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

“I never meet them.”

Now Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce the gallant sergeant through the channel of “bad characters.” But all at once the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that this was rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with. He tried another preamble.

“And as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away from home, too⁠—I mean Farmer Boldwood⁠—why, thinks I, I’ll go,” he said.

“Ah, yes.” She walked on without turning her head, and for many steps nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustle of her dress against the heavy corn-ears. Then she resumed rather tartly⁠—

“I don’t quite understand what you meant by saying that Mr. Boldwood would naturally come to meet me.”

“I meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to take place between you and him, miss. Forgive my speaking plainly.”

“They say what is not true.” she returned quickly. “No marriage is likely to take place between us.”

Gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment had come. “Well, Miss Everdene,” he said, “putting aside what people say, I never in my life saw any courting if his is not a courting of you.”

Bathsheba would probably have terminated the conversation there and then by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weakness of position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to better it.

“Since this subject has been mentioned,” she said very emphatically, “I am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is very common and very provoking. I didn’t definitely promise Mr. Boldwood anything. I have never cared for him. I respect him, and he has urged me to marry him. But I have given him no distinct answer. As soon as he returns I shall do so; and the answer will be that I cannot think of marrying him.”

“People are full of mistakes, seemingly.”

“They are.”

“The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost proved that you were not; lately they have said that you be not, and you straightway begin to show⁠—”

“That I am, I suppose you mean.”

“Well, I hope they speak the truth.”

“They do, but wrongly applied. I don’t trifle with him; but then, I have nothing to do with him.”

Oak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood’s rival in a wrong tone to her after all. “I wish you had never met that young Sergeant Troy, miss,” he sighed.

Bathsheba’s steps became faintly spasmodic. “Why?” she asked.

“He is not good enough for ’ee.”

“Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?”

“Nobody at all.”

“Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here,” she said, intractably. “Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is an educated man, and quite worthy of any woman. He is well born.”

“His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o’ soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It show’s his course to be down’ard.”

“I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation. Mr. Troy’s course is not by any means downward; and his superiority is a proof of his worth!”

“I believe him to have no conscience at all. And I cannot help begging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him. Listen to me this once⁠—only this once! I don’t say he’s such a bad man as I have fancied⁠—I pray to God he is not. But since we don’t exactly know what he is, why not behave as if he might be bad, simply for your own safety? Don’t trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so.”

“Why, pray?”

“I like soldiers, but this one I do not like,” he said, sturdily. “His cleverness in his calling may have tempted him astray, and what is mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman. When he tries to talk to ’ee again, why not turn away with a short ‘Good day’; and when you see him coming one way, turn the other. When he says anything laughable, fail to see the point and don’t smile, and speak of him before those who will report your talk as ‘that fantastical man,’ or ‘that Sergeant What’s-his-name.’ ‘That man of a family that has come to the dogs.’ Don’t be unmannerly towards en, but harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man.”

No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did Bathsheba now.

“I say⁠—I say again⁠—that it doesn’t become you to talk about him. Why he should be mentioned passes me quite!” she exclaimed desperately. “I know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughly conscientious man⁠—blunt sometimes even to rudeness⁠—but always speaking his mind about you plain to your face!”

“Oh.”

“He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular, too, about going to church⁠—yes, he is!”

“I am afeard nobody saw him there. I never did, certainly.”

“The reason of that is,” she said eagerly, “that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so.”

This supreme instance of Troy’s goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it.

Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him. He brimmed with deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of which was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep it so:⁠—

“You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always. I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would wish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside. I have lost in the race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to pretend to ’ee now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me. But Bathsheba, dear