tinued Boldwood deliberately. "A thing strong as death. No dismissal by a hasty letter affects that." "I wish you did not feel so strongly about me," she murmured. "It is generous of you and more than I deserve, but I must not hear it now." "Hear it? What do you think I have to say, then? I am not to marry you, and that's enough. Your letter was excellently plain. I want you to hear nothing not I." Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for freeing herself from this fearfully awkward position. She confusedly said, "Good evening," and was moving on. Boldwood walked up to her heavily and dully. "Bathsheba deed?" "Indeed it is." 66 darling is it final in O, Bathsheba-have pity upon me!" Boldwood burst out. "God's sake, yes - I am come to that low, lowest stage to ask a woman for pity! Still, she is you she is you." Bathsheba commanded herself well. But she could hardly get a clear voice for what came instinctively to her lips: "There is little honour to the woman in that speech." It was only whispered, for something unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios. 66 "I am beyond myself about this, and am mad," he said. I am no stoic at all to be supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you. I wish you knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible, that. In bare human mercy to a lonely man don't throw me off now !" "I don't throw you off—indeed, how can I? I never had you." In her noonclear sense that she had never loved him she forgot for a moment her thoughtless angle on that day in February. the childish game of an idle minute. I have bitterly repented of it ay, bitterly, and in tears. Can you still go on reminding me?" "I don't accuse you of it-I deplore it. I took for earnest what you insist was jest, and now this that I pray to be jest you say is awful wretched earnest. Our moods meet at wrong places. I wish your feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours! O could I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was going to lead me into, how Ï should have cursed you; but only having been able to see it since, I cannot do that, for I love you too well! But it is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this. Bathsheba, you are the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked at to love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard to bear. How nearly you promised me! But I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because of my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it; my pain would get no less by paining you." "But I do pity you - deeply - oh so deeply!" she earnestly said. 66 Do no such thing do no such thing. Your dear love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity make it sensibly less. Oh sweet-how dearly you spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn at the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at your home! Where are your pleasant words all gone-your earnest hope to be able to love me? Where is your firm conviction that you would get to care for me very much? Really forgotten?-really?" She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, and said in her low firm voice, "Mr. Boldwood, I "But there was a time when you promised you nothing. Would you have turned to me, before I thought of you. had me a woman of clay when you paid I don't reproach you, for even now I feel me that furthest, highest compliment a that the ignorant and cold darkness that man can pay a woman-telling her he I should have lived in if you had not at- loves her? I was bound to show some tracted me by that letter - valentine you feeling, if I would not be a graceless call it would have been worse than my shrew. Yet each of those pleasures was knowledge of you, though it has brought just for the day- the day just for the this misery. But, I say, there was a time pleasure. How was I to know that what when I knew nothing of you, and cared is a pastime to all other men was death nothing for you, and yet you drew me on. to you? Have reason, do, and think And if you say you gave me no encour- more kindly of me!" agement I cannot but contradict you." "What you call encouragement was "Well, never mind arguing-never mind. One thing is sure: you were all but mine, and now you are not nearly you would have me believe. No, no. It mine. Everything is changed, and that isn't because you have no feeling in you by you alone, remember. You were that you don't love me. You naturally nothing to me once, and I was contented; would have me think soyou are now nothing to me again, and how different the second nothing is from the first! Would to God you had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!" you would hide from me that you have a burning heart like mine. You have love enough, but it is turned into a new channel. Í know where." The swift music of her heart became Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, be- hubbub now, and she throbbed to exgan to feel unmistakable signs that she tremity. He was coming to Troy. He was inherently the weaker vessel. She did then know what had transpired! And strove miserably against this femininity the name fell from his lips the next mowhich would insist upon supplying un-ment. bidden emotions in stronger and stronger current. She had tried to elude agitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial object before her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could not save her now. "I did not take you up-surely I did not!" she answered as heroically as she could. "But don't be in this mood with me. I can endure being told I am in the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently! Oh sir, will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it cheerfully?" "Cheerfully! Can a man fooled to utter heartburning find a reason for being merry? If I have lost, how can I be as if I had won? Heavens, you must be heartless quite! Had I known what a fearfully bitter sweet this was to be, how I would have avoided you, and never seen you, and been deaf to you. I tell you all this, but what do you care! You don't care." She returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayed her head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they came showering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in the climax of life, with his bronzed Roman face, and fine frame. 66 Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between the two opposites of recklessly renouncing you, and labouring humbly for you again. Forget that you have said No, and let it be as it was. Say, Bathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun-come, say it to me!" "It would be untrue, and painful to both of us. You overrate my capacity for love. I don't possess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me." "Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked, fiercely. 