CHAPTER XLI — SUSPICION—FANNY IS SENT FOR
Bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her. He exhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a silent tongue. The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church both morning and afternoon. This was the day before the Budmouth races. In the evening Troy said, suddenly—
“Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?”
Her countenance instantly sank. “Twenty pounds?” she said.
“The fact is, I want it badly.” The anxiety upon Troy’s face was unusual and very marked. It was a culmination of the mood he had been in all the day.
“Ah! for those races to-morrow.”
Troy for the moment made no reply. Her mistake had its advantages to a man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now. “Well, suppose I do want it for races?” he said, at last.
“Oh, Frank!” Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of entreaty in the words. “Only such a few weeks ago you said that I was far sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that you would give them all up for me; and now, won’t you give up this one, which is more a worry than a pleasure? Do, Frank. Come, let me fascinate you by all I can do—by pretty words and pretty looks, and everything I can think of—to stay at home. Say yes to your wife—say yes!”
The tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba’s nature were prominent now—advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she was cool too frequently threw over them. Few men could have resisted the arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a little back and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses more than the words it accompanies, and which seems to have been designed for these special occasions. Had the woman not been his wife, Troy would have succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he would not deceive her longer.
“The money is not wanted for racing debts at all,” he said.
“What is it for?” she asked. “You worry me a great deal by these mysterious responsibilities, Frank.”
Troy hesitated. He did not now love her enough to allow himself to be carried too far by her ways. Yet it was necessary to be civil. “You wrong me by such a suspicious manner,” he said. “Such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date.”
“I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay,” she said, with features between a smile and a pout.
“Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the latter. Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don’t go too far, or you may have cause to regret something.”
She reddened. “I do that already,” she said, quickly.
“What do you regret?”
“That my romance has come to an end.”
“All romances end at marriage.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You grieve me to my soul by being smart at my expense.”
“You are dull enough at mine. I believe you hate me.”
“Not you—only your faults. I do hate them.”
“’Twould be much more becoming if you set yourself to cure them. Come, let’s strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends.”
She gave a sigh of resignation. “I have about that sum here for household expenses. If you must have it, take it.”
“Very good. Thank you. I expect I shall have gone away before you are in to breakfast to-morrow.”
“And must you go? Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have taken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me. You used to call me darling, then. But it doesn’t matter to you how my days are passed now.”
“I must go, in spite of sentiment.” Troy, as he spoke, looked at his watch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened the case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small coil of hair.
Bathsheba’s eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she saw the action and saw the hair. She flushed in pain and surprise, and some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it was wise to utter them. “A woman’s curl of hair!” she said. “Oh, Frank, whose is that?”
Troy had instantly closed his watch. He carelessly replied, as one who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred. “Why, yours, of course. Whose should it be? I had quite forgotten that I had it.”
“What a dreadful fib, Frank!”
“I tell you I had forgotten it!” he said, loudly.
“I don’t mean that—it was yellow hair.”
“Nonsense.”
“That’s insulting me. I know it was yellow. Now whose was it? I want to know.”
“Very well—I’ll tell you, so make no more ado. It is the hair of a young woman I was going to marry before I knew you.”
“You ought to tell me her name, then.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Is she married yet?”
“No.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Yes.”
“It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful affliction!”
“Affliction—what affliction?” he inquired, quickly.
“Having hair of that dreadful colour.”
“Oh—ho—I like that!” said Troy, recovering himself. “Why, her hair has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it loose, which has not been long. It is beautiful hair. People used to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!”
“Pooh! that’s nothing—that’s nothing!” she exclaimed, in incipient accents of pique. “If I cared for your love as much as I used to I could say people had turned to look at mine.”
“Bathsheba, don’t be so fitful and jealous. You knew what married life would be like, and shouldn’t have entered it if you feared these contingencies.”
Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full. Ashamed as she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:—
“This is all I get for loving you so well! Ah! when I married you your life was dearer to me than my own. I would have died for you—how truly I can say that I would have died for you! And now you sneer at my foolishness in marrying you. O! is it kind to me to throw my mistake in my face? Whatever opinion you may have of my wisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am in your power.”
“I can’t help how things fall out,” said Troy; “upon my heart, women will be the death of me!”
“Well you shouldn’t keep people’s hair. You’ll burn it, won’t you, Frank?”
Frank went on as if he had not heard her. “There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made—ties you know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I.”
Trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled tones of wretchedness and coaxing, “I only repent it if you don’t love me better than any woman in the world! I don’t otherwise, Frank. You don’t repent because you already love somebody better than you love me, do you?”
“I don’t know. Why do you say that?”
“You won’t burn that curl. You like the woman who owns that pretty hair—yes; it is pretty—more beautiful than my miserable black mane! Well, it is no use; I can’t help being ugly. You must like her best, if you will!”
“Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon that bit of hair for several months—that I am ready to swear.”
“But just now you said ‘ties’; and then—that woman we met?”
“’Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair.”
“Is it hers, then?”
“Yes. There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are content.”
“And what are the ties?”
“Oh! that meant nothing—a mere jest.”
“A mere jest!” she said, in mournful astonishment. “Can you jest when I am so wretchedly in earnest? Tell me the truth, Frank. I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman’s moments. Come! treat me fairly,” she said, looking honestly and fearlessly into his face. “I don’t want much; bare justice—that’s all! Ah! once I felt I could be content with nothing less than the highest homage from the husband I should choose. Now, anything short of cruelty will content me. Yes! the independent and spirited Bathsheba is come to this!”
“For Heaven’s sake don’t be so desperate!” Troy said, snappishly, rising as he did so, and leaving the room.
Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs—dry-eyed sobs, which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. But she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man’s on earth—that her waist had never been encircled by a lover’s arm. She hated herself now. In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking young fellow who should choose to salute them. She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about her. In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour. Although she scarcely knew the divinity’s name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored. That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her—that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole—were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference!
The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way. When she came in at half-past eight—their usual hour for breakfasting—she was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.
After breakfast she was cool and collected—quite herself in fact—and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however, finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister. Of course, she sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had momentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have been like; also of life with Boldwood under the same conditions. But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when Troy’s neglect was more than ordinarily evident.
She saw coming up the road a man like Mr. Boldwood. It was Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched. The farmer stopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel Oak, who was in a footpath across the field. The two men then approached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation.
Thus they continued for a long time. Joseph Poorgrass now passed near them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba’s residence. Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a few minutes, and then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming up the hill with his barrow.
Bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise, experienced great relief when Boldwood turned back again. “Well, what’s the message, Joseph?” she said.
He set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady required, spoke to Bathsheba over the gate.
“You’ll never see Fanny Robin no more—use nor principal—ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s dead in the Union.”
“Fanny dead—never!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did she die from?”
“I don’t know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was from general neshness of constitution. She was such a limber maid that ’a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and ’a went like a candle-snoff, so ’tis said. She was took bad in the morning, and, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening. She belongs by law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her.”
“Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing—I shall do it! Fanny was my uncle’s servant, and, although I only knew her for a couple of days, she belongs to me. How very, very sad this is!—the idea of Fanny being in a workhouse.” Bathsheba had begun to know what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling.... “Send across to Mr. Boldwood’s, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon herself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family.... We ought not to put her in a waggon; we’ll get a hearse.”
“There will hardly be time, ma’am, will there?”
“Perhaps not,” she said, musingly. “When did you say we must be at the door—three o’clock?”
“Three o’clock this afternoon, ma’am, so to speak it.”
“Very well—you go with it. A pretty waggon is better than an ugly hearse, after all. Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue body and red wheels, and wash it very clean. And, Joseph—”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her coffin—indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them. Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and boy’s-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum. And let old Pleasant draw her, because she knew him so well.”
“I will, ma’am. I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of four labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate, and take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of Guardians, as by law ordained.”
“Dear me—Casterbridge Union—and is Fanny come to this?” said Bathsheba, musing. “I wish I had known of it sooner. I thought she was far away. How long has she lived there?”
“On’y been there a day or two.”
“Oh!—then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?”
“No. She first went to live in a garrison-town t’other side o’ Wessex, and since then she’s been picking up a living at seampstering in Melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable widow-woman who takes in work of that sort. She only got handy the Union-house on Sunday morning ’a b’lieve, and ’tis supposed here and there that she had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester. Why she left her place, I can’t say, for I don’t know; and as to a lie, why, I wouldn’t tell it. That’s the short of the story, ma’am.”
“Ah-h!”
No gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than changed the young wife’s countenance whilst this word came from her in a long-drawn breath. “Did she walk along our turnpike-road?” she said, in a suddenly restless and eager voice.
“I believe she did.... Ma’am, shall I call Liddy? You bain’t well, ma’am, surely? You look like a lily—so pale and fainty!”
“No; don’t call her; it is nothing. When did she pass Weatherbury?”
“Last Saturday night.”
“That will do, Joseph; now you may go.”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
“Joseph, come hither a moment. What was the colour of Fanny Robin’s hair?”
“Really, mistress, now that ’tis put to me so judge-and-jury like, I can’t call to mind, if ye’ll believe me!”
