NIGHT — HORSES TRAMPING
The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the click of the same at their close. The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things — flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.
Bathsheba’s crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba had set out to visit. A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. She was totally unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep. It led to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation that something had happened. She left her bed and looked out of the window. The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure approaching the horse that was feeding there. The figure seized the horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field. Here she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle, for after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light wheels.
Two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure. They were a woman and a gipsy man. A woman was out of the question in such an occupation at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might probably have known the weakness of the household on this particular night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt. Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies in Weatherbury Bottom.
Maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber’s presence, having seen him depart had no fear. She hastily slipped on her clothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred creaks, ran to Coggan’s, the nearest house, and raised an alarm. Coggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first, and together they went to the paddock. Beyond all doubt the horse was gone.
“Hark!” said Gabriel.
They listened. Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a trotting horse passing up Longpuddle Lane — just beyond the gipsies’ encampment in Weatherbury Bottom.
“That’s our Dainty — I’ll swear to her step,” said Jan.
“Mighty me! Won’t mis’ess storm and call us stupids when she comes back!” moaned Maryann. “How I wish it had happened when she was at home, and none of us had been answerable!”
“We must ride after,” said Gabriel, decisively. “I’ll be responsible to Miss Everdene for what we do. Yes, we’ll follow.”
“Faith, I don’t see how,” said Coggan. “All our horses are too heavy for that trick except little Poppet, and what’s she between two of us? — If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something.”
“Which pair?”
“Mr. Boldwood’s Tidy and Moll.”
“Then wait here till I come hither again,” said Gabriel. He ran down the hill towards Farmer Boldwood’s.
“Farmer Boldwood is not at home,” said Maryann.
“All the better,” said Coggan. “I know what he’s gone for.”
Less than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same pace, with two halters dangling from his hand.
“Where did you find ‘em?” said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon the hedge without waiting for an answer.
“Under the eaves. I knew where they were kept,” said Gabriel, following him. “Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there’s no time to look for saddles.”
“Like a hero!” said Jan.
“Maryann, you go to bed,” Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the hedge.
Springing down into Boldwood’s pastures, each pocketed his halter to hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely allowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were dexterously slipped on. Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and Coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case through the animal’s mouth and looping it on the other side. Oak vaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by Bathsheba’s horse and the robber. Whose vehicle the horse had been harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty.
Weatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes. They scanned the shady green patch by the roadside. The gipsies were gone.
“The villains!” said Gabriel. “Which way have they gone, I wonder?”
“Straight on, as sure as God made little apples,” said Jan.
“Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake em”, said Oak. “Now on at full speed!”
No sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered. The road-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left behind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat plastic, but not muddy state. They came to cross-roads. Coggan suddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off.
“What’s the matter?” said Gabriel.
“We must try to track ‘em, since we can’t hear ‘em,” said Jan, fumbling in his pockets. He struck a light, and held the match to the ground. The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which reflected the flame of the match like eyes. One set of tracks was fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty, and not small canals, like the others. The footprints forming this recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot of each pair being exactly opposite one another.
“Straight on!” Jan exclaimed. “Tracks like that mean a stiff gallop. No wonder we don’t hear him. And the horse is harnessed — look at the ruts. Ay, that’s our mare sure enough!”
“How do you know?”
“Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I’d swear to his make among ten thousand.”
“The rest of the gipsies must ha’ gone on earlier, or some other way,” said Oak. “You saw there were no other tracks?”
“True.” They rode along silently for a long weary time. Coggan carried an old pinchbeck repeater which he had inherited from some genius in his family; and it now struck one. He lighted another match, and examined the ground again.
“’Tis a canter now,” he said, throwing away the light. “A twisty, rickety pace for a gig. The fact is, they over-drove her at starting; we shall catch ‘em yet.”
Again they hastened on, and entered Blackmore Vale. Coggan’s watch struck one. When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as to form a sort of zigzag if united, like the lamps along a street.
“That’s a trot, I know,” said Gabriel.
“Only a trot now,” said Coggan, cheerfully. “We shall overtake him in time.”
They pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles. “Ah! a moment,” said Jan. “Let’s see how she was driven up this hill. ‘Twill help us.” A light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the examination made.
“Hurrah!” said Coggan. “She walked up here — and well she might. We shall get them in two miles, for a crown.”
They rode three, and listened. No sound was to be heard save a millpond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy possibilities of drowning by jumping in. Gabriel dismounted when they came to a turning. The tracks were absolutely the only guide as to the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary to avoid confusing them with some others which had made their appearance lately.
“What does this mean? — though I guess,” said Gabriel, looking up at Coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning. Coggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown signs of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters. This time only three were of the regular horseshoe shape. Every fourth was a dot.
He screwed up his face and emitted a long “Whew-w-w!”
“Lame,” said Oak.
“Yes. Dainty is lamed; the near-foot-afore,” said Coggan slowly, staring still at the footprints.
“We’ll push on,” said Gabriel, remounting his humid steed.
Although the road along its greater part had been as good as any turnpike-road in the country, it was nominally only a byway. The last turning had brought them into the high road leading to Bath. Coggan recollected himself.
“We shall have him now!” he exclaimed.
“Where?”
“Sherton Turnpike. The keeper of that gate is the sleepiest man between here and London — Dan Randall, that’s his name — knowed ‘en for years, when he was at Casterbridge gate. Between the lameness and the gate ‘tis a done job.”
They now advanced with extreme caution. Nothing was said until, against a shady background of foliage, five white bars were visible, crossing their route a little way ahead.
“Hush — we are almost close!” said Gabriel.
“Amble on upon the grass,” said Coggan.
The white bars were blotted out in the midst by a dark shape in front of them. The silence of this lonely time was pierced by an exclamation from that quarter.
“Hoy-a-hoy! Gate!”
It appeared that there had been a previous call which they had not noticed, for on their close approach the door of the turnpike-house opened, and the keeper came out half-dressed, with a candle in his hand. The rays illumined the whole group.
“Keep the gate close!” shouted Gabriel. “He has stolen the horse!”
“Who?” said the turnpike-man.
Gabriel looked at the driver of the gig, and saw a woman — Bathsheba, his mistress.
On hearing his voice she had turned her face away from the light. Coggan had, however, caught sight of her in the meanwhile.
“Why, ‘tis mistress — I’ll take my oath!” he said, amazed.
Bathsheba it certainly was, and she had by this time done the trick she could do so well in crises not of love, namely, mask a surprise by coolness of manner.
“Well, Gabriel,” she inquired quietly, “where are you going?”
“We thought — ” began Gabriel.
“I am driving to Bath,” she said, taking for her own use the assurance that Gabriel lacked. “An important matter made it necessary for me to give up my visit to Liddy, and go off at once. What, then, were you following me?”
“We thought the horse was stole.”
“Well — what a thing! How very foolish of you not to know that I had taken the trap and horse. I could neither wake Maryann nor get into the house, though I hammered for ten minutes against her window-sill. Fortunately, I could get the key of the coach-house, so I troubled no one further. Didn’t you think it might be me?”
“Why should we, miss?”
“Perhaps not. Why, those are never Farmer Boldwood’s horses! Goodness mercy! what have you been doing — bringing trouble upon me in this way? What! mustn’t a lady move an inch from her door without being dogged like a thief?”
“But how was we to know, if you left no account of your doings?” expostulated Coggan, “and ladies don’t drive at these hours, miss, as a jineral rule of society.”
“I did leave an account — and you would have seen it in the morning. I wrote in chalk on the coach-house doors that I had come back for the horse and gig, and driven off; that I could arouse nobody, and should return soon.”
“But you’ll consider, ma’am, that we couldn’t see that till it got daylight.”
“True,” she said, and though vexed at first she had too much sense to blame them long or seriously for a devotion to her that was as valuable as it was rare. She added with a very pretty grace, “Well, I really thank you heartily for taking all this trouble; but I wish you had borrowed anybody’s horses but Mr. Boldwood’s.”
“Dainty is lame, miss,” said Coggan. “Can ye go on?”
