第78章

`You may as well. I have no farther claim upon you. As for me, I had better go somewhere alone, and hide - and pray. I loved a woman once. I am now ashamed. When I am dead they'll say, Miserable love-sick man that he was. Heaven - heaven - if I had got jilted secretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept! But no matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained. Shame upon him - shame!'

His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him, without obviously moving, as she said, `I am only a girl - do not speak to me so!'

`All the time you knew - how very well you knew - that your new freak was my misery. Dazzled by brass and scarlet - O, Bathsheba - this is woman's folly indeed!'

She fired up at once. `You are taking too much upon yourself!' she said vehemently. `Everybody is upon me - everybody. It is unmanly to attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me; but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!'

`You'll chatter with him doubtless about me. Say to him, "Boldwood would have died for me." Yes, and you have given way to him, knowing him to be not the man for you. He has kissed you - claimed you as his. Do you hear - he has kissed you. Deny it!'

The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another sex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped, `Leave me, sir - leave me! I am nothing to you. Let me go on!'

`Deny that he has kissed you.'

`I shall not.'

`Ha - then he has!' came hoarsely from the farmer.

`He has,' she said slowly, and, in spite of her fear, defiantly, `I am not ashamed to speak the truth.'

`Then curse him; and curse him!' said Boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury. `Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand, you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and - Kiss you! Heaven's mercy - kiss you!... Ah, a time of his life shall come when he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he has caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn - as I do now!'

`Don't, don't, O, don't pray down evil upon him!' she implored in a miserable cry. `Anything but that - anything. O, be Kind to him, sir, for I love him true!'

Boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline and consistency entirely disappear. The impending night appeared to concentrate in his eye. He did not hear her at all now.

`I'll punish him - by my soul, that will I! I'll meet him, soldier or no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for his reckless theft of my one delight. If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him--' He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. `Bathsheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! I've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies!... It is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment - that he's away up the country, and not here! I hope he may not return here just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted beyond myself. O, Bathsheba, keep him away - yes, keep him away from me!'

For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words.

He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the lead trees.

Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr Boldwood were incomprehensible, dreadful.

Instead of being a man trained to repression he was - what she had seen him.

The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a circumstance known at present only to herself; her lover was coming back to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two. Troy had not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in Bath, and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough.

She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel would be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when she thought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this evening;Troy's blitheness might become aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's anger might than take the direction of revenge.

With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this guideless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now there was no reserve. In her distraction, instead of advancing further she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing her brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself.

Then she sat down on a heap of stones by the wayside to think. There she remained long. Above the dak margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of coppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating start. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realized none at all. Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.