“Never mind; go on and do what I told you. Stop—well no, go on.”
She turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the mood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors with a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow. About an hour after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still with a painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look. Joseph, dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse to start. The shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as she had directed; Bathsheba hardly saw them now.
“Died of what? did you say, Joseph?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Yes, ma’am, quite sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“I’m sure that all I know is that she arrived in the morning and died in the evening without further parley. What Oak and Mr. Boldwood told me was only these few words. ‘Little Fanny Robin is dead, Joseph,’ Gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way. I was very sorry, and I said, ‘Ah!—and how did she come to die?’ ‘Well, she’s dead in Casterbridge Union,’ he said, ‘and perhaps ’tisn’t much matter about how she came to die. She reached the Union early Sunday morning, and died in the afternoon—that’s clear enough.’ Then I asked what she’d been doing lately, and Mr. Boldwood turned round to me then, and left off spitting a thistle with the end of his stick. He told me about her having lived by seampstering in Melchester, as I mentioned to you, and that she walked therefrom at the end of last week, passing near here Saturday night in the dusk. They then said I had better just name a hint of her death to you, and away they went. Her death might have been brought on by biding in the night wind, you know, ma’am; for people used to say she’d go off in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time. However, ’tisn’t much odds to us about that now, for ’tis all over.”
“Have you heard a different story at all?” She looked at him so intently that Joseph’s eyes quailed.
“Not a word, mistress, I assure ’ee!” he said. “Hardly anybody in the parish knows the news yet.”
“I wonder why Gabriel didn’t bring the message to me himself. He mostly makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand.” These words were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the ground.
“Perhaps he was busy, ma’am,” Joseph suggested. “And sometimes he seems to suffer from things upon his mind, connected with the time when he was better off than ’a is now. ’A’s rather a curious item, but a very understanding shepherd, and learned in books.”
“Did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about this?”
“I cannot but say that there did, ma’am. He was terrible down, and so was Farmer Boldwood.”
“Thank you, Joseph. That will do. Go on now, or you’ll be late.”
Bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again. In the course of the afternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence, “What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin’s hair? Do you know? I cannot recollect—I only saw her for a day or two.”
“It was light, ma’am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it. But I have seen her let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful then. Real golden hair.”
“Her young man was a soldier, was he not?”
“Yes. In the same regiment as Mr. Troy. He says he knew him very well.”
“What, Mr. Troy says so? How came he to say that?”
“One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny’s young man. He said, ‘Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he knew himself, and that there wasn’t a man in the regiment he liked better.’”
“Ah! Said that, did he?”
“Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the other young man, so that sometimes people mistook them—”
“Liddy, for Heaven’s sake stop your talking!” said Bathsheba, with the nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.
CHAPTER XLII — JOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN—BUCK’S HEAD
A wall bounded the site of Casterbridge Union-house, except along a portion of the end. Here a high gable stood prominent, and it was covered like the front with a mat of ivy. In this gable was no window, chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind. The single feature appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves, was a small door.
The situation of the door was peculiar. The sill was three or four feet above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an explanation of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately beneath suggested that the door was used solely for the passage of articles and persons to and from the level of a vehicle standing on the outside. Upon the whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as a species of Traitor’s Gate translated to another sphere. That entry and exit hereby was only at rare intervals became apparent on noting that tufts of grass were allowed to flourish undisturbed in the chinks of the sill.
As the clock over the South-street Alms-house pointed to five minutes to three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with red, and containing boughs and flowers, passed the end of the street, and up towards this side of the building. Whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a shattered form of “Malbrook,” Joseph Poorgrass rang the bell, and received directions to back his waggon against the high door under the gable. The door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly thrust forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the vehicle.
One of the men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump of chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in a large scrawling hand. (We believe that they do these things more tenderly now, and provide a plate.) He covered the whole with a black cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tail-board of the waggon was returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of registry to Poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind them. Their connection with her, short as it had been, was over for ever.
Joseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens around the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the waggon contained; he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car crept down the hill, and along the road to Weatherbury.
The afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the right towards the sea as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw strange clouds and scrolls of mist rolling over the long ridges which girt the landscape in that quarter. They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently crept across the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery flags of the moor and river brinks. Then their dank spongy forms closed in upon the sky. It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped, this being the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the first fog of the series.
The air was as an eye suddenly struck blind. The waggon and its load rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor throughout. There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs composing the wood on either side. The trees stood in an attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock them. A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things—so completely, that the crunching of the waggon-wheels was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized.
Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny. The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three. Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair.
