CHAPTER XXXV

AT AN UPPER WINDOW

It was very early the next morning—a time of sun and dew. The confused

beginnings of many birds’ songs spread into the healthy air, and the

wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin webs of

incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day. All the

lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the shadows were

attenuated as to form. The creeping plants about the old manor-house

were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects

behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power.

Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the

village cross, and went on together to the fields. They were yet barely

in view of their mistress’s house, when Oak fancied he saw the opening

of a casement in one of the upper windows. The two men were at this

moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning to be

enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before emerging

from its shade.

A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice. He looked east and then

west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey. The man

was Sergeant Troy. His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but not

buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier taking

his ease.

Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window.

“She has married him!” he said.

Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his back

turned, making no reply.

“I fancied we should know something to-day,” continued Coggan. “I heard

wheels pass my door just after dark—you were out somewhere.” He glanced

round upon Gabriel. “Good heavens above us, Oak, how white your face

is; you look like a corpse!”

“Do I?” said Oak, with a faint smile.

“Lean on the gate: I’ll wait a bit.”

“All right, all right.”

They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the

ground. His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in years

of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this work of

haste. That they were married he had instantly decided. Why had it been

so mysteriously managed? It had become known that she had had a fearful

journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the distance: that the

horse had broken down, and that she had been more than two days getting

there. It was not Bathsheba’s way to do things furtively. With all her

faults, she was candour itself. Could she have been entrapped? The

union was not only an unutterable grief to him: it amazed him,

notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding week in a suspicion

that such might be the issue of Troy’s meeting her away from home. Her

quiet return with Liddy had to some extent dispersed the dread. Just as

that imperceptible motion which appears like stillness is infinitely

divided in its properties from stillness itself, so had his hope

undistinguishable from despair differed from despair indeed.

In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house. The sergeant

still looked from the window.

“Morning, comrades!” he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came up.

Coggan replied to the greeting. “Bain’t ye going to answer the man?” he

then said to Gabriel. “I’d say good morning—you needn’t spend a hapenny

of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil.”

Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the best

face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he loved.

“Good morning, Sergeant Troy,” he returned, in a ghastly voice.

“A rambling, gloomy house this,” said Troy, smiling.

“Why—they _may_ not be married!” suggested Coggan. “Perhaps she’s not

there.”

Gabriel shook his head. The soldier turned a little towards the east,

and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow.

“But it is a nice old house,” responded Gabriel.

“Yes—I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here. My

notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these old

wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite away,

and the walls papered.”

“It would be a pity, I think.”

“Well, no. A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old builders,

who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect for the work of

builders who went before them, but pulled down and altered as they

thought fit; and why shouldn’t we? ‘Creation and preservation don’t do

well together,’ says he, ‘and a million of antiquarians can’t invent a

style.’ My mind exactly. I am for making this place more modern, that

we may be cheerful whilst we can.”

The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to

assist his ideas of improvement in this direction. Gabriel and Coggan

began to move on.

“Oh, Coggan,” said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection “do you know

if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood’s family?”

Jan reflected for a moment.

“I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don’t

know the rights o’t,” he said.

“It is of no importance,” said Troy, lightly. “Well, I shall be down in

the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters to

attend to first. So good-day to you. We shall, of course, keep on just

as friendly terms as usual. I’m not a proud man: nobody is ever able to

say that of Sergeant Troy. However, what is must be, and here’s

half-a-crown to drink my health, men.”

Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the

fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning to

an angry red. Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught the

money in its ricochet upon the road.

“Very well—you keep it, Coggan,” said Gabriel with disdain and almost

fiercely. “As for me, I’ll do without gifts from him!”

“Don’t show it too much,” said Coggan, musingly. “For if he’s married

to her, mark my words, he’ll buy his discharge and be our master here.

Therefore ’tis well to say ‘Friend’ outwardly, though you say

‘Troublehouse’ within.”

“Well—perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can’t go further than

that. I can’t flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by

smoothing him down, my place must be lost.”

A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now

appeared close beside them.

“There’s Mr. Boldwood,” said Oak. “I wonder what Troy meant by his

question.”

Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their

paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not stood

back to let him pass on.

The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating

through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour in

his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in his

forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. The horse

bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed significant of

dogged despair. Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his own grief in

noticing Boldwood’s. He saw the square figure sitting erect upon the

horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows steady by the hips,

the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in its onward glide, until

the keen edges of Boldwood’s shape sank by degrees over the hill. To

one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in

this immobility than in a collapse. The clash of discord between mood

and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in

laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in

the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.