Hardly a soul in the assembly recognized the thin tones to be those of Boldwood. Sudden dispaire had transformed him.
"Bathsheba, go with your husband!"
Nevertheless, she did not move.
The truth was that Bathsheba was beyond the pale of activity — and yet not in a swoon.
She was in a state of mental GUTTA SERENA; her mind was for the minute totally deprived of light at the same time no obscuration was apparent from without.
Troy stretched out his hand to pull her her towards him, when she quickly shrank back.
This visible dread of him seemed to irritate Troy, and he seized her arm and pulled it sharply.
Whether his grasp pinched her, or whether his mere touch was the 'cause, was never known, but at the moment of his seizure she writhed, and gave a quick, low scream.
The scream had been heard but a few seconds When it was followed by sudden deafening report that echoed through the room and stupefied them all.
The oak partition shook with the concussion, and the place was filled with grey smoke.
In bewilderment they turned their eyes to Boldwood. at his back, as stood before the fireplace, was a gun- rack, as is usual in farmhouses, constructed to hold two guns.
When Bathsheba had cried out in her husband's grasp, Boldwood's face of gnashing despair had changed.
The veins had swollen, and a frenzied look had gleamed in his eye.
He had turned quickly, taken one of the guns, cocked it, and at once discharged it at Troy.
Troy fell.
The distance apart of the two men was so small that the charge of shot did not spread in the least, but passed like a bullet into his body.
He uttered a long guttural sigh — there was a contraction — an extension — then his muscles relaxed, and he lay still.
Boldwood was seen through the smoke to be now again engaged with the gun.
It was double-barrelled, and he had, meanwhile, in some way fastened his handkerchief to the trigger, and with his foot on the other end was in the act of turning the second barrel upon himself.
Samway his man was the first to see this, and in the midst of the general horror darted up to him.
Boldwood had already twitched the handkerchief, and the gun exploded a second time, sending its contents, by a timely blow from Samway, into the beam which crossed the ceiling.
"Well, it makes no difference!" Boldwood gasped.
"There is another way for me to die."
Then he broke from Samway, crossed the room to Bathsheba, and kissed her hand.
He put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the darkness, nobody thinking of preventing him.
CHAPTER LIV
AFTER THE SHOCK
BOLDWOOD passed into the high road and turned in the direction of Casterbridge.
Here he walked at an even, steady pace over Yalbury Hill, along the dead level beyond, mounted Mellstock Hill, and between eleven and twelve o'clock crossed the Moor into the town.
The streets were nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only lighted up rows of grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving upon which his step echoed as his passed along.
He turned to the right, and halted before an archway of heavy stonework, which was closed by an iron studded pair of doors.
This was the entrance to the gaol, and over it a lamp was fixed, the light enabling the wretched traveller to find a bellpull.
The small wicket at last opened, and a porter appeared.
Boldwood stepped forward, and said something in a low tone, when, after a delay, another man came.
Boldwood entered, and the door was closed behind him, and he walked the world no more.
Long before this time Weatherbury had been thoroughly aroused, and the wild deed which had terminated Boldwood's merrymaking became known to all.
Of those out of the house Oak was one of the first to hear of the catastrophe, and when he entered the room, which was about five minutes after Boldwood's exit, the scene was terrible.
All the female guests were huddled aghast against the walls like sheep in a storm, and the men were bewildered as to what to do.
As for Bathsheba, she had changed. She was sitting on the floor beside the body of Troy, his head pillowed in her lap, where she had herself lifted it.
With one hand she held her handkerchief to his breast and covered the wound, though scarcely a single drop of blood had flowed, and with the other she tightly clasped one of his.
The household convulsion had made her herself again.
The temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come with the necessity for it.
Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct, and Bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did not practise.
She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made.
She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.
Troy recumbent in his wife's lap formed now the sole spectacle in the middle of the spacious room.
"Gabriel." she said, automatically, when he entered, turning up a face of which only the wellknown lines remained to tell him it was hers, all else in the picture having faded quite. "Ride to Casterbridge instantly for a surgeon.
It is, I believe, useless, but go.
Mr. Boldwood has shot my husband."
Her statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with more force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of setting the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus.