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Far from the Madding Crowd: Boldwood

In all Weatherbury, one man alone was heedless to her charm. This was William Boldwood, "the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter quarter of the parish could boast of." She resented being ignored and, in a moment of thoughtlessness, sent him a valentine that fanned into flame passions that Boldwood had hidden from the world.

At the shearing supper held in the great barn Gabriel could see that Boldwood's suit was prospering. He was madly in love, she no longer discouraged him. Neither Bathsheba nor Boldwood was thinking then of a song she had sung earlier that evening, when "the shearers reclined against one another as at suppers in the early ages of the world." Yet afterward how often were they to recall with a shudder the words that Bathsheba had so lightly sung:

For his bride a soldier sought her, And a winning tongue had he: On the banks of Allan Water None was gay as she.

That very night the soldier came into her life, came as she walked about the farm to see that all was secure. Her skirt was caught as she trod fearfully through a growth of high firs; she heard the mutter of a man's voice. A dark-lantern revealed a spur entangled in her skirt, a young and slender man clad in brilliant brass and scarlet. It flashed like a gleam of romance in gray days, that scarlet coat that was afterward to be remembered as so sinister a portent.

The man was Sergeant Troy, a light-hearted scoundrel whose ready flattery sounded sweeter in Bathsheba's ears than the stammering longing of Gabriel or Boldwood. He courted her romantically, wooing her with his sword. She stood, a few days later, in a hollow of ferns and about her flashed his whirling, edged weapon, slashing so close to her that she could hear its sharp hiss as it carved out in the air her lissome figure. And when he turned to leave her he stooped swiftly and kissed her on the lips.

Gabriel tried to warn Bathsheba, but she scorned his reproaches. So he bore silently with his grief and he did not tell her that Troy had beguiled little Fanny Robin away from Weatherbury. Boldwood, whose heart had never before beat faster at a woman's approach, could not so control his anger. He shouted maledictions upon the man who had robbed him of all that had made life joyous. His madness precipitated that which he most dreaded, Bathsheba's marriage to Troy.

The hasty marriage led swiftly to sorrow, inevitably to tragedy. Troy celebrated the wedding by a revel in the barn where he and all the jovial rustics were soon hopelessly befuddled. Gabriel dared not drink with them. The creeping things of the night and the huddled sheep had warned him of a nearing storm, and in the fields the high ricks of wheat and barley lay uncovered. The moon vanished and the wind subsided; on far horizons baleful fires fluttered. The mutter of distant thunder rolled into a sharp rattle. The flashes grew bright as he worked to protect the grain. Then Bathsheba was with him, and their laboring forms were outlined in black by the green snakes of fire that darted venomously earthward. As she trembled with fright, Gabriel felt her warm arm tremble in his great, sheltering hand. She was another man's wife; she did not love him; but there was solace in the strange ways of fate that had brought her nearer to him than when her heart was free. Tragedy came when Fanny Robin crept home to die. Her body, with that of her child, was brought back to the house where she had worked. Standing by the coffin, Bathsheba learned that Troy had never loved her as he had this girl who had borne death and shame for him. He fled from Weatherbury and word was brought to Bathsheba that he had been swept out to sea and drowned. The seasons rolled on and sorrow gave to Bathsheba's face a seriousness that added to her charm. Boldwood dreamed again and he was made happy by a promise, although six years must pass before its fulfilment.

To celebrate his joy, he planned a Christmas Eve party, more than a year after Troy had disappeared. And it was on this night that Troy chose to reappear, striding like a specter among the merrymakers. As he advanced upon her, Bathsheba stood like a stricken thing, half convinced that delusion had enthralled her. But there was nothing ghostly in the rough command that he shouted at her nor in the brutal grip that he took upon her arm. Then only did she stir, but she could not speak. A strangled scream was heard, then a deafening roar. Some eyes were upon Troy, pitching forward and never to rise again; others upon Boldwood, standing with a smoking gun in his hands. Not until the next August, long after it was known that Boldwood was to be imprisoned for life, was Bathsheba able to walk as far as the village street. Fate had been hard to her. Of three men who had loved her, one had been killed by another who would never stride in the daylight again. And now word had come to her that Gabriel--honest, sturdy Gabriel--whom she had found the one man in the world who did not fail her in her need, was leaving her. She sought him in his humble cottage and he confessed that he was going because people were coupling his name with hers. "Such a thing as that is too absurd--too soon--to think of, by far!" she cried. When he agreed with her that it was "too absurd," she insisted that she had not said that, but "too soon." Even then minutes clicked away before Gabriel could realize that what he had so long sought was to be his.

Their lives, in calm and storm, had been so close that, after the wedding, the rustics marveled at his easy way of speaking of "my wife." They agreed that he did not say the words as chillingly as might a man who had been married twenty years, but that that improvement would come later. Gabriel laughed aloud at that and Bathsheba smiled, for Bathsheba did not now laugh so readily as had been her wont when first she came among the simple folk of changeless Weatherbury.