feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_28_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 29
feat_summary_id: chapter 29
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-29", "summary": "Bathsheba is now in love with Sergeant Troy, but she won't let anyone know about it. Nonetheless, it doesn't take long for Gabriel Oak to realize that she's in love. One night, Gabriel meets her during an evening walk and advises her against getting involved with Sergeant Troy. Bathsheba tells him to mind his own business or she'll fire him... again. Oak says that Sergeant Troy is a bad man. Bathsheba counters by saying that Troy goes to church every Sunday through a secret little side door. That's why Oak has never seen him attend a service. Finally, Bathsheba commands Oak to go away, as in leave the farm. But this time, Oak ignores her request and tells her that they both know she's not going to fire him. As he leaves, Oak sees Troy emerge from the fields to stand and talk to Bathsheba. He realizes that the whole reason she went for a walk to begin with was to meet up with Troy. On his way home, Oak walks by the church and checks out the little side door that Troy supposedly uses to go in. It is completely overgrown with ivy, meaning that no one has used it in years. In other words, Troy has no problem telling flat-out lies to Bathsheba.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK
  
  
  We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many
  varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba
  Everdene.  It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature.  Introduced
  as lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured
  her whole constitution.  Bathsheba, though she had too much
  understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too
  much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage.
  Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than
  in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she
  knows to be false--except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical
  on strictures that she knows to be true.
  
  Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women
  love when they abandon their self-reliance.  When a strong woman
  recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman
  who has never had any strength to throw away.  One source of her
  inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice
  in making the best of such a condition.  Weakness is doubly weak by
  being new.
  
  Bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter.  Though in one
  sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight
  coteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and
  winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on
  the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody
  in the tything, and where calculation is confined to market-days.
  Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but
  little, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.
  Had her utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (and
  by herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such a
  matter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than her
  discretion.  Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as
  summer it was fresh as spring.  Her culpability lay in her making
  no attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into
  consequences.  She could show others the steep and thorny way, but
  "reck'd not her own rede."
  
  And Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst
  his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with
  homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose
  virtues were as metals in a mine.
  
  The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her
  conduct.  Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the
  greatest freedom to Liddy, but she had only communed with her own
  heart concerning Troy.
  
  All this infatuation Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the
  time of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on
  to the small hours of many a night.  That he was not beloved had
  hitherto been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting into
  the toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which
  nearly obscured it.  It was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted
  observation of Hippocrates concerning physical pains.
  
  That is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even the
  fear of breeding aversion in the bosom of the one beloved can deter
  from combating his or her errors.  Oak determined to speak to his
  mistress.  He would base his appeal on what he considered her unfair
  treatment of Farmer Boldwood, now absent from home.
  
  An opportunity occurred one evening when she had gone for a short
  walk by a path through the neighbouring cornfields.  It was dusk when
  Oak, who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path and
  met her returning, quite pensively, as he thought.
  
  The wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way was
  quite a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side.
  Two persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and
  Oak stood aside to let her pass.
  
  "Oh, is it Gabriel?" she said.  "You are taking a walk too.
  Good-night."
  
  "I thought I would come to meet you, as it is rather late," said Oak,
  turning and following at her heels when she had brushed somewhat
  quickly by him.
  
  "Thank you, indeed, but I am not very fearful."
  
  "Oh no; but there are bad characters about."
  
  "I never meet them."
  
  Now Oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce the
  gallant sergeant through the channel of "bad characters."  But all at
  once the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that this
  was rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with.  He tried
  another preamble.
  
  "And as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away from
  home, too--I mean Farmer Boldwood--why, thinks I, I'll go," he said.
  
  "Ah, yes."  She walked on without turning her head, and for many
  steps nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustle
  of her dress against the heavy corn-ears.  Then she resumed rather
  tartly--
  
  "I don't quite understand what you meant by saying that Mr. Boldwood
  would naturally come to meet me."
  
  "I meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to take
  place between you and him, miss.  Forgive my speaking plainly."
  
  "They say what is not true." she returned quickly.  "No marriage is
  likely to take place between us."
  
  Gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment had
  come.  "Well, Miss Everdene," he said, "putting aside what people
  say, I never in my life saw any courting if his is not a courting
  of you."
  
  Bathsheba would probably have terminated the conversation there and
  then by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weakness
  of position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to better
  it.
  
  "Since this subject has been mentioned," she said very emphatically,
  "I am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is very
  common and very provoking.  I didn't definitely promise Mr. Boldwood
  anything.  I have never cared for him.  I respect him, and he has
  urged me to marry him.  But I have given him no distinct answer.
  As soon as he returns I shall do so; and the answer will be that I
  cannot think of marrying him."
  
  "People are full of mistakes, seemingly."
  
  "They are."
  
  "The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost
  proved that you were not; lately they have said that you be not, and
  you straightway begin to show--"
  
  "That I am, I suppose you mean."
  
  "Well, I hope they speak the truth."
  
  "They do, but wrongly applied.  I don't trifle with him; but then, I
  have nothing to do with him."
  
  Oak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood's rival in a wrong
  tone to her after all.  "I wish you had never met that young Sergeant
  Troy, miss," he sighed.
  
  Bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic.  "Why?" she asked.
  
  "He is not good enough for 'ee."
  
  "Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?"
  
  "Nobody at all."
  
  "Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here,"
  she said, intractably. "Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is an
  educated man, and quite worthy of any woman.  He is well born."
  
  "His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiers
  is anything but a proof of his worth.  It show's his course to be
  down'ard."
  
  "I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation.  Mr. Troy's
  course is not by any means downward; and his superiority IS a proof
  of his worth!"
  
