CHAPTER XXV
THE NEW ACQUAINTANCE DESCRIBED
Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy asan exceptional being.
He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipationsa superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what wasbefore his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. His outlookupon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: thatprojection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, whichmakes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a wordfor circumspection, was foreign to Troy. With him the past wasyesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.
On this account he might, in certain lights, have been regarded asone of the most fortunate of his order. For it may be argued withgreat plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than adisease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form--that ofabsolute faith--is practically an impossibility; whilst in the formof hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve,curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.
Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice ofexpectation, was never disappointed. To set against this negativegain there may have been some positive losses from a certainnarrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed. Butlimitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the losertherefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrastsplausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it,whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer. It is not a denialof anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had neverenjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what soberpeople missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemedgreater than theirs.
He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied likea Cretan--a system of ethics above all others calculated to winpopularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; andthe possibility of the favour gained being transitory had referenceonly to the future.
He never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from theugly; and hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded,disapproval of them had frequently been tempered with a smile. Thistreatment had led to his becoming a sort of regrater of other men'sgallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a Corinthian, rather thanto the moral profit of his hearers.
His reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocatinginfluence, having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence itsometimes happened that, while his intentions were as honourable ascould be wished, any particular deed formed a dark background whichthrew them into fine relief. The sergeant's vicious phases being theoffspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool meditation, thelatter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen.
Troy was full of activity, but his activities were less of alocomotive than a vegetative nature; and, never being based uponany original choice of foundation or direction, they were exercisedon whatever object chance might place in their way. Hence, whilsthe sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that wasspontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inabilityto guide incipient effort. He had a quick comprehension andconsiderable force of character; but, being without the power tocombine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialitieswhilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itselfin useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension.
He was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class--exceptionally well educated for a common soldier. He spoke fluentlyand unceasingly. He could in this way be one thing and seem another:for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on thehusband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe.
The wondrous power of flattery in _passados_ at woman is a perceptionso universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost asautomatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they areChristians and the like, without thinking much of the enormouscorollaries which spring from the proposition. Still less is itacted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to.With the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those triteaphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendousmeanings thoroughly home. When expressed with some amount ofreflectiveness it seems co-ordinate with a belief that this flatterymust be reasonable to be effective. It is to the credit of men thatfew attempt to settle the question by experiment, and it is fortheir happiness, perhaps, that accident has never settled it forthem. Nevertheless, that a male dissembler who by deluging her withuntenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powersreaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many byunsought and wringing occurrences. And some profess to have attainedto the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntilycontinue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect.Sergeant Troy was one.
He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankindthe only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing. There wasno third method. "Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man." hewould say.
This person's public appearance in Weatherbury promptly followed hisarrival there. A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, feelinga nameless relief of spirits on account of Boldwood's absence,approached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards thehaymakers. They consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled andflexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, whowore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upontheir shoulders. Coggan and Mark Clark were mowing in a less forwardmeadow, Clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, towhich Jan made no attempt to keep time with his. In the first meadthey were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks andwindrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon.
From behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went onloading unconcernedly with the rest. It was the gallant sergeant,who had come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny thathe was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by thisvoluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time.
As soon as she had entered the field Troy saw her, and sticking hispitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he cameforward. Bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, andadjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path.