CHAPTER XLIII

FANNY’S REVENGE

“Do you want me any longer ma’am?” inquired Liddy, at a later hour the

same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her

hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large

parlour beside the first fire of the season.

“No more to-night, Liddy.”

“I’ll sit up for master if you like, ma’am. I am not at all afraid of

Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle. She was such a

childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn’t appear to anybody

if it tried, I’m quite sure.”

“Oh no, no! You go to bed. I’ll sit up for him myself till twelve

o’clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up

and go to bed too.”

“It is half-past ten now.”

“Oh! is it?”

“Why don’t you sit upstairs, ma’am?”

“Why don’t I?” said Bathsheba, desultorily. “It isn’t worth

while—there’s a fire here, Liddy.” She suddenly exclaimed in an

impulsive and excited whisper, “Have you heard anything strange said of

Fanny?” The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of

unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears.

“No—not a word!” said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with

astonishment. “What is it makes you cry so, ma’am; has anything hurt

you?” She came to Bathsheba’s side with a face full of sympathy.

“No, Liddy—I don’t want you any more. I can hardly say why I have taken

to crying lately: I never used to cry. Good-night.”

Liddy then left the parlour and closed the door.

Bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than she

had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of

the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a

cave. And within the last day or two had come these disquieting

thoughts about her husband’s past. Her wayward sentiment that evening

concerning Fanny’s temporary resting-place had been the result of a

strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba’s bosom. Perhaps it would

be more accurately described as a determined rebellion against her

prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct of uncharitableness,

which would have withheld all sympathy from the dead woman, because in

life she had preceded Bathsheba in the attentions of a man whom

Bathsheba had by no means ceased from loving, though her love was sick

to death just now with the gravity of a further misgiving.

In five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door. Liddy

reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at

length she said, “Maryann has just heard something very strange, but I

know it isn’t true. And we shall be sure to know the rights of it in a

day or two.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma’am. It is about Fanny. That

same thing you have heard.”

“I have heard nothing.”

“I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last

hour—that—” Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the

remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as

she spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay.

Bathsheba trembled from head to foot.

“I don’t believe it!” she said, excitedly. “And there’s only one name

written on the coffin-cover.”

“Nor I, ma’am. And a good many others don’t; for we should surely have

been told more about it if it had been true—don’t you think so, ma’am?”

“We might or we might not.”

Bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see her

face. Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy glided

out, closed the door softly, and went to bed.

Bathsheba’s face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening,

might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who

loved her least. The sadness of Fanny Robin’s fate did not make

Bathsheba’s glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor Vashti,

and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects as

contrasts to each other. When Liddy came into the room a second time

the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary look. When

she went out after telling the story they had expressed wretchedness in

full activity. Her simple country nature, fed on old-fashioned

principles, was troubled by that which would have troubled a woman of

the world very little, both Fanny and her child, if she had one, being

dead.

Bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own

history and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny’s end which Oak and

Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing. The meeting

with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been

unwitnessed and unspoken of. Oak may have had the best of intentions in

withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had

happened to Fanny; but had he known that Bathsheba’s perceptions had

already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to

lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the

certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected

after all.

She suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than

herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with

dignity and her lurking doubts with stoicism. Where could she find such

a friend? nowhere in the house. She was by far the coolest of the women

under her roof. Patience and suspension of judgement for a few hours

were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to teach her. Might

she but go to Gabriel Oak!—but that could not be. What a way Oak had,

she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper

and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt,

any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery

of by every turn and look he gave—that among the multitude of interests

by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal

well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak

meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any

special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she

would wish to be. But then Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the

inmost matter of his bosom, as she was at this moment. Oak knew all

about Fanny that he wished to know—she felt convinced of that. If she

were to go to him now at once and say no more than these few words,

“What is the truth of the story?” he would feel bound in honour to tell

her. It would be an inexpressible relief. No further speech would need

to be uttered. He knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in

her would alarm him.

She flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it. Every

blade, every twig was still. The air was yet thick with moisture,

though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady

smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost

musical in its soothing regularity. It seemed better to be out of the

house than within it, and Bathsheba closed the door, and walked slowly

down the lane till she came opposite to Gabriel’s cottage, where he now

lived alone, having left Coggan’s house through being pinched for room.

