Bathsheba and Troy say almost nothing to each other all Saturday night and all Sunday, and then, in the evening, Troy asks her for twenty pounds. She takes it for racing money and pleads with him, reminding him that he once called her sweeter than all his other pleasures. He says it is not for racing, and will not say what it is for. She hands over the household money, and as he looks at his watch he opens the back of the case and shows a small coil of hair. “A woman’s curl of hair!” she says. It is yellow, and her own is black. He claims it is hers, then admits it belongs to a young woman he meant to marry before he knew her. He will not give a name. The meeting on the road, he says, reminded him of it. Bathsheba tries a bitter joke about the dreadful colour, then breaks down, asks him to burn it, and gets no answer. He talks of ties she knows nothing of, calls it a jest when she asks what they are, and walks out of the room. She sobs without tears, and hates herself for the girl who once thought she was too proud for any man.
Next morning Troy has driven off to Casterbridge in the gig. Bathsheba sees Boldwood stop a long way off and talk earnestly with Gabriel Oak, then call over Joseph Poorgrass, who comes up the hill with a barrow of apples and a message for her. “You’ll never see Fanny Robin no more.” She has died in Casterbridge Union. Bathsheba overrules Boldwood, who meant to send a waggon: Fanny was her uncle’s servant, and so she belongs to Bathsheba. She orders the blue spring waggon with red wheels washed clean, piled with evergreens and flowers, and drawn by old Pleasant, who knew Fanny well. Joseph adds that Fanny had been sewing in Melchester and walked from there, passing Weatherbury last Saturday night. Bathsheba’s face changes at that. Nobody can say what Fanny died of, and Joseph can only repeat that Oak and Boldwood told him very little and both looked terrible down. Bathsheba murmurs that Gabriel, who usually brings her even the smallest message himself, did not come.
She asks Joseph what colour Fanny’s hair was. He cannot remember. Liddy can: golden, though Fanny wore it short and tucked under her cap. Liddy goes on cheerfully to say that Fanny’s young man was a soldier in Troy’s own regiment, that Troy told her he knew him as well as he knew himself, and that people sometimes mistook the two of them, before Bathsheba cuts in with, “Liddy, for Heaven’s sake stop your talking!”
Coming Up in Chapter 42
At five minutes to three, Joseph Poorgrass backs his blue waggon against a small high door in the ivy-covered gable of Casterbridge Union. A plain elm coffin is pushed out and marked in chalk. Joseph buries it in flowers and sets off for Weatherbury, but the first autumn fog closes in around him.