At the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond this wood, was the old inn Buck’s Head. It was about a mile and a half from Weatherbury, and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling had been the place where many coaches changed and kept their relays of horses. All the old stabling was now pulled down, and little remained besides the habitable inn itself, which, standing a little way back from the road, signified its existence to people far up and down the highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough of an elm on the opposite side of the way.
Travellers—for the variety _tourist_ had hardly developed into a distinct species at this date—sometimes said in passing, when they cast their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond of representing the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves had never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working order. It was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which Gabriel Oak crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness, the sign and the inn had been unobserved.
The manners of the inn were of the old-established type. Indeed, in the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulæ: _e.g._—
Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor. For tobacco, shout. In calling for the girl in waiting, say, “Maid!” Ditto for the landlady, “Old Soul!” etc., etc.
It was a relief to Joseph’s heart when the friendly signboard came in view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to fulfil an intention made a long time before. His spirits were oozing out of him quite. He turned the horse’s head to the green bank, and entered the hostel for a mug of ale.
Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside, what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-coloured discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark Clark. These owners of the two most appreciative throats in the neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were now sitting face to face over a three-legged circular table, having an iron rim to keep cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining _vis-à-vis_ across the globe.
“Why, ’tis neighbour Poorgrass!” said Mark Clark. “I’m sure your face don’t praise your mistress’s table, Joseph.”
“I’ve had a very pale companion for the last four miles,” said Joseph, indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation. “And to speak the truth, ’twas beginning to tell upon me. I assure ye, I ha’n’t seed the colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that was no more than a dew-bit afield.”
“Then drink, Joseph, and don’t restrain yourself!” said Coggan, handing him a hooped mug three-quarters full.
Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time, saying, as he lowered the jug, “’Tis pretty drinking—very pretty drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to speak it.”
“True, drink is a pleasant delight,” said Jan, as one who repeated a truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings.
“Well, I must be on again,” said Poorgrass. “Not but that I should like another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me if I was seed here.”
“Where be ye trading o’t to to-day, then, Joseph?”
“Back to Weatherbury. I’ve got poor little Fanny Robin in my waggon outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five with her.”
“Ay—I’ve heard of it. And so she’s nailed up in parish boards after all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown.”
“The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling, because the bell’s a luxery: but ’a can hardly do without the grave, poor body. However, I expect our mistress will pay all.”
“A pretty maid as ever I see! But what’s yer hurry, Joseph? The pore woman’s dead, and you can’t bring her to life, and you may as well sit down comfortable, and finish another with us.”
“I don’t mind taking just the least thimbleful ye can dream of more with ye, sonnies. But only a few minutes, because ’tis as ’tis.”
“Of course, you’ll have another drop. A man’s twice the man afterwards. You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking. Too much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house; but after all, many people haven’t the gift of enjoying a wet, and since we be highly favoured with a power that way, we should make the most o’t.”
“True,” said Mark Clark. “’Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my carcase, they have!”
“Well, really, I must be onward again now,” said Joseph.
“Now, now, Joseph; nonsense! The poor woman is dead, isn’t she, and what’s your hurry?”
“Well, I hope Providence won’t be in a way with me for my doings,” said Joseph, again sitting down. “I’ve been troubled with weak moments lately, ’tis true. I’ve been drinky once this month already, and I did not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two yesterday; so I don’t want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand.”
“I believe ye to be a chapelmember, Joseph. That I do.”
“Oh, no, no! I don’t go so far as that.”
“For my part,” said Coggan, “I’m staunch Church of England.”
“Ay, and faith, so be I,” said Mark Clark.
“I won’t say much for myself; I don’t wish to,” Coggan continued, with that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the barley-corn. “But I’ve never changed a single doctrine: I’ve stuck like a plaster to the old faith I was born in. Yes; there’s this to be said for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all. But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapel members be clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwrecks in the newspaper.”
“They can—they can,” said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; “but we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer like the Lord than babes unborn.”
“Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we,” said Joseph, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Coggan. “We know very well that if anybody do go to heaven, they will. They’ve worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it, such as ’tis. I bain’t such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to the Church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not. But I hate a feller who’ll change his old ancient doctrines for the sake of getting to heaven. I’d as soon turn king’s-evidence for the few pounds you get. Why, neighbours, when every one of my taties were frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man who gave me a sack for seed, though he hardly had one for his own use, and no money to buy ’em. If it hadn’t been for him, I shouldn’t hae had a tatie to put in my garden. D’ye think I’d turn after that? No, I’ll stick to my side; and if we be in the wrong, so be it: I’ll fall with the fallen!”