  "I believe him to have no conscience at all.  And I cannot help
  begging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him.  Listen to me this
  once--only this once!  I don't say he's such a bad man as I have
  fancied--I pray to God he is not.  But since we don't exactly know
  what he is, why not behave as if he MIGHT be bad, simply for your own
  safety?  Don't trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so."
  
  "Why, pray?"
  
  "I like soldiers, but this one I do not like," he said, sturdily.
  "His cleverness in his calling may have tempted him astray, and what
  is mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman.  When he tries to
  talk to 'ee again, why not turn away with a short 'Good day'; and
  when you see him coming one way, turn the other.  When he says
  anything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speak
  of him before those who will report your talk as 'that fantastical
  man,' or 'that Sergeant What's-his-name.' 'That man of a family
  that has come to the dogs.'  Don't be unmannerly towards en, but
  harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man."
  
  No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did
  Bathsheba now.
  
  "I say--I say again--that it doesn't become you to talk about
  him.  Why he should be mentioned passes me quite!" she exclaimed
  desperately.  "I know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughly
  conscientious man--blunt sometimes even to rudeness--but always
  speaking his mind about you plain to your face!"
  
  "Oh."
  
  "He is as good as anybody in this parish!  He is very particular,
  too, about going to church--yes, he is!"
  
  "I am afeard nobody saw him there.  I never did, certainly."
  
  "The reason of that is," she said eagerly, "that he goes in privately
  by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at
  the back of the gallery.  He told me so."
  
  This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like
  the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock.  It was not only received with
  utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the
  assurances that had preceded it.
  
  Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him.  He brimmed
  with deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of
  which was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep it
  so:--
  
  "You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always.
  I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would
  wish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside.  I have lost in
  the race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to
  pretend to 'ee now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me.
  But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider--that, both
  to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common
  generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you
  should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier."
  
  "Don't, don't, don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.
  
  "Are ye not more to me than my own affairs, and even life!" he went
  on.  "Come, listen to me!  I am six years older than you, and Mr.
  Boldwood is ten years older than I, and consider--I do beg of 'ee to
  consider before it is too late--how safe you would be in his hands!"
  
  Oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, her
  anger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him for
  letting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good,
  any more than for his slighting treatment of Troy.
  
  "I wish you to go elsewhere," she commanded, a paleness of face
  invisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words.  "Do not
  remain on this farm any longer.  I don't want you--I beg you to go!"
  
  "That's nonsense," said Oak, calmly.  "This is the second time you
  have pretended to dismiss me; and what's the use o' it?"
  
  "Pretended!  You shall go, sir--your lecturing I will not hear!  I am
  mistress here."
  
  "Go, indeed--what folly will you say next?  Treating me like Dick,
  Tom and Harry when you know that a short time ago my position was as
  good as yours!  Upon my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced.  You
  know, too, that I can't go without putting things in such a strait as
  you wouldn't get out of I can't tell when.  Unless, indeed, you'll
  promise to have an understanding man as bailiff, or manager, or
  something.  I'll go at once if you'll promise that."
  
  "I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my own manager," she
  said decisively.
  
  "Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for biding.  How would
  the farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman?  But mind this, I
  don't wish 'ee to feel you owe me anything.  Not I.  What I do, I do.
  Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place--for
  don't suppose I'm content to be a nobody.  I was made for better
  things.  However, I don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as
  they must if you keep in this mind....  I hate taking my own measure
  so plain, but, upon my life, your provoking ways make a man say
  what he wouldn't dream of at other times!  I own to being rather
  interfering.  But you know well enough how it is, and who she is that
  I like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil to
  her!"
  
  It is more than probable that she privately and unconsciously
  respected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shown
  in his tone even more than in his words.  At any rate she murmured
  something to the effect that he might stay if he wished.  She said
  more distinctly, "Will you leave me alone now?  I don't order it
  as a mistress--I ask it as a woman, and I expect you not to be so
  uncourteous as to refuse."
  
  "Certainly I will, Miss Everdene," said Gabriel, gently.  He wondered
  that the request should have come at this moment, for the strife was
  over, and they were on a most desolate hill, far from every human
  habitation, and the hour was getting late.  He stood still and
  allowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her form
  upon the sky.
  
  A distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at that
  point now ensued.  A figure apparently rose from the earth beside
  her.  The shape beyond all doubt was Troy's.  Oak would not be even
  a possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundred
  yards were between the lovers and himself.
  
  Gabriel went home by way of the churchyard.  In passing the tower
  he thought of what she had said about the sergeant's virtuous habit
  of entering the church unperceived at the beginning of service.
  Believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused,
  he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which
  it stood, and examined it.  The pale lustre yet hanging in the
  north-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had
  grown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot,
  delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb.  It was a decisive
  proof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy came back
  to Weatherbury.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 29
target: Bathsheba is now in love with Sergeant Troy, but she won't let anyone know about it. Nonetheless, it doesn't take long for Gabriel Oak to realize that she's in love. One night, Gabriel meets her during an evening walk and advises her against getting involved with Sergeant Troy. Bathsheba tells him to mind his own business or she'll fire him... again. Oak says that Sergeant Troy is a bad man. Bathsheba counters by saying that Troy goes to church every Sunday through a secret little side door. That's why Oak has never seen him attend a service. Finally, Bathsheba commands Oak to go away, as in leave the farm. But this time, Oak ignores her request and tells her that they both know she's not going to fire him. As he leaves, Oak sees Troy emerge from the fields to stand and talk to Bathsheba. He realizes that the whole reason she went for a walk to begin with was to meet up with Troy. On his way home, Oak walks by the church and checks out the little side door that Troy supposedly uses to go in. It is completely overgrown with ivy, meaning that no one has used it in years. In other words, Troy has no problem telling flat-out lies to Bathsheba.