Free Thomas Hardy by Andrew Norman Page B

militia.
    Bathsheba buys a Valentine’s Day card, thinking to send it to a child, but instead sends it as a prank to Farmer Boldwood, a bachelor who has a neighbouring farm. The words imprinted on its seal read ‘Marry Me’. Boldwood shows the card to Oak, who tells him that the handwriting on it is Miss Everdene’s.
    Fanny Robin’s plans to marry Sergeant Troy encounter a hitch when she mistakenly goes to the wrong church. Meanwhile Boldwood, who has taken the sending of the Valentine card seriously, proposes marriage to Bathsheba. She refuses him on the grounds that she does not love him. Furthermore, she admits to him that the sending of the Valentine card was ‘wanton’ and ‘thoughtless’ on her part. When she asks Oak his opinion on the matter, he gives it to her in no uncertain terms. The act, says he, was ‘unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman’.Leading a man on whom she did not care for was ‘not a praiseworthy action’. (He had previously described her behaviour as ‘coquettish’.) Bathsheba is incensed by Oak’s criticism of her and she orders him to leave the farm. Oak is quickly recalled, however, when his services are required to attend to some sheep which have become bloated and sick after breaking down the fence and feeding off a field of clover.
    Boldwood reappears at the shearing supper, held in Bathsheba’s great barn, where there is much music and merriment. When farm labourer Joseph Poorgrass is asked to sing, he retorts, ‘I be in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me’, but he obliges nonetheless.
    One night, when Bathsheba is taking a final look around her farm, she encounters Sergeant Troy, and her skirt becomes entangled in his riding spur. ‘I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there’s no untying,’ he says, on catching sight of her beautiful face. Troy tells Bathsheba she is beautiful, something Farmer Boldwood had never done; and this she regards as a fatal omission on the latter’s part. Bathsheba meets Troy again at the haymaking, at which he has come to assist. He gives her a gold watch which had belonged to his father. He then helps her with her bees, and gives her an exhibition of sword play. Here, in describing the various ‘infantry cuts and guards’, Hardy again shows his knowledge and attention to detail.
    When Oak warns Bathsheba of the dangers of becoming involved with one such as Troy, she reacts by dismissing him, Once again, from the farm. She confesses to her maid Liddy that she loves Troy ‘to very distraction and agony’. When Boldwood discovers this he is distraught. Despite her feelings for Troy, Bathsheba decides to travel to Bath where he is currently staying and ‘bid him farewell’ – that is, end her relationship with him. Troy, on his return, encounters Boldwood, who encourages him to marry Fanny Robin. However, when Boldwood sees how much Bathsheba appears to love Troy, he changes his mind and exhorts Troy instead to marry Bathsheba. Troy then informs Boldwood that he and Bathsheba are already married – she having changed her mind once more and the ceremony having taken place in Bath.
    At the harvest supper and dance, when all the employees are the worse for drink and a storm blows up, Oak, with Bathsheba’s help, Manages to save the precious hayricks once again. Bathsheba confesses to Oak that when she had visited Troy in Bath, he had emotionally blackmailed her by saying that he had seen a woman more beautiful than her, and therefore could not be counted upon unless she ‘at once became his’. Through ‘jealousy and distraction’ she had married him. As her husband, Troy, now demands money from Bathsheba for gambling purposes.
    Bathsheba becomes suspicious when they encounter a poor woman en route to the Casterbridge workhouse whom Troy appears to know. It is Fanny Robin. Troy promises to meet her and bring her money in two days time. He confesses to Bathsheba that this is the woman he was intending to marry