Thirty One: Far From The Madding Crowd: Thomas Hardy - The Fury

Next evening, Bathsheba with the idea of getting out of the way of Boldwood in the event of his coming to answer her note proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy. 

Liddy had been granted a week's leave to visit her sister in Yalbury. Her sister's husband was a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib maker.  They were living in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far From Yalbury. Miss Everdene was to honour them by visiting them for a day or two to familiarise with some ingenious contrivences which this man of wood had introduced into his wares. 

Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann that they were to see everything for the night she set out at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined the air, and gracefully bathed the surface of the land. 

She had walked nearly three miles, when she saw advancing over the hill, the very man she sought to elude. Instead of his usual gait,  she saw him stunned and sluggish. Boldwood had for the first time awkened to women's way of evasiveness without regard to another's distraction and blight.

He came on, looking upon the ground, till they were less than a stone's throw apart.  He looked up at the sound of her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to her the depth and strength of feelings paralysed by her letter.

"Oh! It's you, Mr Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing in her face.

Boldwood was silent, but silence spoke volumes. His look was unanswerable.

Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are you afraid of me?" 

"Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba.

"I fancied you looked so," said he.  "And it's most strange because of its contrast with my feeling for you." 

She regained self possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited.

"You know what that feeling is," continued Boldwood deliberately.  "A thing strong as death.  No dismissal by a hasty letter affects that." 

"I wish you did not feel so strong 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 upto her heavily and dully.

"Bathsheba --- darling --- is it final indeed?"

"Indeed, it is."

"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 a whisper.

"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.  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." She did not consider the Valentine's day episode.

"There was a time when you turned to me, before I thought of you.  I don't reproach you.  I should have lived in the ignorant and cold darkness if you had not attracted me by that Valentine's day missive.  Was it not an encouragement?"

"It was a childish game of an idle minute.  I have bitterly repented of it."

"I don't accuse you of it --- I deplore it.

I took it earnestly what you say was  jest.  Bathsheba, you are the first and last woman of any shade or nature I have looked at to love and it is 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 of it now to move your heart and make you grieve.  I must bear it."

"But I do pity you --- deeply --- so deeply!" she earnestly said.

"Do no such thing --- do no such thing.  Your dear love is such a vast thing, beside your pity. Loss of your love add to my sorrow.  Gain of your pity does not lessen my sorrow.  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 beautiful twilight at your home.  Where are your pleasant words all gone --- your earnest hope to be able to love me.

She checked her emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face and said firmly, "Mr Boldwood, I promised you nothing.  Would you have had me a woman.of clay when you paid me the highest compliment a man can pay a woman --- telling her he loves her.  I was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a graceless shrew.  Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day --- the day just for the pleasure.  How should I know that what is a pastime for all other men was death to you?  Have reason, and think more kindly of me!" 

"Well, you were nothing to me, once.

Then you were all but mine. And now you are not mine.  You have changed everything.  I was contented when you were nothing to me. And again your are nothing and look how it is different."

Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel that she was inherently 

the weaker vessel.  She tried to divert her attention to trees, sky and other objects around her. But ingenuity could not save her now.

"I did not take you up --- surely I did not!" she answered heroically.  "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!  I have lost. How can I be cheerful, as if I had won?  Had I known what a fearfully bitter sweet this was to be, how I would have avoided you, and never see you, and  been deaf to you. I tell you all this, but what do you care?  You don't care." 

Bathsheba was silent.

"Dearest," continued Boldwood, "forget that you have said no, and let it be as it was.  Say that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun -- come, say it to me."

"It would be untrue, and painfull to both of us.  You overrate my capacity to 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."

"That may be true," said Boldwood without any resentment, "but you are not a cold woman you would have me believe.  You have love enough, but it is turned into a new channel.  I know where."

The swift music of her heart became a hubbub.  He was coming to Troy.

"Why  did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked fiercely.  " 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 cannot," she whispered.

"I know you cannot. He stole you in my absence.  Why didn't he win you before, when nobody would have been grieved?  Now people sneer at me.  The very hill and sky seem to laugh at me, and I blush for my folly.  I have lost my respect and good name.  I lost my standing, never to get it again.  Go and marry your man -- Go on!"

"O Sir --- Mr Boldwood !"

"I have no further claim upon you. I had better go somewhere alone and hide.  I loved a woman once.  I am now ashamed.  When I am dead they'll say, a miserable love-sick man

that he was.  Shame upon him --- shame !"

His anger terrified her.  "I am only a girl, do not speak to me so !"

"All this time you knew that your new freak was my misery.  Dazzled by brass and scarlet.  Oh, Bathsheba --- this is woman's folly"

She flared up at once. "You are taking too much upon yourself," she said vehemently.  Everybody is upon me --everybody.  It is unmanly to attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world 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 will chatter with him about me.  Say to him Boldwood would have died for me.  You have given way to him knowing that he be not The man for you.  He has kissed you --- claimed you as his.  Do you hear? He has kissed you.  Can you deny it?" 

Bathsheba's cheek quivered.  "She gasped, "Leave me sir --- I am nothing to you.  Let me go on!" 

"Deny that he has kissed you." 

"I cannot deny that." 

"Then curse him; curse him!" said Boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury. "While I would have given worlds to touch your hand you have let a rake come in without right and 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." 

"Oh, don't pray down evil upon him" she implored.

"I will punish him, soldier or no, and I will whip him for his reckless theft of my delight."  He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally.  "Bathsheba , lost coquette, pardon me. He is the great sinner.  He stole your heart with his lies.  He is in Melchester.  Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away from me !" He turned away and withdrew into the twilight and his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees.

Bathsheba flung her hands to her face. Troy has been to Bath to see his friends. He may return any time. She sat there on a heap of stones. Now she was concerned with the safety of Troy.

            END OF THE CHAPTER