Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy (best books for 20 year olds .TXT) đ
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- Author: Thomas Hardy
Book online «Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy (best books for 20 year olds .TXT) đ». Author Thomas Hardy
âAnd have they done it as you wished?â said Oak.
âYes. Come and see it, if you have not already.â
So together they went and read the tomb. âEight months ago!â Gabriel murmured when he saw the date. âIt seems like yesterday to me.â
âAnd to me as if it were years agoâ âlong years, and I had been dead between. And now I am going home, Mr. Oak.â
Oak walked after her. âI wanted to name a small matter to you as soon as I could,â he said, with hesitation. âMerely about business, and I think I may just mention it now, if youâll allow me.â
âOh yes, certainly.â
âIt is that I may soon have to give up the management of your farm, Mrs. Troy. The fact is, I am thinking of leaving Englandâ ânot yet, you knowâ ânext spring.â
âLeaving England!â she said, in surprise and genuine disappointment. âWhy, Gabriel, what are you going to do that for?â
âWell, Iâve thought it best,â Oak stammered out. âCalifornia is the spot Iâve had in my mind to try.â
âBut it is understood everywhere that you are going to take poor Mr. Boldwoodâs farm on your own account.â
âIâve had the refusal oâ it âtis true; but nothing is settled yet, and I have reasons for giving up. I shall finish out my year there as manager for the trustees, but no more.â
âAnd what shall I do without you? Oh, Gabriel, I donât think you ought to go away. Youâve been with me so longâ âthrough bright times and dark timesâ âsuch old friends as we areâ âthat it seems unkind almost. I had fancied that if you leased the other farm as master, you might still give a helping look across at mine. And now going away!â
âI would have willingly.â
âYet now that I am more helpless than ever you go away!â
âYes, thatâs the ill fortune oâ it,â said Gabriel, in a distressed tone. âAnd it is because of that very helplessness that I feel bound to go. Good afternoon, maâamâ he concluded, in evident anxiety to get away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could follow on no pretence whatever.
Bathsheba went home, her mind occupied with a new trouble, which being rather harassing than deadly was calculated to do good by diverting her from the chronic gloom of her life. She was set thinking a great deal about Oak and of his wish to shun her; and there occurred to Bathsheba several incidents of her latter intercourse with him, which, trivial when singly viewed, amounted together to a perceptible disinclination for her society. It broke upon her at length as a great pain that her last old disciple was about to forsake her and flee. He who had believed in her and argued on her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at last like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause, and was leaving her to fight her battles alone.
Three weeks went on, and more evidence of his want of interest in her was forthcoming. She noticed that instead of entering the small parlour or office where the farm accounts were kept, and waiting, or leaving a memorandum as he had hitherto done during her seclusion, Oak never came at all when she was likely to be there, only entering at unseasonable hours when her presence in that part of the house was least to be expected. Whenever he wanted directions he sent a message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was obliged to reply in the same offhand style. Poor Bathsheba began to suffer now from the most torturing sting of allâ âa sensation that she was despised.
The autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these melancholy conjectures, and Christmas-day came, completing a year of her legal widowhood, and two years and a quarter of her life alone. On examining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the subject of which the season might have been supposed suggestiveâ âthe event in the hall at Boldwoodâsâ âwas not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured herâ âfor what she could not tellâ âand that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants. Coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak, whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in the old way. There he was, as usual, coming down the path behind her. But on seeing Bathsheba turn, he looked aside, and as soon as he got beyond the gate, and there was the barest excuse for a divergence, he made one, and vanished.
The next morning brought the culminating stroke; she had been expecting it long. It was a formal notice by letter from him that he should not renew his engagement with her for the following Lady-day.
Bathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most bitterly. She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way. She was bewildered too by the prospect of having to rely on her own resources again: it seemed to herself that she never could again acquire energy sufficient to go to market, barter, and sell. Since Troyâs death Oak had attended all sales and fairs for her, transacting her business at the same time with his own. What should she do now? Her life was becoming a desolation.
So desolate was Bathsheba this evening, that in an absolute hunger for pity and sympathy, and miserable in that she appeared to have outlived the only true friendship she had ever owned, she put on her bonnet
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