“It was only a stone in her shoe. I got down and pulled it out a hundred yards back. I can manage very well, thank you. I shall be in Bath by daylight. Will you now return, please?”
She turned her head — the gateman’s candle shimmering upon her quick, clear eyes as she did so — passed through the gate, and was soon wrapped in the embowering shades of mysterious summer boughs. Coggan and Gabriel put about their horses, and, fanned by the velvety air of this July night, retraced the road by which they had come.
“A strange vagary, this of hers, isn’t it, Oak?” said Coggan, curiously.
“Yes,” said Gabriel, shortly.
“She won’t be in Bath by no daylight!”
“Coggan, suppose we keep this night’s work as quiet as we can?”
“I am of one and the same mind.”
“Very well. We shall be home by three o’clock or so, and can creep into the parish like lambs.”
Bathsheba’s perturbed meditations by the roadside had ultimately evolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the present desperate state of affairs. The first was merely to keep Troy away from Weatherbury till Boldwood’s indignation had cooled; the second to listen to Oak’s entreaties, and Boldwood’s denunciations, and give up Troy altogether.
Alas! Could she give up this new love — induce him to renounce her by saying she did not like him — could no more speak to him, and beg him, for her good, to end his furlough in Bath, and see her and Weatherbury no more?
It was a picture full of misery, but for a while she contemplated it firmly, allowing herself, nevertheless, as girls will, to dwell upon the happy life she would have enjoyed had Troy been Boldwood, and the path of love the path of duty — inflicting upon herself gratuitous tortures by imagining him the lover of another woman after forgetting her; for she had penetrated Troy’s nature so far as to estimate his tendencies pretty accurately, but unfortunately loved him no less in thinking that he might soon cease to love her — indeed, considerably more.
She jumped to her feet. She would see him at once. Yes, she would implore him by word of mouth to assist her in this dilemma. A letter to keep him away could not reach him in time, even if he should be disposed to listen to it.
Was Bathsheba altogether blind to the obvious fact that the support of a lover’s arms is not of a kind best calculated to assist a resolve to renounce him? Or was she sophistically sensible, with a thrill of pleasure, that by adopting this course for getting rid of him she was ensuring a meeting with him, at any rate, once more? Or was it the bald fact, clearly evident to anyone except herself, that she was quite mad, infatuated with lust to do those things with him she scorned to do with any other?
It was now dark, and the hour must have been nearly ten. The only way to accomplish her purpose was to give up her idea of visiting Liddy at Yalbury, return to Weatherbury Farm, put the horse into the gig, and drive at once to Bath. The scheme seemed at first impossible: the journey was a fearfully heavy one, even for a strong horse, at her own estimate; and she much underrated the distance. It was most venturesome for a woman, at night, and alone.
But could she go on to Liddy’s and leave things to take their course? No, no; anything but that. Bathsheba was full of a stimulating turbulence, beside which caution vainly prayed for a hearing. She turned back towards the village.
Her walk was slow, for she wished not to enter Weatherbury till the cottagers were in bed, and, particularly, till Boldwood was secure. Her plan was now to drive to Bath during the night, see Sergeant Troy in the morning before he set out to come to her, bid him farewell, and dismiss him: then to rest the horse thoroughly (herself to weep the while, she thought), starting early the next morning on her return journey. By this arrangement she could trot Dainty gently all the day, reach Liddy at Yalbury in the evening, and come home to Weatherbury with her whenever they chose — so nobody would know she had been to Bath at all. Such was Bathsheba’s scheme. But in her topographical ignorance as a late comer to the place, she misreckoned the distance of her journey as not much more than half what it really was.
It was not that night, nor the next morning, that she reached her destination. Early on the following day, she finally arrived on the outskirts, where muddy lanes and green hedges gave way to the broad and elegant cobbled streets of the town of Bath.
Ashamed to ask any stranger for her destination, she paid an urchin to bring her to the Lower Bristol Road, direct to the barracks, being forced to walk along with him, since Dainty still hobbled.
The gloomy and forbidding outer walls soon stood before her, and uncertainty and need duelled within her bosom at the barred and bolted gate.
