responded Gabriel.

“Yes—I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here. My
notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these old
wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite away,
and the walls papered.”

“It would be a pity, I think.”

“Well, no. A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old builders,
who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect for the work of
builders who went before them, but pulled down and altered as they
thought fit; and why shouldn’t we? ‘Creation and preservation don’t do
well together,’ says he, ‘and a million of antiquarians can’t invent a
style.’ My mind exactly. I am for making this place more modern, that
we may be cheerful whilst we can.”

The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to
assist his ideas of improvement in this direction. Gabriel and Coggan
began to move on.

“Oh, Coggan,” said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection “do you know
if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood’s family?”

Jan reflected for a moment.

“I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don’t
know the rights o’t,” he said.

“It is of no importance,” said Troy, lightly. “Well, I shall be down in
the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters to
attend to first. So good-day to you. We shall, of course, keep on just
as friendly terms as usual. I’m not a proud man: nobody is ever able to
say that of Sergeant Troy. However, what is must be, and here’s
half-a-crown to drink my health, men.”

Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the
fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning to
an angry red. Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught the
money in its ricochet upon the road.

“Very well—you keep it, Coggan,” said Gabriel with disdain and almost
fiercely. “As for me, I’ll do without gifts from him!”

“Don’t show it too much,” said Coggan, musingly. “For if he’s married
to her, mark my words, he’ll buy his discharge and be our master here.
Therefore ’tis well to say ‘Friend’ outwardly, though you say
‘Troublehouse’ within.”

“Well—perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can’t go further than
that. I can’t flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by
smoothing him down, my place must be lost.”

A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now
appeared close beside them.

“There’s Mr. Boldwood,” said Oak. “I wonder what Troy meant by his
question.”

Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their
paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not stood
back to let him pass on.

The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating
through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour in
his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in his
forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. The horse
bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed significant of
dogged despair. Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his own grief in
noticing Boldwood’s. He saw the square figure sitting erect upon the
horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows steady by the hips,
the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in its onward glide, until
the keen edges of Boldwood’s shape sank by degrees over the hill. To
one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in
this immobility than in a collapse. The clash of discord between mood
and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in
laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in
the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.