There was a light in one window only, and that was downstairs. The

shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or curtain drawn over the

window, neither robbery nor observation being a contingency which could

do much injury to the occupant of the domicile. Yes, it was Gabriel

himself who was sitting up: he was reading. From her standing-place in

the road she could see him plainly, sitting quite still, his light

curly head upon his hand, and only occasionally looking up to snuff the

candle which stood beside him. At length he looked at the clock, seemed

surprised at the lateness of the hour, closed his book, and arose. He

was going to bed, she knew, and if she tapped it must be done at once.

Alas for her resolve! She felt she could not do it. Not for worlds now

could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him

plainly for information on the cause of Fanny’s death. She must

suspect, and guess, and chafe, and bear it all alone.

Like a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and

fascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from

that little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own. Gabriel

appeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench, and

then—knelt down to pray. The contrast of the picture with her

rebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for

her to bear to look upon longer. It was not for her to make a truce

with trouble by any such means. She must tread her giddy distracting

measure to its last note, as she had begun it. With a swollen heart she

went again up the lane, and entered her own door.

More fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which Oak’s

example had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the door

of the room wherein Fanny lay. She locked her fingers, threw back her

head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her forehead, saying,

with a hysterical sob, “Would to God you would speak and tell me your

secret, Fanny!... Oh, I hope, hope it is not true that there are two of

you!... If I could only look in upon you for one little minute, I

should know all!”

A few moments passed, and she added, slowly, “_And I will_.”

Bathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried her

through the actions following this murmured resolution on this

memorable evening of her life. She went to the lumber-closet for a

screw-driver. At the end of a short though undefined time she found

herself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a mist before her

eyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain, standing beside the

uncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end had so entirely

engrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice as she gazed

within—

“It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!”

She was conscious of having brought about this situation by a series of

actions done as by one in an extravagant dream; of following that idea

as to method, which had burst upon her in the hall with glaring

obviousness, by gliding to the top of the stairs, assuring herself by

listening to the heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep,

gliding down again, turning the handle of the door within which the

young girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what, if she had

anticipated any such undertaking at night and alone, would have

horrified her, but which, when done, was not so dreadful as was the

conclusive proof of her husband’s conduct which came with knowing

beyond doubt the last chapter of Fanny’s story.

Bathsheba’s head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which had been

bated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was exhaled now in the form

of a whispered wail: “Oh-h-h!” she said, and the silent room added

length to her moan.

Her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin: tears of

a complicated origin, of a nature indescribable, almost indefinable

except as other than those of simple sorrow. Assuredly their wonted

fires must have lived in Fanny’s ashes when events were so shaped as to

chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet effectual manner.

The one feat alone—that of dying—by which a mean condition could be

resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved. And to that had destiny

subjoined this reencounter to-night, which had, in Bathsheba’s wild

imagining, turned her companion’s failure to success, her humiliation

to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendency; it had thrown over herself

a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an

ironical smile.

Fanny’s face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and there was

no longer much room for doubt as to the origin of the curl owned by

Troy. In Bathsheba’s heated fancy the innocent white countenance

expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was

retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic

law: “Burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife.”

Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by

immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient and

awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not

be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless. Yet even

this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying her rival’s

method without the reasons which had glorified it in her rival’s case.

She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly her habit when

excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as she thought and

in part expressed in broken words: “O, I hate her, yet I don’t mean

that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and yet I hate her a

little! Yes, my flesh insists upon hating her, whether my spirit is

willing or no!... If she had only lived, I could have been angry and

cruel towards her with some justification; but to be vindictive towards

a poor dead woman recoils upon myself. O God, have mercy! I am

miserable at all this!”

Bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind

that she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself. The vision

of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the imitative

instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea, resolved to

kneel, and, if possible, pray. Gabriel had prayed; so would she.

She knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and for a

time the room was silent as a tomb. Whether from a purely mechanical,

or from any other cause, when Bathsheba arose it was with a quieted

spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which had seized

upon her just before.

In her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the

window, and began laying them around the dead girl’s head. Bathsheba

knew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by

giving them flowers. She knew not how long she remained engaged thus.

She forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing. A slamming

together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to herself

again. An instant after, the front door opened and closed, steps

crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to the room,

looking in upon her.

He beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the scene, as if

he thought it an illusion raised by some fiendish incantation.

Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same

wild way.

So little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate induction

that, at this moment, as he stood with the door in his hand, Troy never

once thought of Fanny in connection with what he saw. His first

confused idea was that somebody in the house had died.

“Well—what?” said Troy, blankly.