She was afeared to arouse attention, but when her timid knock on the gate received no response, she was bold enough to take off her green shoe and hammer with it till the spyhole opened a crack, and an unfriendly eye surveyed her.
“Is Sergeant Troy in the barracks?”
“What business have you with Sergeant Troy, madam?” was the none too civil reply.
She was compelled to acknowledge that her appearing so suddenly might seem to be the act of a loose woman, a follower of the regiment. Thus it was that Bathsheba took her first step in duplicity, marvelling at how easily the lie came to her lips.
“I am a — friend of his sister. I bring him news of her that he must hear.”
Still the gate remained shut, and the face at the spyhole looked her up and down, and inspected from that vantage point her gig and her pony.
“I have sent to his quarters,’ said the unknown vigilant. “Do you know your horse is lame?”
At last the word came. Sergeant Troy was still on furlough and not within.
“Can you tell me where he lodges?”
“One of a dozen places. He may be playing at cards at Weatherbury, or he may be at the Royal Oak, a half mile hence.”
“I will go there and stable my horse, at least, thank ‘ee.”
She gathered the reins and prepared to walk the dragging steps along the muddy road. How weary she was now! She had hardly slept the previous night.
She asked again for Troy at the Royal Oak, and to her relief and terror she was shown up to a room they said was his.
He was within. She could hear him whistling.
Whatever her intentions, Bathsheba, when faced with the object of her journey, was so far at a loss to begin that she hesitated to knock on the door, and when she did so, it was a knock of such a timid and deferential nature that, by his response, she knew he had no inkling of her arrival.
“Bessy, is that you with my shaving water? Hurry in, girl, I have been waiting this half hour for — ”
“It is not Bessy. It is I. The object, I venture to hope, of your affections,” said Bathsheba in uncertain tones.
Troy stood stock still, his shirt open at the neck, and legs bare. He had a towel in his hand.
“Well, madam.” He seemed to have no further need of speech, but gazed upon her as if she, not himself, had been the undressed figure. There was not one scruple of her appearance that escaped his eye, from her elegant gold silk dress, her pale green shoes, to her tumbling ebony hair and rosy cheeks, combined with a blushing confusion and an air of maidenly modesty.
It was a small, dark room, with a mean little window and a ceiling under eaves so low that Troy seemed a giant in a dolls’ house.
Bathsheba, seeing an armchair chair covered in a pleasing chintz, took some steps toward it and was about seat herself, but the chair was occupied. Sergeant Troy’s sword and belt lay across it.
She reached out her hand, then withdrew it. Her heart fluttered within her like a covey of partridges. Beseechingly she turned her eyes upon Troy.
“O, you may move them. My weapon can do you no harm while it is sheathed,”’ he said with a careless laugh. That all women should be so easily conquered and won, he had long ceased to wonder at. Nor had he any doubt that Bathsheba had come to him yielding to the promptings of her passion.
The door opened to admit a smiling Bessy with hot shaving water, and Bathsheba’s sense of shame showed in a deeper crimson flush on her cheek, as the brisk little servant gave her a saucy wink upon her exit.
“I am come here to tell you that we cannot go on as we are, Frank,” she began.
He took a small badger-hair shaving brush from the washstand and began lathering his chin, not looking back at her as she stumbled for words.
“I have been very foolish,” she essayed again, and he did turn then, no longer smiling.
“Indeed you have. Whatever you and I might know to be the truth, what do you imagine the world will construe from this incursion into my chamber?”
Now all her good intentions slipped from under her, unbalancing her as if she was carried along in fast flowing water, and she floundered in the millrace of passion, for his nakedness was to her both a distraction, and a call to action.
“I have never watched a man shaving.” She tried for a lighter tone, to recapture the spirit of their previous encounters. He had the long cutthroat blade in his hand, and with the same dexterity as he had shown her with his swordplay, he stroked the blade along the contours of his chin and jaw, smoothing where it had been, lifting his moustache and turning his head from side to side. Yet all was not serene in the bosom of Troy — his nakedness revealed his arousal, to himself if not to the innocent before him, and in a moment’s carelessness, he nicked his skin and began to bleed.
