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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 un-willingly
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 do to sulk 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.
Content of CHAPTER XXIV - THE SAME NIGHT -- THE FIR PLANTATION [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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