Far from the Madding Crowd

AFTER THE SHOCK

Boldwood passed into the high road and turned in the direction of
Casterbridge. Here he walked at an even, steady pace over Yalbury Hill,
along the dead level beyond, mounted Mellstock Hill, and between eleven
and twelve o’clock crossed the Moor into the town. The streets were
nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only lighted up rows of
grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving upon which his step
echoed as his passed along. He turned to the right, and halted before
an archway of heavy stonework, which was closed by an iron studded pair
of doors. This was the entrance to the gaol, and over it a lamp was
fixed, the light enabling the wretched traveller to find a bell-pull.

The small wicket at last opened, and a porter appeared. Boldwood
stepped forward, and said something in a low tone, when, after a delay,
another man came. Boldwood entered, and the door was closed behind him,
and he walked the world no more.

Long before this time Weatherbury had been thoroughly aroused, and the
wild deed which had terminated Boldwood’s merrymaking became known to
all. Of those out of the house Oak was one of the first to hear of the
catastrophe, and when he entered the room, which was about five minutes
after Boldwood’s exit, the scene was terrible. All the female guests
were huddled aghast against the walls like sheep in a storm, and the
men were bewildered as to what to do. As for Bathsheba, she had
changed. She was sitting on the floor beside the body of Troy, his head
pillowed in her lap, where she had herself lifted it. With one hand she
held her handkerchief to his breast and covered the wound, though
scarcely a single drop of blood had flowed, and with the other she
tightly clasped one of his. The household convulsion had made her
herself again. The temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come
with the necessity for it. Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in
philosophy, are rare in conduct, and Bathsheba was astonishing all
around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom
thought practicable what she did not practise. She was of the stuff of
which great men’s mothers are made. She was indispensable to high
generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.
Troy recumbent in his wife’s lap formed now the sole spectacle in the
middle of the spacious room.

“Gabriel,” she said, automatically, when he entered, turning up a face
of which only the well-known lines remained to tell him it was hers,
all else in the picture having faded quite. “Ride to Casterbridge
instantly for a surgeon. It is, I believe, useless, but go. Mr.
Boldwood has shot my husband.”

Her statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with more
force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of setting
the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus. Oak,
almost before he had comprehended anything beyond the briefest abstract
of the event, hurried out of the room, saddled a horse and rode away.
Not till he had ridden more than a mile did it occur to him that he
would have done better by sending some other man on this errand,
remaining himself in the house. What had become of Boldwood? He should
have been looked after. Was he mad—had there been a quarrel? Then how
had Troy got there? Where had he come from? How did this remarkable
reappearance effect itself when he was supposed by many to be at the
bottom of the sea? Oak had in some slight measure been prepared for the
presence of Troy by hearing a rumour of his return just before entering
Boldwood’s house; but before he had weighed that information, this
fatal event had been superimposed. However, it was too late now to
think of sending another messenger, and he rode on, in the excitement
of these self-inquiries not discerning, when about three miles from
Casterbridge, a square-figured pedestrian passing along under the dark
hedge in the same direction as his own.

The miles necessary to be traversed, and other hindrances incidental to
the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, delayed the
arrival of Mr. Aldritch, the surgeon; and more than three hours passed
between the time at which the shot was fired and that of his entering
the house. Oak was additionally detained in Casterbridge through having
to give notice to the authorities of what had happened; and he then
found that Boldwood had also entered the town, and delivered himself
up.

In the meantime the surgeon, having hastened into the hall at
Boldwood’s, found it in darkness and quite deserted. He went on to the
back of the house, where he discovered in the kitchen an old man, of
whom he made inquiries.

“She’s had him took away to her own house, sir,” said his informant.

“Who has?” said the doctor.

“Mrs. Troy. ’A was quite dead, sir.”

This was astonishing information. “She had no right to do that,” said
the doctor. “There will have to be an inquest, and she should have
waited to know what to do.”

“Yes, sir; it was hinted to her that she had better wait till the law
was known. But she said law was nothing to her, and she wouldn’t let
her dear husband’s corpse bide neglected for folks to stare at for all
the crowners in England.”

Mr. Aldritch drove at once back again up the hill to Bathsheba’s. The
first person he met was poor Liddy, who seemed literally to have
dwindled smaller in these few latter hours. “What has been done?” he
said.

“I don’t know, sir,” said Liddy, with suspended breath. “My mistress
has done it all.”

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs with him, sir. When he was brought home and taken upstairs,
she said she wanted no further help from the men. And then she called
me, and made me fill the bath, and after that told me I had better go
and lie down because I looked so ill. Then she locked herself into the
room alone with him, and would not let a nurse come in, or anybody at
all. But I thought I’d wait in the next room in case she should want
me. I heard her moving about inside for more than an hour, but she only
came out once, and that was for more candles, because hers had burnt
down into the socket. She said we were to let her know when you or Mr.
Thirdly came, sir.”

Oak entered with the parson at this moment, and they all went upstairs
together, preceded by Liddy Smallbury. Everything was silent as the
grave when they paused on the landing. Liddy knocked, and Bathsheba’s
dress was heard rustling across the room: the key turned in the lock,
and she opened the door. Her looks were calm and nearly rigid, like a
slightly animated bust of Melpomene.

“Oh, Mr. Aldritch, you have come at last,” she murmured from her lips
merely, and threw back the door. “Ah, and Mr. Thirdly. Well, all is
done, and anybody in the world may see him now.” She then passed by
him, crossed the landing, and entered another room.

Looking into the chamber of death she had vacated they saw by the light
of the candles which were on the drawers a tall straight shape lying at
the further end of the bedroom, wrapped in white. Everything around was
quite orderly. The doctor went in, and after a few minutes returned to
the landing again, where Oak and the parson still waited.

“It is all done, indeed, as she says,” remarked Mr. Aldritch, in a
subdued voice. “The body has been undressed and properly laid out in
grave clothes. Gracious Heaven—this mere girl! She must have the nerve
of a stoic!”

“The heart of a wife merely,” floated in a whisper about the ears of
the three, and turning they saw Bathsheba in the midst of them. Then,
as if at that instant to prove that her fortitude had been more of will
than of spontaneity, she silently sank down between them and was a
shapeless heap of drapery on the floor. The simple consciousness that
superhuman strain was no longer required had at once put a period to
her power to continue it.

They took her away into a further room, and the medical attendance
which had been useless in Troy’s case was invaluable in Bathsheba’s,
who fell into a series of fainting-fits that had a serious aspect for a
time. The sufferer was got to bed, and Oak, finding from the bulletins
that nothing really dreadful was to be apprehended on her score, left
the house. Liddy kept watch in Bathsheba’s chamber, where she heard her
mistress, moaning in whispers through the dull slow hours of that
wretched night: “Oh it is my fault—how can I live! O Heaven, how can I
live!”