When Guilt Drives Grand Gestures — Far from the Madding Crowd

When Bathsheba ran out Troy covered the dead from sight, threw himself dressed on the bed, and met morning with indifference to her whereabouts. His twenty-seven pounds ten had been meant for Fanny at Grey's Bridge at ten; she was already being grave-clothed in the Union while he waited on the parapet till eleven, then bitterly drove to Budmouth races, kept his vow not to bet, and came home to the shock of the open coffin. Fate had leagued events against his intentions: racing instead of mercy, shock instead of reunion. At daylight he walks to the new grave, then to Lester's mason yard in Casterbridge, and like a child demands the best tomb twenty-seven pounds can buy, name cut, carriage, and erection now, though the mason protests no special work this week. He writes the inscription, follows the packed marble to Weatherbury, and at ten by lantern plants snowdrops, crocuses, violets, and lilies over Fanny in romantic reparation he does not see as absurd. Rain enters the lantern; he leaves the planting unfinished and sleeps in the church porch. Hardy shows Troy's French sentiment meeting English inelasticity: elaborate grief performed while the living wife has vanished into the dark, and fate already diverging from intention at the bridge he missed.