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

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 wagon 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 wagon, 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.

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