Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy [best ereader for pdf txt] 📗

So a whimsical fate ordered that her hat should be taken off⁠—veil and all attached⁠—and placed upon his head, Troy tossing his own into a gooseberry bush. Then the veil had to be tied at its lower edge round his collar and the gloves put on him.

He looked such an extraordinary object in this guise that, flurried as she was, she could not avoid laughing outright. It was the removal of yet another stake from the palisade of cold manners which had kept him off.

Bathsheba looked on from the ground whilst he was busy sweeping and shaking the bees from the tree, holding up the hive with the other hand for them to fall into. She made use of an unobserved minute whilst his attention was absorbed in the operation to arrange her plumes a little. He came down holding the hive at arm’s length, behind which trailed a cloud of bees.

“Upon my life,” said Troy, through the veil, “holding up this hive makes one’s arm ache worse than a week of sword-exercise.” When the manoeuvre was complete he approached her. “Would you be good enough to untie me and let me out? I am nearly stifled inside this silk cage.”

To hide her embarrassment during the unwonted process of untying the string about his neck, she said:⁠—

“I have never seen that you spoke of.”

“What?”

“The sword-exercise.”

“Ah! would you like to?” said Troy.

Bathsheba hesitated. She had heard wondrous reports from time to time by dwellers in Weatherbury, who had by chance sojourned awhile in Casterbridge, near the barracks, of this strange and glorious performance, the sword-exercise. Men and boys who had peeped through chinks or over walls into the barrack-yard returned with accounts of its being the most flashing affair conceivable; accoutrements and weapons glistening like stars⁠—here, there, around⁠—yet all by rule and compass. So she said mildly what she felt strongly.

“Yes; I should like to see it very much.”

“And so you shall; you shall see me go through it.”

“No! How?”

“Let me consider.”

“Not with a walking-stick⁠—I don’t care to see that. It must be a real sword.”

“Yes, I know; and I have no sword here; but I think I could get one by the evening. Now, will you do this?”

Troy bent over her and murmured some suggestion in a low voice.

“Oh no, indeed!” said Bathsheba, blushing. “Thank you very much, but I couldn’t on any account.”

“Surely you might? Nobody would know.”

She shook her head, but with a weakened negation. “If I were to,” she said, “I must bring Liddy too. Might I not?”

Troy looked far away. “I don’t see why you want to bring her,” he said coldly.

An unconscious look of assent in Bathsheba’s eyes betrayed that something more than his coldness had made her also feel that Liddy would be superfluous in the suggested scene. She had felt it, even whilst making the proposal.

“Well, I won’t bring Liddy⁠—and I’ll come. But only for a very short time,” she added; “a very short time.”

“It will not take five minutes,” said Troy.

The hill opposite Bathsheba’s dwelling extended, a mile off, into an uncultivated tract of land, dotted at this season with tall thickets of brake fern, plump and diaphanous from recent rapid growth, and radiant in hues of clear and untainted green.

At eight o’clock this midsummer evening, whilst the bristling ball of gold in the west still swept the tips of the ferns with its long, luxuriant rays, a soft brushing-by of garments might have been heard among them, and Bathsheba appeared in their midst, their soft, feathery arms caressing her up to her shoulders. She paused, turned, went back over the hill and half-way to her own door, whence she cast a farewell glance upon the spot she had just left, having resolved not to remain near the place after all.

She saw a dim spot of artificial red moving round the shoulder of the rise. It disappeared on the other side.

She waited one minute⁠—two minutes⁠—thought of Troy’s disappointment at her non-fulfilment of a promised engagement, till she again ran along the field, clambered over the bank, and followed the original direction. She was now literally trembling and panting at this her temerity in such an errant undertaking; her breath came and went quickly, and her eyes shone with an infrequent light. Yet go she must. She reached the verge of a pit in the middle of the ferns. Troy stood in the bottom, looking up towards her.

“I heard you rustling through the fern before I saw you,” he said, coming up and giving her his hand to help her down the slope.

The pit was a saucer-shaped concave, naturally formed, with a top diameter of about thirty feet, and shallow enough to allow the sunshine to reach their heads. Standing in the centre, the sky overhead was met by a circular horizon of fern: this grew nearly to the bottom of the slope and then abruptly ceased. The middle within the belt of verdure was floored with a thick flossy carpet of moss and grass intermingled, so yielding that the foot was half-buried within it.

“Now,” said Troy, producing the sword, which, as he raised it into the sunlight, gleamed a sort of greeting, like a living thing, “first, we have four right and four left cuts; four right and four left thrusts. Infantry cuts and guards are more interesting than ours, to my mind; but they are not so swashing. They have seven cuts and three thrusts. So much as a preliminary. Well, next, our cut one is as if you were sowing your corn⁠—so.” Bathsheba saw a sort of rainbow, upside down in the air, and Troy’s arm was still again. “Cut two, as if you were hedging⁠—so. Three, as if you were reaping⁠—so. Four, as if you were threshing⁠—in that way. Then the same on the left. The thrusts are these: one, two, three, four, right; one, two, three, four, left.” He repeated them. “Have ’em again?” he said. “One,