CHAPTER XXIV

THE SAME NIGHT—THE FIR PLANTATION

Among the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed

upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the

particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed, to

see that all was right and safe for the night. Gabriel had almost

constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching her

affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of surveillance

could have done; but this tender devotion was to a great extent unknown

to his mistress, and as much as was known was somewhat thanklessly

received. Women are never tired of bewailing man’s fickleness in love,

but they only seem to snub his constancy.

As watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark lantern

in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light to examine

nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan policeman. This

coolness may have owed its existence not so much to her fearlessness of

expected danger as to her freedom from the suspicion of any; her worst

anticipated discovery being that a horse might not be well bedded, the

fowls not all in, or a door not closed.

This night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round to

the farm paddock. Here the only sounds disturbing the stillness were

steady munchings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from all but

invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing of bellows

slowly. Then the munching would recommence, when the lively imagination

might assist the eye to discern a group of pink-white nostrils, shaped

as caverns, and very clammy and humid on their surfaces, not exactly

pleasant to the touch until one got used to them; the mouths beneath

having a great partiality for closing upon any loose end of Bathsheba’s

apparel which came within reach of their tongues. Above each of these a

still keener vision suggested a brown forehead and two staring though

not unfriendly eyes, and above all a pair of whitish crescent-shaped

horns like two particularly new moons, an occasional stolid “moo!”

proclaiming beyond the shade of a doubt that these phenomena were the

features and persons of Daisy, Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot,

Twinkle-eye, etc., etc.—the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging

to Bathsheba aforesaid.

Her way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of

tapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter the

premises from the north wind. By reason of the density of the

interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless noontide,

twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the

ninth plague of Egypt at midnight. To describe the spot is to call it a

vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling of which was

supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor being covered

with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed cones, with a

tuft of grass-blades here and there.

This bit of the path was always the crux of the night’s ramble, though,

before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid enough to

lead her to take a companion. Slipping along here covertly as Time,

Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering the track at the

opposite end. It was certainly a rustle of footsteps. Her own instantly

fell as gently as snowflakes. She reassured herself by a remembrance

that the path was public, and that the traveller was probably some

villager returning home; regretting, at the same time, that the meeting

should be about to occur in the darkest point of her route, even though

only just outside her own door.

The noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the

point of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and pinned

it forcibly to the ground. The instantaneous check nearly threw

Bathsheba off her balance. In recovering she struck against warm

clothes and buttons.

“A rum start, upon my soul!” said a masculine voice, a foot or so above

her head. “Have I hurt you, mate?”

“No,” said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink away.

“We have got hitched together somehow, I think.”

“Yes.”

“Are you a woman?”

“Yes.”

“A lady, I should have said.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I am a man.”

“Oh!”

Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.

“Is that a dark lantern you have? I fancy so,” said the man.

“Yes.”

“If you’ll allow me I’ll open it, and set you free.”

A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst out from

their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with astonishment.

The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. He

was a soldier. His sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of

a trumpet is to silence. Gloom, the _genius loci_ at all times

hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light than by

what the lantern lighted. The contrast of this revelation with her

anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so great that

it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.

It was immediately apparent that the military man’s spur had become

entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress. He caught

a view of her face.

“I’ll unfasten you in one moment, miss,” he said, with new-born

gallantry.

“Oh no—I can do it, thank you,” she hastily replied, and stooped for

the performance.

The unfastening was not such a trifling affair. The rowel of the spur

had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments, that

separation was likely to be a matter of time.

He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them

threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the

blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm. It

radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation

gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming

distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.

He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment;

Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be received

point-blank with her own. But she had obliquely noticed that he was

young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his sleeve.

Bathsheba pulled again.

“You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter,” said the

soldier, drily. “I must cut your dress if you are in such a hurry.”

“Yes—please do!” she exclaimed, helplessly.

“It wouldn’t be necessary if you could wait a moment,” and he unwound a

cord from the little wheel. She withdrew her own hand, but, whether by

accident or design, he touched it. Bathsheba was vexed; she hardly knew

why.

His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end.

She looked at him again.

“Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!” said the young

sergeant, without ceremony.

She coloured with embarrassment. “’Twas unwillingly shown,” she

replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity—which was very little—as she

could infuse into a position of captivity.

“I like you the better for that incivility, miss,” he said.

“I should have liked—I wish—you had never shown yourself to me by

intruding here!” She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began

to give way like liliputian musketry.

“I deserve the chastisement your words give me. But why should such a

fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father’s sex?”

“Go on your way, please.”

“What, Beauty, and drag you after me? Do but look; I never saw such a

tangle!”

“Oh, ’tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose to

keep me here—you have!”

“Indeed, I don’t think so,” said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle.

“I tell you you have!” she exclaimed, in high temper. “I insist upon

undoing it. Now, allow me!”

“Certainly, miss; I am not of steel.” He added a sigh which had as much

archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature

altogether. “I am thankful for beauty, even when ’tis thrown to me like

a bone to a dog. These moments will be over too soon!”

She closed her lips in a determined silence.

Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate

rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily

behind her. The thought was too dreadful. The dress—which she had put

on to appear stately at the supper—was the head and front of her

wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well. What woman in

Bathsheba’s position, not naturally timid, and within call of her

retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear a

price?

“All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive,” said her cool

friend.

“This trifling provokes, and—and—”

“Not too cruel!”

“—Insults me!”

“It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologizing to so

charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam,” he said,

bowing low.

Bathsheba really knew not what to say.

“I’ve seen a good many women in my time,” continued the young man in a

murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding her

bent head at the same time; “but I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful

as you. Take it or leave it—be offended or like it—I don’t care.”

“Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?”

“No stranger. Sergeant Troy. I am staying in this place.—There! it is

undone at last, you see. Your light fingers were more eager than mine.

I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there’s no untying!”

This was worse and worse. She started up, and so did he. How to

decently get away from him—that was her difficulty now. She sidled off

inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the redness

of his coat no longer.

“Ah, Beauty; good-bye!” he said.

She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty yards,

turned about, and ran indoors.

Liddy had just retired to rest. In ascending to her own chamber,

Bathsheba opened the girl’s door an inch or two, and, panting, said—

“Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village—sergeant somebody—rather

gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking—a red coat with blue

facings?”

“No, miss.... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on

furlough, though I have not seen him. He was here once in that way when

the regiment was at Casterbridge.”

“Yes; that’s the name. Had he a moustache—no whiskers or beard?”

“He had.”

“What kind of a person is he?”

“Oh! miss—I blush to name it—a gay man! But I know him to be very quick

and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire. Such a

clever young dandy as he is! He’s a doctor’s son by name, which is a

great deal; and he’s an earl’s son by nature!”

“Which is a great deal more. Fancy! Is it true?”

“Yes. And, he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge Grammar

School for years and years. Learnt all languages while he was there;

and it was said he got on so far that he could take down Chinese in

shorthand; but that I don’t answer for, as it was only reported.

However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier; but even then

he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all. Ah! such a blessing it

is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine out even in the ranks

and files. And is he really come home, miss?”

“I believe so. Good-night, Liddy.”

After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently

offended with the man? There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba

will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour. When they

want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered,

which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.

Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba, with a

dash of the second. Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant

was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who had

evidently seen better days.

So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he had

insulted her or not.

“Was ever anything so odd!” she at last exclaimed to herself, in her

own room. “And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did—to skulk

away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!” Clearly she did

not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now.

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood’s that he had never once told her

she was beautiful.