66 When I had no thought of injuring him why did he force himself upon your notice! Before he worried you your inclination was to have me; when next I should have come to you your answer would have been Yes. Can you deny it - I ask, can you deny it?" She delayed the reply, but was too honest to withhold it. "I cannot," she whispered. "I know you cannot. But he stole in in my absence and robbed me. Why didn't he win you away before, when nobody would have been grieved?- when nobody would have been set tale-bearing. Now the people sneer at me - the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till I blush shamefully for my folly. I have lost my respect, my good name, my standing-lost it, never to get it again. Go and marry your man -go on!" "Oh sir - Mr. Boldwood! "You may as well. I have no further claim upon you. As for me, I had better go somewhere alone, and hide, - and pray. I loved a woman once. I am now ashamed. When I am dead they'll say, miserable, love-sick man that he was. Heaven-heaven-if I had got jilted secretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept! But no matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained. Shame upon him — shame! " His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him, without obviously moving, as she said, "I am only a girl do not speak to me so !" "All the time you knew how very well you knew that your new freak was my misery. Dazzled by brass and scarlet - oh Bathsheba this is woman's folly indeed!" He immediately said with more resent- She fired up at once. "You are taking ment: "That may be true, somewhat; too much upon yourself!" she said, vebut ah, Miss Everdene, it won't do as a hemently. Everybody is upon me reason! You are not the cold woman everybody. It is unmanly to attack a 66 woman so! I have nobody in the world, chester, and not here! I hope he may to fight my battles for me, but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!" "You'll chatter with him doubtless about me. Say to him, 'Boldwood would have died for me.' Yes, and you have given way to him knowing him to be not the man for you. He has kissed you claimed you as his. Do you hear, he has kissed you. Deny it !" The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another sex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped, "Leave me sir leave me! I am nothing to you. Let me go on!" "Deny that he has kissed you." "I shall not." "Hathen he has!" came hoarsely from the farmer. "He has," she said slowly, and in spite of her fear, defiantly. "I am not ashamed to speak the truth." "Then curse him; and curse him!" said Boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury. "Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and - kiss you! Heaven's mercy-kiss you! . . . Ah, a time of his life shall come when he will have to repent and think wretchedly of the pain he has caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn as I do now!" 66 "Don't, don't, oh don't pray down evil upon him!" she implored in a miserable cry. Anything but that anything. Oh be kind to him, sir, for I love him dearly!" not return here just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted beyond myself. Oh Bathsheba, keep him away-yes, keep him away from me!" For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words. He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees. Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were incomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to repression he was — what she had seen him. The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a circumstance known at present only to herself; her lover was coming back to Weatherbury the very next day. Troy had not returned to Melchester Barracks as Boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone for a day or two to visit some acquaintance in Bath, and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough. She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel would be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when she thought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this evenBoldwood's ideas. had reached that ing; Troy's blitheness might become point of fusion at which outline and con- aggressive; it might take the direction sistency entirely disappear. The impend-of derision, and Boldwood's anger might ing night appeared to concentrate in his then take the direction of revenge. eye. He did not hear her at all now. With almost a morbid dread of being "I'll punish him- by my soul that thought a gushing girl, this guideless wowill! I'll meet him, soldier or no, and man too well concealed from the world I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for under a manner of carelessness the warm this reckless theft of my one delight. If depths of her strong emotions. But now he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip there was no reserve. In her distraction, him He dropped his voice sudden- instead of advancing further, she walked ly and unnaturally, "Bathsheba, sweet up and down, beating the air with her lost coquette, pardon me. I've been fingers, pressing her brow, and sobbing blaming you, threatening you, behaving brokenly to herself. Then she sat down like a churl to you, when he's the great- on a heap of stones by the wayside to est sinner. He stole your dear heart think. There she remained long. The away with his unfathomable lies! . . . It dark rotundity of the earth approached is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone the foreshores and promontories of copback to his regiment that he's in Mel-pery cloud which bounded a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky, amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realized none at all. Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy. CHAPTER XXXII. NIGHT: HORSES TRAMPING. THE village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clockwork immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the click of the same at their close. The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things-flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space. Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba had set out to visit. A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. She was totally unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep. It led to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation that something had happened. She left her bed and looked out of the window. The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure approaching the horse that was feeding there. The figure seized the horse by the forelock, and, led it to the corner of the field. Here she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle, for after a few minutes' spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light' wheels. daring attempt. Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies in Weatherbury Bottom. Maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence, having seen him depart, had no fear. She hastily slipped on her clothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred creaks, ran to Coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm. Coggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first, and together they went to the paddock. Beyond all doubt the horse was gone. "Listen!" said Gabriel. They listened. Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a trotting horse passing over Weatherbury Hill just beyond the gipsies' encampment in Weatherbury Bottom. "That's our Dainty I'll swear to her step," said Jan. 66 Mighty me! 66 Won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids when she comes back!" moaned Maryann. "How I wish it had happened when she was at home, and none of us had been answerable!" "We must ride after," said Gabriel, decisively." "I'll be responsible to Miss Everdene for what we do. Yes, we'll follow." "Faith, I don't see how," said Coggan. "All our horses are too heavy for that trick except little Poppet, and what's she between two of us? If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something." "Which pair?” "Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll." "Then wait here till I come hither again," said Gabriel. He ran down the hill towards Farmer Boldwood's. "Farmer Boldwood is not at home," said Maryann. "All the better," said Coggan. "I know what he's gone for." Less than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same pace, with two halters dangling from his hand. "Where did you find 'em?" said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon the hedge without waiting for an answer. 66 "Under the eaves. I knew where they were kept," said Gabriel, following him. Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to look for saddles." "Like a hero!" said Jan. "Maryann, you go to bed," Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the hedge. Springing down into Boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely allowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were dexterously slipped on. Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and Coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case through the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side. Oak vaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by Bathsheba's horse and the robber. Whose vehicle the horse had been harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty. Weatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes. They scanned the shady green patch by the roadside. The gipsies were gone. "The villains!" said Gabriel. "Which way have they gone, I wonder?" "Straight on, as sure as God made little apples," said Jan. "Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake 'em," said Oak. Now, on at full speed!" 66 No sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered. The road-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left behind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat plastic, but not muddy state. They came to cross-roads. Coggan suddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off. "What's the matter?" said Gabriel. "We must try to track 'em, since we can't hear 'em,” said Jan, fumbling in his pockets. He struck a light, and held the match to the ground. The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which reflected the flame of the match like eyes. One set of tracks was fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty, and not small canals, like the others. The footprints | forming this recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot of each pair being exactly opposite one another. "Straight on!" Jan exclaimed. "Tracks like that mean a stiff gallop. No wonder we don't hear him. And the horse is harnessed-look at the ruts. Ay, that's our mare sure enough!" "How do you know?" "Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I'd swear to his make among ten thousand." "The rest of the gipsies must have gone on earlier, or some other way," said Oak. "You saw there were no other tracks?" "Trew." They rode along silently for a long weary time. Coggan's watch struck one. He lighted another match, and examined the ground again. 66 "'Tis a canter now," he said, "throwing away the light. "A twisty rickety pace for a gig. The fact is, they overdrove her at starting; we shall catch them yet." Again they hastened on. Coggan's watch struck two. When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as to form a sort of zig-zag if united, like the lamps along a street. "That's a trot, I know," said Gabriel. Only a trot now," said Coggan cheerfully. "We shall overtake him in time." They pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles. "Ah! a moment," said Jan. "Let's see how she was driven up this hill. 'Twill help us." A light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the examination made. "She "Hurrah!" said Coggan. walked up here-and well she might. We shall get them in two miles, for a crown." They rode three and listened. No sound was to be heard save a mill-pond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy possibilities of drowning by jumping in. Gabriel dismounted when they came to a turning. The tracks were absolutely the only guide as to the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary to avoid confusing them with some others which had made their appearance lately. "What does this mean? though I guess,” said Gabriel, looking up at Coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning. Coggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown signs of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters. This time only three were of the regular horseshoe shape. Every fourth was a dot. He screwed up his face, and emitted a long "whew-w-w!" "Lame?" said Oak. "Yes. Dainty is lamed; the nearfoot-afore," said Coggan slowly, staring still at the footprints. "We'll push on," said Gabriel, remounting his humid steed. Although the road along its greater part had been as good as any turnpikeroad in the country it was nominally only a byway. The last turning had brought |
