Fanny Calls Up to Sergeant Troy — Far from the Madding Crowd

Many miles north of Weatherbury, in a barracks town, the snow falls so thickly that it seems the sky and the ground might close up into one mass. A bell strikes ten, its voice muffled by snow. By the river, under a high wall with windows only in its upper part, a small shape walks slowly along and counts aloud: “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” Then it stoops and throws snow at the fifth window. Hardy says the idea of the throw was a man’s and the execution a woman’s, for nobody who had watched a bird or a squirrel as a child could throw so badly. The wall is soon pimpled with lumps before one finally strikes the glass.

A window opens. The voice is not surprised, since people have called across this river before. “Is it Sergeant Troy?” asks the spot in the snow, and gives her name: “Your wife, Fanny Robin.” He is astonished, and Hardy says the wall seems to be holding a conversation with the snow. The gates are shut and he has no leave, so he cannot come down. She has walked from Weatherbury, partly, and ridden the rest with carriers, and she asks the one thing she has come for: when will they be married? He cannot quite recall promising. He tells her she needs proper clothes, agrees that banns must be read in two parishes, and says “Not to-morrow.” Has he the permission of his officers? “The fact is, I forgot to ask.” She is the one who apologises for worrying him, and she asks him to visit her at Mrs. Twills’s in North Street, because the women near the barracks take her for one of their own.

He says “Quite so” and wishes her good-night, and the window closes. As she turns the corner, a voice behind the wall calls, “Ho, ho, Sergeant, ho, ho!” and the laughter that follows is hard to tell from the river’s own small gurgling. She walks off with his promise to visit her. Behind her, someone inside the wall is laughing, and the river carries the sound away.