his watch. He carelessly replied, as one who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred. “Why, yours, of course. Whose should it be? I had quite forgotten that I had it.”
“What a dreadful fib, Frank!”
“I tell you I had forgotten it!” he said, loudly.
“I don’t mean that — it was yellow hair.”
“Nonsense.”
“That’s insulting me. I know it was yellow. Now whose was it? I want to know.”
“Very well I’ll tell you, so make no more ado. It is the hair of a young woman I was going to marry before I knew you.”
“You ought to tell me her name, then.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Is she married yet?”
“No.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Yes.”
“It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful affliction!”
“Affliction — what affliction?” he inquired, quickly.
“Having hair of that dreadful colour.”
“Oh — ho — I like that!” said Troy, recovering himself. “Why, her hair has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it loose, which has not been long. It is beautiful hair. People used to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!”
“Pooh! that’s nothing — that’s nothing!” she exclaimed, in incipient accents of pique. “If I cared for your love as much as I used to I could say people had turned to look at mine.”
“Bathsheba, don’t be so fitful and jealous. You knew what married life would be like, and shouldn’t have entered it if you feared these contingencies.”
Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full. Ashamed as she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:—
“This is all I get for loving you so well! Ah! when I married you your life was dearer to me than my own. I would have died for you — how truly I can say that I would have died for you! And now you sneer at my foolishness in marrying you. O! is it kind to me to throw my mistake in my face? Whatever opinion you may have of my wisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am in your power.”
“I can’t help how things fall out,” said Troy; “upon my heart, women will be the death of me!”
“Well you shouldn’t keep people’s hair. You’ll burn it, won’t you, Frank?”
Frank went on as if he had not heard her. “There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made — ties you know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I.”
Trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled tones of wretchedness and coaxing, “I only repent it if you don’t love me better than any woman in the world! I don’t otherwise, Frank. You don’t repent because you already love somebody better than you love me, do you?”
“I don’t know. Why do you say that?”
“You won’t burn that curl. You like the woman who owns that pretty hair — yes; it is pretty — more beautiful than my miserable black mane! Well, it is no use; I can’t help being ugly. You must like her best, if you will!”
“Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon that bit of hair for several months — that I am ready to swear.”
“But just now you said ‘ties’; and then — that woman we met?”
“’Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair.”
“Is it hers, then?”
“Yes. There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are content.”
“And what are the ties?”
“Oh! that meant nothing — a mere jest.”
“A mere jest!” she said, in mournful astonishment. “Can you jest when I am so wretchedly in earnest? Tell me the truth, Frank. I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman’s moments. Come! treat me fairly,” she said, looking honestly and fearlessly into his face. “I don’t want much; bare justice — that’s all! Ah! once I felt I could be content with nothing less than the highest homage from the husband I should choose. Now, anything short of cruelty will content me. Yes! the independent and spirited Bathsheba is come to this!”
“For Heaven’s sake don’t be so desperate!” Troy said, snappishly, rising as he did so, and leaving the room.
Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs — dry-eyed sobs, which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. But she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man’s on earth — that her waist had never been encircled by a lover’s arm. She hated herself now. In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first goodlooking young fellow who should choose to salute them. She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about her. In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour. Although she scarcely knew the divinity’s name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored. That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her — that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole — were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference!
The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way. When she came in at half-past eight — their usual hour for breakfasting — she was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.
After breakfast she was cool and collected — quite herself in fact — and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however, finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine
