Far from the Madding Crowd

OUBTS ARISE—DOUBTS LINGER

Bathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband’s absence from hours
to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling of
relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the level
commonly designated as indifference. She belonged to him: the
certainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable
probabilities of its issue so bounded that she could not speculate on
contingencies. Taking no further interest in herself as a splendid
woman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in
contemplating her probable fate as a singular wretch; for Bathsheba
drew herself and her future in colours that no reality could exceed for
darkness. Her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened, and with
it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since anxiety
recognizes a better and a worse alternative, and Bathsheba had made up
her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had ceased for her.
Soon, or later—and that not very late—her husband would be home again.
And then the days of their tenancy of the Upper Farm would be numbered.
There had originally been shown by the agent to the estate some
distrust of Bathsheba’s tenure as James Everdene’s successor, on the
score of her sex, and her youth, and her beauty; but the peculiar
nature of her uncle’s will, his own frequent testimony before his death
to her cleverness in such a pursuit, and her vigorous marshalling of
the numerous flocks and herds which came suddenly into her hands before
negotiations were concluded, had won confidence in her powers, and no
further objections had been raised. She had latterly been in great
doubt as to what the legal effects of her marriage would be upon her
position; but no notice had been taken as yet of her change of name,
and only one point was clear—that in the event of her own or her
husband’s inability to meet the agent at the forthcoming January
rent-day, very little consideration would be shown, and, for that
matter, very little would be deserved. Once out of the farm, the
approach of poverty would be sure.

Hence Bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken
off. She was not a woman who could hope on without good materials for
the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and energetic,
though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes on as a sort of
clockwork which the merest food and shelter are sufficient to wind up;
and perceiving clearly that her mistake had been a fatal one, she
accepted her position, and waited coldly for the end.

The first Saturday after Troy’s departure she went to Casterbridge
alone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage. On this
Saturday Bathsheba was passing slowly on foot through the crowd of
rural business-men gathered as usual in front of the market-house, who
were as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that those
healthy lives were dearly paid for by exclusion from possible
aldermanship, when a man, who had apparently been following her, said
some words to another on her left hand. Bathsheba’s ears were keen as
those of any wild animal, and she distinctly heard what the speaker
said, though her back was towards him.

“I am looking for Mrs. Troy. Is that she there?”

“Yes; that’s the young lady, I believe,” said the the person addressed.

“I have some awkward news to break to her. Her husband is drowned.”

As if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, Bathsheba gasped out, “No,
it is not true; it cannot be true!” Then she said and heard no more.
The ice of self-command which had latterly gathered over her was
broken, and the currents burst forth again, and overwhelmed her. A
darkness came into her eyes, and she fell.

But not to the ground. A gloomy man, who had been observing her from
under the portico of the old corn-exchange when she passed through the
group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her
exclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down.

“What is it?” said Boldwood, looking up at the bringer of the big news,
as he supported her.

“Her husband was drowned this week while bathing in Lulwind Cove. A
coastguardsman found his clothes, and brought them into Budmouth
yesterday.”

Thereupon a strange fire lighted up Boldwood’s eye, and his face
flushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought.
Everybody’s glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious
Bathsheba. He lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down the
folds of her dress as a child might have taken a storm-beaten bird and
arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the pavement to the
King’s Arms Inn. Here he passed with her under the archway into a
private room; and by the time he had deposited—so lothly—the precious
burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her eyes. Remembering all that
had occurred, she murmured, “I want to go home!”

Boldwood left the room. He stood for a moment in the passage to recover
his senses. The experience had been too much for his consciousness to
keep up with, and now that he had grasped it it had gone again. For
those few heavenly, golden moments she had been in his arms. What did
it matter about her not knowing it? She had been close to his breast;
he had been close to hers.

He started onward again, and sending a woman to her, went out to
ascertain all the facts of the case. These appeared to be limited to
what he had already heard. He then ordered her horse to be put into the
gig, and when all was ready returned to inform her. He found that,
though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for the
Budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all there was
to know.

Being hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town,
Boldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get her
a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, which was more
comfortable than her own conveyance. These proposals Bathsheba gently
declined, and the farmer at once departed.

About half-an-hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and took
her seat and the reins as usual—in external appearance much as if
nothing had happened. She went out of the town by a tortuous back
street, and drove slowly along, unconscious of the road and the scene.
The first shades of evening were showing themselves when Bathsheba
reached home, where, silently alighting and leaving the horse in the
hands of the boy, she proceeded at once upstairs. Liddy met her on the
landing. The news had preceded Bathsheba to Weatherbury by
half-an-hour, and Liddy looked inquiringly into her mistress’s face.
Bathsheba had nothing to say.

She entered her bedroom and sat by the window, and thought and thought
till night enveloped her, and the extreme lines only of her shape were
visible. Somebody came to the door, knocked, and opened it.

“Well, what is it, Liddy?” she said.

“I was thinking there must be something got for you to wear,” said
Liddy, with hesitation.

“What do you mean?”

“Mourning.”

“No, no, no,” said Bathsheba, hurriedly.

“But I suppose there must be something done for poor—”

“Not at present, I think. It is not necessary.”

“Why not, ma’am?”

“Because he’s still alive.”

“How do you know that?” said Liddy, amazed.

“I don’t know it. But wouldn’t it have been different, or shouldn’t I
have heard more, or wouldn’t they have found him, Liddy?—or—I don’t
know how it is, but death would have been different from how this is. I
am perfectly convinced that he is still alive!”

Bathsheba remained firm in this opinion till Monday, when two
circumstances conjoined to shake it. The first was a short paragraph in
the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodizing pen
formidable presumptive evidence of Troy’s death by drowning, contained
the important testimony of a young Mr. Barker, M.D., of Budmouth, who
spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident, in a letter to the
editor. In this he stated that he was passing over the cliff on the
remoter side of the cove just as the sun was setting. At that time he
saw a bather carried along in the current outside the mouth of the
cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a poor chance for
him unless he should be possessed of unusual muscular powers. He
drifted behind a projection of the coast, and Mr. Barker followed along
the shore in the same direction. But by the time that he could reach an
elevation sufficiently great to command a view of the sea beyond, dusk
had set in, and nothing further was to be seen.

The other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became
necessary for her to examine and identify them—though this had
virtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in
his pockets. It was so evident to her in the midst of her agitation
that Troy had undressed in the full conviction of dressing again almost
immediately, that the notion that anything but death could have
prevented him was a perverse one to entertain.

Then Bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their
opinion; strange that she should not be. A strange reflection occurred
to her, causing her face to flush. Suppose that Troy had followed Fanny
into another world. Had he done this intentionally, yet contrived to
make his death appear like an accident? Nevertheless, this thought of
how the apparent might differ from the real—made vivid by her bygone
jealousy of Fanny, and the remorse he had shown that night—did not
blind her to the perception of a likelier difference, less tragic, but
to herself far more disastrous.

When alone late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed down,
Bathsheba took Troy’s watch into her hand, which had been restored to
her with the rest of the articles belonging to him. She opened the case
as he had opened it before her a week ago. There was the little coil of
pale hair which had been as the fuze to this great explosion.

“He was hers and she was his; they should be gone together,” she said.
“I am nothing to either of them, and why should I keep her hair?” She
took it in her hand, and held it over the fire. “No—I’ll not burn
it—I’ll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!” she added, snatching
back her hand.