She felt she could not do it, Not for worlds now could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him plainly for information on the cause of Fanny's death.
She must suspect, and guess, and chafe, and bear it all alone.
Like a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and fascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from that little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own.
Gabriel appeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench, and then — knelt down to pray.
The contrast of the picture with her rebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for her to bear to look upon longer.
It was not for her to make a truce with trouble by any such means.
She must tread her giddy distracting measure to its last note, as she had begun it.
With a swollen heart she went again up the lane, and entered her own door.
More fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which Oak's example had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the door of the room wherein Fanny lay.
She locked her fingers, threw back her head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her forehead, saying, with a hysterical sob,
"Would to God you would speak and tell me your secret, Fanny! . , .
O, I hope, hope it is not true that there are two of you! … If I could only look in upon you for one little minute, I should know all!"
A few moments passed, and she added, slowly,
"And I will" Bathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried her through the actions following this murmured resolution on this memorable evening of her life.
She went to the lumber-closet for a screw-driver.
At the end of a short though undefined time she found herself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a mist before her eyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain, standing beside the uncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end had so entirely engrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice as she gazed within —
"It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!"
She was conscious of having brought about this situation by a series of actions done as by one in an extravagant dream; of following that idea as to method, which had burst upon her in the hall with glaring obviousness, by gliding to the top of the stairs, assuring herself by listening to the heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep, gliding down again, turning the handle of the door within which the young girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what, if she had anticipated any such undertaking at night and alone, would have horrified her, but which, when done, was not so dreadful as was the conclusive proof of her husband's conduct which came with knowing beyond doubt the last chapter of Fanny's story.
Bathsheba's head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which had been bated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was exhaled now in the form of a whispered wail:
"Oh-h-h!" she said, and the silent room added length to her moan.
Her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin: tears of a complicated origin, of a nature indescribable, almost indefinable except as other than those of simple sorrow.
Assuredly their wonted fires must have lived in Fanny's ashes when events were so shaped as to chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet effectual manner.
The one feat alone — that of dying — by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved.
And to that had destiny subjoined this rencounter tonight, which had, in Bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion's failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendency; et had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an ironical smile.
Fanny's face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and there was no longer much room for doubt as to the origin of the curl owned by Troy.
In Bathsheba's heated fancy the innocent white countenance expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic law:
"Burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife.
Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by immediate death, which thought she, though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless.
Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was out tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her rival's case.
She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly her habit hen excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as she thought and in part expressed in broken words: O, I hate her, yet I don't mean that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and yet I hate her a little! yes, my flesh insists upon hating her, whether my spirit is willing or no!… If she had only lived, I could ave been angry and cruel towards her with some justification; but to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman recoils upon myself.
O God, have mercy,!
I am miserable at all this!"
Bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind that she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself.
The vision of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the imitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea, resolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray.
Gabriel had prayed; so would she.
She knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and for a time the room was silent as a tomb. whether from a purely mechanical, or from any other cause, when Bathsheba arose it was with a quieted spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which had seized upon her just before.
In her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the window, and began laying them around the dead girl's head.
Bathsheba knew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by giving them flowers.
She knew not how long she remained engaged thus.
She forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing.
A slamming together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to herself again.
An instant after, the front door opened and closed, steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to the room, looking in upon her.
He beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the scene, as if he thought it an illusion raised by some fiendish incantation.
Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same wild way.
So little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate induction, that at this moment, as he stood with the door in his hand, Troy never once thought of Fanny in connection with what he saw.
His first confused idea was that somebody in the house had died.
"Well — what?" said Troy, blankly.
"I must go!
I must go!" said Bathsheba, to herself more than to him.
She came with a dilated eye towards the door, to push past him.