“Quick, hold the cloth here” he cried, and she wasted no time in obeying. How thrilling it was to stand beside him, feeling the heat from his body and touching his face, now streaked with blood on her account.
“Thanks. You have staunched my wound.” But she did not move away. The clean smell of the shaving soap, and another, ranker, yet more enticing smell, fixed her next to him. He leaned suddenly over her, burying his face in her hair, and murmuring, “’Such sweet odours of the country you bring to this place. Why have I been so distracted by the beauties here, as to forget what could have fallen so sweetly into my lap?”
She could not help herself. She raised her face to his, and felt once again the thrill of his lips on hers. But not only his lips, his body, naked but for the shirt, was pressed against her, and she, in her turn, pressed against him. Slowly he took her hand and led it to that place under his shirt which was as hot as his words were cool. Gently he closed her hand around its magnificence.
“Now you hold my dearest weapon”’ He felt her hand grow as hot as his rising member, heard her breathing fast and hard, and could no longer delay his inevitable satisfaction. In the country she had teased and flirted and kissed; in Bath she was come to do his bidding.
His hand, all too practised, loosened the cords of her skirt, and then her petticoats, and, questing with a gentle insistence, slipped between the open legs of her pantalettes and pressed, with loving ease, that place in her which Bathsheba had hitherto only suspected was hers. The power to resist, if she ever had imagined she had it, left her, and with a sobbing sigh she unlaced her corset, dropping it on the chair, while his fingers continued their gentle probing. Her breath was faster now, as she sought for his mouth and he sounded her with his tongue and hand, till she gasped for pleasure, and in her weakness and joy fell upon the unmade bed.
“Well, well. An unexpected start to the day”’ he said , as he laid himself alongside her, having deftly removed his shirt, so they lay together naked as babes, but alas, in no wise as innocent.
“Did I say you were Beauty personified?” he murmured, running his finger teasingly along the contour of her small breast, pulling gently, with maddening insistence, at each of her small nipples, that now swelled and stood erect. She moaned and twisted as he kissed and tongued every inch of her breast so slowly, with such exquisite skill, that she felt she must soon melt in a torrent of desire.
“Now, my fine lady, having brought me thus far along the road, will you turn back , or will you go the journey with me?”
As he spoke, he let his hand rove — o, too slowly — over her belly, stroking downwards, and coming to rest lightly upon her mound, and though she wriggled and cried out for him to go lower, touch her deeper — he smilingly refused.
“Milady is saddled. Will you and I ride?”
She hardly knew what he asked, only that his need of her was as great as her desire of him, and with no more encouragement than her nod, he was upon her as lightly and easily as he mounted his horse.
Then there were no words, only the pressure of his hand upon her legs, to open them yet wider, his other hand still encompassing hers, clasping that dearest weapon as it moved towards its target.
O but she was wet — she had never known a moisture like it! And his desire gave her courage to give herself to him in the way he wanted, for now his face was as grave as Oak’s when there was farming business to be done, as he eased himself into her with a gentleness she, being as yet a virgin, could not appreciate.
“Now we must canter a little,” he whispered, and his soft words helped her to bear the stinging heat of the movements below and within. So this was the business of a wife with a husband! This was what Boldwood dreamed of; this was what Oak had offered. But here in this lowly room, a place forever theirs, she loved and gave herself only to Frank with all her woman’s heart, her inmost body, and her eyes.
It did not take long, for after cantering came the gallop, faster and harder, climaxing in a racing jump at the pinnacle of joy which had her crying out, and laughing, all together. Troy was an accomplished lover; he had known many women, and his skill and delight was in bringing them off along with him, taking his pleasure, as he did now, with no sound, only a brief convulsion, quieting the moans of her ecstasy with a kiss as he, his strength spent, collapsed upon her, while she, caught between the exquisite poles of pleasure and pain, marvelled at her own endurance, to take his whole weight on her body with so little discomfort.
A few moments they lay together, and then he slipped from her, and all too soon for Bathsheba, he rose from the bed and was dressed.
“We shall breakfast at the Pump Rooms,”’ he announced, “and then we shall take a walk in Victoria Park, and you shall tell me what it is you came to say.”