CHAPTER LIV

AFTER THE SHOCK

Boldwood passed into the high road and turned in the direction of

Casterbridge. Here he walked at an even, steady pace over Yalbury Hill,

along the dead level beyond, mounted Mellstock Hill, and between eleven

and twelve o’clock crossed the Moor into the town. The streets were

nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only lighted up rows of

grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving upon which his step

echoed as his passed along. He turned to the right, and halted before

an archway of heavy stonework, which was closed by an iron studded pair

of doors. This was the entrance to the gaol, and over it a lamp was

fixed, the light enabling the wretched traveller to find a bell-pull.

The small wicket at last opened, and a porter appeared. Boldwood

stepped forward, and said something in a low tone, when, after a delay,

another man came. Boldwood entered, and the door was closed behind him,

and he walked the world no more.

Long before this time Weatherbury had been thoroughly aroused, and the

wild deed which had terminated Boldwood’s merrymaking became known to

all. Of those out of the house Oak was one of the first to hear of the

catastrophe, and when he entered the room, which was about five minutes

after Boldwood’s exit, the scene was terrible. All the female guests

were huddled aghast against the walls like sheep in a storm, and the

men were bewildered as to what to do. As for Bathsheba, she had

changed. She was sitting on the floor beside the body of Troy, his head

pillowed in her lap, where she had herself lifted it. With one hand she

held her handkerchief to his breast and covered the wound, though

scarcely a single drop of blood had flowed, and with the other she

tightly clasped one of his. The household convulsion had made her

herself again. The temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come

with the necessity for it. Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in

philosophy, are rare in conduct, and Bathsheba was astonishing all

around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom

thought practicable what she did not practise. She was of the stuff of

which great men’s mothers are made. She was indispensable to high

generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.

Troy recumbent in his wife’s lap formed now the sole spectacle in the

middle of the spacious room.

“Gabriel,” she said, automatically, when he entered, turning up a face

of which only the well-known lines remained to tell him it was hers,

all else in the picture having faded quite. “Ride to Casterbridge

instantly for a surgeon. It is, I believe, useless, but go. Mr.

Boldwood has shot my husband.”

Her statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with more

force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of setting

the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus. Oak,

almost before he had comprehended anything beyond the briefest abstract

of the event, hurried out of the room, saddled a horse and rode away.

Not till he had ridden more than a mile did it occur to him that he

would have done better by sending some other man on this errand,

remaining himself in the house. What had become of Boldwood? He should

have been looked after. Was he mad—had there been a quarrel? Then how

had Troy got there? Where had he come from? How did this remarkable

reappearance effect itself when he was supposed by many to be at the

bottom of the sea? Oak had in some slight measure been prepared for the

presence of Troy by hearing a rumour of his return just before entering

Boldwood’s house; but before he had weighed that information, this

fatal event had been superimposed. However, it was too late now to

think of sending another messenger, and he rode on, in the excitement

of these self-inquiries not discerning, when about three miles from

Casterbridge, a square-figured pedestrian passing along under the dark

hedge in the same direction as his own.

The miles necessary to be traversed, and other hindrances incidental to

the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, delayed the

arrival of Mr. Aldritch, the surgeon; and more than three hours passed

between the time at which the shot was fired and that of his entering

the house. Oak was additionally detained in Casterbridge through having

to give notice to the authorities of what had happened; and he then

found that Boldwood had also entered the town, and delivered himself

up.

In the meantime the surgeon, having hastened into the hall at

Boldwood’s, found it in darkness and quite deserted. He went on to the

back of the house, where he discovered in the kitchen an old man, of

whom he made inquiries.

“She’s had him took away to her own house, sir,” said his informant.

“Who has?” said the doctor.

“Mrs. Troy. ’A was quite dead, sir.”

This was astonishing information. “She had no right to do that,” said

the doctor. “There will have to be an inquest, and she should have

waited to know what to do.”

“Yes, sir; it was hinted to her that she had better wait till the law

was known. But she said law was nothing to her, and she wouldn’t let

her dear husband’s corpse bide neglected for folks to stare at for all

the crowners in England.”

Mr. Aldritch drove at once back again up the hill to Bathsheba’s. The

first person he met was poor Liddy, who seemed literally to have

dwindled smaller in these few latter hours. “What has been done?” he

said.

“I don’t know, sir,” said Liddy, with suspended breath. “My mistress

has done it all.”

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs with him, sir. When he was brought home and taken upstairs,

she said she wanted no further help from the men. And then she called

me, and made me fill the bath, and after that told me I had better go

and lie down because I looked so ill. Then she locked herself into the

room alone with him, and would not let a nurse come in, or anybody at

all. But I thought I’d wait in the next room in case she should want

me. I heard her moving about inside for more than an hour, but she only

came out once, and that was for more candles, because hers had burnt

down into the socket. She said we were to let her know when you or Mr.

Thirdly came, sir.”

Oak entered with the parson at this moment, and they all went upstairs

together, preceded by Liddy Smallbury. Everything was silent as the

grave when they paused on the landing. Liddy knocked, and Bathsheba’s

dress was heard rustling across the room: the key turned in the lock,

and she opened the door. Her looks were calm and nearly rigid, like a

slightly animated bust of Melpomene.

“Oh, Mr. Aldritch, you have come at last,” she murmured from her lips

merely, and threw back the door. “Ah, and Mr. Thirdly. Well, all is

done, and anybody in the world may see him now.” She then passed by

him, crossed the landing, and entered another room.

Looking into the chamber of death she had vacated they saw by the light

of the candles which were on the drawers a tall straight shape lying at

the further end of the bedroom, wrapped in white. Everything around was

quite orderly. The doctor went in, and after a few minutes returned to

the landing again, where Oak and the parson still waited.

“It is all done, indeed, as she says,” remarked Mr. Aldritch, in a

subdued voice. “The body has been undressed and properly laid out in

grave clothes. Gracious Heaven—this mere girl! She must have the nerve

of a stoic!”

“The heart of a wife merely,” floated in a whisper about the ears of

the three, and turning they saw Bathsheba in the midst of them. Then,

as if at that instant to prove that her fortitude had been more of will

than of spontaneity, she silently sank down between them and was a

shapeless heap of drapery on the floor. The simple consciousness that

superhuman strain was no longer required had at once put a period to

her power to continue it.

They took her away into a further room, and the medical attendance

which had been useless in Troy’s case was invaluable in Bathsheba’s,

who fell into a series of fainting-fits that had a serious aspect for a

time. The sufferer was got to bed, and Oak, finding from the bulletins

that nothing really dreadful was to be apprehended on her score, left

the house. Liddy kept watch in Bathsheba’s chamber, where she heard her

mistress, moaning in whispers through the dull slow hours of that

wretched night: “Oh it is my fault—how can I live! O Heaven, how can I

live!”