Forty Six: Far From The Madding Crowd: Thomas Hardy - Gurgoyle

The tower of the Weatherbury Church was a square erection of fourteenth century date, having two stone gurgoyles on each of the four faces of its parapet.  Of these only two were working.  The others were closed by the churchwardens as superfluous, or being choked or broken.  The shape of the remaining gurgoyle was very queer.  It was not a dragon; not a man; not a fiend; and not even a griffin.  This horrible stone identity was fashioned as if covered with a wrinkled hide; it had short erect ears, eyes starting from their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the corners of its mouth, which they seemed to pull open to give free passage to the water it vomited.  The lower row of teeth was quite washed away, though the upper still remained.  Here and thus, jutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested as a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the surrounding landscape, voicelessly in dry weather, and in wet with a gurgling and snorting sound. 

Troy slept on in the porch, and the rain increased outside.  Soon the gurgoyle spat.  In due course a small stream began to trickle through the seventy feet aerial space between its mouth and the ground, which water drops hit heavily like duckshot in their accelerated velocity.  The stream thickened in substance and increased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from the side of the tower.  When the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless torrent, the stream dashed downward in volumes. 

The base of stream of water has come forward from the wall, and advanced over the plinth, over a heap of stones, over the marble boarder, into the midst of Fanny Robin's grave. 

The force of the stream had, until very lately, been received upon loose stones spread  thereabout, which has acted as a shield to the soil under onset.  These had been cleared during the summer, and there was nothing to resist the downfall. This year the downpour was heavy and unusual. 

The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle was directed into the grave. The rich twany mould was was stirred into motion and boiled. The water accumulated and formed into a pool.  The roar of the pool spread into the night accompanied by other noises of the same kind.  The flower planted by Fanny's lover began to move and writhe in their bed.  The winter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud.  Soon the snowdrops danced in the boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron.   Plants of tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface and floated off. 

Troy did not wake from his comfortless sleep till it was broad day.   Afer  two nights' bedless sleep he felt his shoulders stiff, feet tender, and head heavy.  He remembered his position, arose, shivered, took the spade and went out. 

The rain had quite ceased, the sun was shining through the leaves that looked sparkling and vanished by the raindrops to the brightness of similar effects in the land scapes of Ruysdael and Hobbema, and full of those infinite beauties that arise from the union of water and colour with high lights. 

Troy entered the gravel path which could take him beyond the tower.   The stony path was brown with a thin coating of mud. At one place in the path he saw a tuft of stringy roots washed white and clean as a bundle of tendons.  He picked it up --- surely it could not be one of the primroses he had planted?  He saw a bulb, another, and another as he advanced.  Beyond doubt they were the crocuses.  Perplexed, Troy turned the corner and there beheld the wreck the stream had made. 

The pool upon the grave had soaked away into the ground, and in its place was a hollow.  The disturbed earth was washed over the grass and pathway in the guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and it spotted the marble stone with the same stains.  All the flowers were washed clean out the ground, and they lay, roots upwards, on the spot whither they had been splashed by the stream. 

Troy stood before the dismantled grave.  For the first time in his life, he wished himself another man.  And for the first time he hated himself.  He stood and meditated.  A miserable man.  Whither should he go? He slowly withdrew from the grave.  He did not attempt to fill up the hole, replace the flowers, or do anything at all.  Going out of the churchyard silently and unobserved, he passed down some fields and emerged upon the high road. Shortly afterwards he had gone from the village. 

Meanwhile Bathsheba remained a voluntary prisoner in the attic. The door was kept locked except for the entries and exists of Liddy, for whom a bed had been arranged in small adjoining room.  The light of Troy's lantern was noticed about ten o'clock by the maid servant, who occasionally glanced from the window in that direction while taking her supper, and she called Bathsheba's attention to it.  They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time, until Liddy was sent to bed. 

Bathsheba did not sleep heavily that night.  While Liddy was sleeping soundly in the next room, Bathsheba was looking out of the window at the faint gleam spreading from among the trees.  Bathsheba remained here until it began to rain and the light vanished, when she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed.  Almost before the first sign of dawn appeared she rose again, and opened the window to get a full breathing of the new morning air.  From the trees came the sound of steady dripping upon the drifted leaves under them, and from the direction of the church she could hear another noise ---- peculiar and not intermittent like the rest ---- purl of water falling into a pool. 

Liddy knocked at eight o'clock and Bathsheba unlocked the door. 

"What a heavy rain we have had in the night, ma'am!" said Liddy, when her inquiries about breakfast had been made. 

"Yes; very heavy." 

"Did you hear the strange noise from the churchyard?" 

"I heard one strange noise.  I've been thinking it must have been the water from the tower spouts." 

"Well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am. He's now gone on to see." 

"Oh! Gabriel has been here this morning?" 

"Only just looking in passing --- quite in his old way, which I thought he had left off lately.  But the tower spouts used to spatter on the stones, and we are puzzled, for this was like the boiling of a pot."

Not being able to read, work, or think, Bathsheba asked Liddy to stay and breakfast with her.  The tongue of the more childish woman still ran upon recent events.  "Are you going across to the church, ma'am?" she asked.

"Not that I know of," said Bathsheba.

"I thought you might like to go and see where they have put Fanny.  The trees hide the place from your window."

Bathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting her husband.  "Has Mr Troy been in tonight?" she said.

"No ma'am; I think he has gone to Budmouth."

Budmouth! The word carried with it a much diminished perspective of him.  She hated questioning Liddy about her husband's movements, but now all of the house knew that there had been some dreadful disagreement between them.

"What makes you think he has gone there?" she said.

"Laban Tall saw him on the Budmouth road this morning before breakfast."

Bathsheba was momentarily releived of that wayward heaviness of the past twenty four hours which quenched the vitality of her youth.  She resolved to go out for a walk a little way. So, when breakfast was over, she put on her bonnet, and walked towards the church.  It was nine o'clock, and the men have returned to their work after their first meal.  She was not likely to meet any of them in the road.  Knowing that Fanny had been laid in reprobates' quarter of the graveyard, called in the parish "behind church", which was invisible from the road, it was impossible to reist the impulse to enter and look upon a spot which, from nameless feelings she dreaded to see.  She had been unable to overcome an impression that some connections existed between her rival and the light through the trees.

Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole and the tomb, its delicately veined surface splashed and stained just as Troy had seen it and left it two hours earlier.  On the other side of the scene stood Gabriel.  His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her arrival having been noiseless, she had not yet attracted his attention.  Bathsheba did not at once perceive that the grand tomb and the disturbed grave were Fanny's and she looked on both sides and around for some humbler mound, earthed up and clodded in the usual way.  Then her eyes followed Oak's, and she read the words with which the inscription opened

ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY

IN MEMORY OF 

FANNY ROBIN 

Oak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly and learn how she received this knowledge of the authorship of the work, which to himself had caused considerable astonishment.  But she was not bothered of such discoveries.  She bade him goodmorning and asked him to fill in the hole with the spade which was standing by.  Bathsheba collected the flowers and began planting them sympathetically.  She, through Oak requested the churchwardens to turn the leadwork at the mouth of gurgoyle that hung gaping down upon them, that by this means the stream might be directed sideways, and a repetition of the accident prevented.  Then she wiped the mud spot from the tomb as if she rather liked its words, and then went home.

END OF THE CHAPTER