“I must go! I must go!” said Bathsheba, to herself more than to him.

She came with a dilated eye towards the door, to push past him.

“What’s the matter, in God’s name? who’s dead?” said Troy.

“I cannot say; let me go out. I want air!” she continued.

“But no; stay, I insist!” He seized her hand, and then volition seemed

to leave her, and she went off into a state of passivity. He, still

holding her, came up the room, and thus, hand in hand, Troy and

Bathsheba approached the coffin’s side.

The candle was standing on a bureau close by them, and the light

slanted down, distinctly enkindling the cold features of both mother

and babe. Troy looked in, dropped his wife’s hand, knowledge of it all

came over him in a lurid sheen, and he stood still.

So still he remained that he could be imagined to have left in him no

motive power whatever. The clashes of feeling in all directions

confounded one another, produced a neutrality, and there was motion in

none.

“Do you know her?” said Bathsheba, in a small enclosed echo, as from

the interior of a cell.

“I do,” said Troy.

“Is it she?”

“It is.”

He had originally stood perfectly erect. And now, in the well-nigh

congealed immobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient

movement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a while.

He was gradually sinking forwards. The lines of his features softened,

and dismay modulated to illimitable sadness. Bathsheba was regarding

him from the other side, still with parted lips and distracted eyes.

Capacity for intense feeling is proportionate to the general intensity

of the nature, and perhaps in all Fanny’s sufferings, much greater

relatively to her strength, there never was a time she suffered in an

absolute sense what Bathsheba suffered now.

What Troy did was to sink upon his knees with an indefinable union of

remorse and reverence upon his face, and, bending over Fanny Robin,

gently kissed her, as one would kiss an infant asleep to avoid

awakening it.

At the sight and sound of that, to her, unendurable act, Bathsheba

sprang towards him. All the strong feelings which had been scattered

over her existence since she knew what feeling was, seemed gathered

together into one pulsation now. The revulsion from her indignant mood

a little earlier, when she had meditated upon compromised honour,

forestalment, eclipse in maternity by another, was violent and entire.

All that was forgotten in the simple and still strong attachment of

wife to husband. She had sighed for her self-completeness then, and now

she cried aloud against the severance of the union she had deplored.

She flung her arms round Troy’s neck, exclaiming wildly from the

deepest deep of her heart—

“Don’t—don’t kiss them! O, Frank, I can’t bear it—I can’t! I love you

better than she did: kiss me too, Frank—kiss me! _You will, Frank, kiss

me too!_”

There was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain and

simplicity of this appeal from a woman of Bathsheba’s calibre and

independence, that Troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from his

neck, looked at her in bewilderment. It was such an unexpected

revelation of all women being alike at heart, even those so different

in their accessories as Fanny and this one beside him, that Troy could

hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife Bathsheba. Fanny’s own

spirit seemed to be animating her frame. But this was the mood of a few

instants only. When the momentary surprise had passed, his expression

changed to a silencing imperious gaze.

“I will not kiss you!” he said pushing her away.

Had the wife now but gone no further. Yet, perhaps, under the harrowing

circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which can be better

understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and politic one, her

rival being now but a corpse. All the feeling she had been betrayed

into showing she drew back to herself again by a strenuous effort of

self-command.

“What have you to say as your reason?” she asked, her bitter voice

being strangely low—quite that of another woman now.

“I have to say that I have been a bad, black-hearted man,” he answered.

“And that this woman is your victim; and I not less than she.”

“Ah! don’t taunt me, madam. This woman is more to me, dead as she is,

than ever you were, or are, or can be. If Satan had not tempted me with

that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have married

her. I never had another thought till you came in my way. Would to God

that I had; but it is all too late!” He turned to Fanny then. “But

never mind, darling,” he said; “in the sight of Heaven you are my very,

very wife!”

At these words there arose from Bathsheba’s lips a long, low cry of

measureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had

never before been heard within those old-inhabited walls. It was the

Τετέλεσται[*] of her union with Troy.

“If she’s—that,—what—am I?” she added, as a continuation of the same

cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such abandonment

only made the condition more dire.

“You are nothing to me—nothing,” said Troy, heartlessly. “A ceremony

before a priest doesn’t make a marriage. I am not morally yours.”

A vehement impulse to flee from him, to run from this place, hide, and

escape his words at any price, not stopping short of death itself,

mastered Bathsheba now. She waited not an instant, but turned to the

door and ran out.