“Well said—very well said,” observed Joseph.—“However, folks, I must be moving now: upon my life I must. Pa’son Thirdly will be waiting at the church gates, and there’s the woman a-biding outside in the waggon.”
“Joseph Poorgrass, don’t be so miserable! Pa’son Thirdly won’t mind. He’s a generous man; he’s found me in tracts for years, and I’ve consumed a good many in the course of a long and shady life; but he’s never been the man to cry out at the expense. Sit down.”
The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was troubled by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the surface of darkness. Coggan’s repeater struck six from his pocket in the usual still small tones.
At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and shrank several inches into the background.
“Upon my soul, I’m ashamed of you; ’tis disgraceful, Joseph, disgraceful!” said Gabriel, indignantly. “Coggan, you call yourself a man, and don’t know better than this.”
Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not a member, but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.
“Don’t take on so, shepherd!” said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully at the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for his eyes.
“Nobody can hurt a dead woman,” at length said Coggan, with the precision of a machine. “All that could be done for her is done—she’s beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don’t know what you do with her at all? If she’d been alive, I would have been the first to help her. If she now wanted victuals and drink, I’d pay for it, money down. But she’s dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. The woman’s past us—time spent upon her is throwed away: why should we hurry to do what’s not required? Drink, shepherd, and be friends, for to-morrow we may be like her.”
“We may,” added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself, to run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to, Jan meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a song:—
To-mor-row, to-mor-row! And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board, With a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row, With my friends will I share what to-day may af-ford, And let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row. To-mor-row, to-mor——
“Do hold thy horning, Jan!” said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, “as for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy ways, you are as drunk as you can stand.”
“No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that’s the matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that’s how it is I look double to you—I mean, you look double to me.”
“A multiplying eye is a very bad thing,” said Mark Clark.
“It always comes on when I have been in a public-house a little time,” said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly. “Yes; I see two of every sort, as if I were some holy man living in the times of King Noah and entering into the ark.... Y-y-y-yes,” he added, becoming much affected by the picture of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears; “I feel too good for England: I ought to have lived in Genesis by rights, like the other men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn’t have b-b-been called a d-d-drunkard in such a way!”
“I wish you’d show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining there!”
“Show myself a man of spirit?... Ah, well! let me take the name of drunkard humbly—let me be a man of contrite knees—let it be! I know that I always do say ‘Please God’ afore I do anything, from my getting up to my going down of the same, and I be willing to take as much disgrace as there is in that holy act. Hah, yes!... But not a man of spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my hinder parts without groaning manfully that I question the right to do so? I inquire that query boldly?”
“We can’t say that you have, Hero Poorgrass,” admitted Jan.
“Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned! Yet the shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I be not a man of spirit! Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!”
Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply, but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy time. He pulled the horse’s head from the large patch of turf it had eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along through the unwholesome night.
It had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate Fanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge through Melchester and onwards. But, thanks to Boldwood’s reticence and Oak’s generosity, the lover she had followed had never been individualized as Troy. Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be published till at any rate the girl had been in her grave for a few days, when the interposing barriers of earth and time, and a sense that the events had been somewhat shut into oblivion, would deaden the sting that revelation and invidious remark would have for Bathsheba just now.
By the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence, which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark. A man came from the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown flour—
“Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?”
Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson.
“The corpse is here, sir,” said Gabriel.
“I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to be performed with proper decency. Have you the registrar’s certificate?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “I expect Poorgrass has that; and he’s at the Buck’s Head. I forgot to ask him for it.”
“Then that settles the matter. We’ll put off the funeral till to-morrow morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited more than an hour, and have now gone home.”
Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba’s uncle. Visions of several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay flitted before him. But his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. He found her in an unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were suspicious and perplexed as with some antecedent thought. Troy had not yet returned. At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of indifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny’s account, and desired that the girl might be brought into the house. Oak argued upon the convenience of leaving her in the waggon, just as she lay now, with her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose. “It is unkind and unchristian,” she said, “to leave the poor thing in a coach-house all night.”
“Very well, then,” said the parson. “And I will arrange that the funeral shall take place early to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Troy is right in feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully. We must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving her home, she is still our sister: and it is to be believed that God’s uncovenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ.”
The parson’s words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr. Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.
Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to Troy’s wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite of his careful manœuvering all this day, the very worst event that could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had happened now. Oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this afternoon’s work that might cast over Bathsheba’s life a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove.
Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one, “_Fanny Robin and child_.” Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription “_Fanny Robin_” only. He then left the room, and went out quietly by the front door.