Now, Bathsheba had an unmarried aunt—Aunt Hessy Pendlurian we called her—that used to take her to all the parties and courants when Old John was away at sea. So she wasn't likely to miss any of the fun, bein' able to foot it as clever as any girl in the Islands. She had the love of it, too—foot and waist and eyes all a-dancing, and body and blood all a-tingle as soon as ever the fiddle spoke. Maybe this same speech of Old John's set me thinking. Or, maybe I'd been thinking already—what with their May-game hints and the loneliness out there. Anyway, I dangled pretty close on Bathsheba's heels all that Christmas. She was comely—you understand—very comely and tall, with dark blood, and eyes that put you in mind of a light shining steady upon dark water. And good as gold. She's dead and gone these twelve years—rest her soul! But (praise God for her!) I've never married another woman nor wanted to.
There, I've as good as told you already! When the time came and I asked her if she liked me, she said she liked no man half so well: and that being as it should be, the next thing was to put up the banns. There wasn't time that holiday: like a fool, I had been dilly-dallying too long, though I believe now I might have asked her a month before. So the wedding was held in the April following, my father going out to the Gunnel for a couple of days, so that Old John might be ashore to give his daughter away. The most I mind of the wedding was the wonder of beholding the old chap there in a long-tailed coat, having never seen him for years but in his oilskins.
Well, the rest of that year seemed pretty much like all the others, except that coming home was better than ever. But when Christmas went by, and February came and our turn to be out again on the Gunnel, I went with a dismal feeling I hadn't known before. For Bathsheba was drawing near her time, and the sorrow was that she must go through it without me. She had walked down to the quay with us, to see us off; and all the way she chatted and laughed with my father as cheerful as cheerful—but never letting her eyes rest on me, I noticed, and I saw what that meant; and when it came to goodbye, there was more in the tightening of her arms about me than I'd ever read in it before.
The old man, I reckon, had a wisht time with me, the next two or three weeks; but, by the mercy of God, the weather behaved furious all the while, leaving a man no time to mope. 'Twas busy all, and busy enough, to keep a clear light inside the lantern, and warm souls inside our bodies. All through February it blew hard and cold from the north and north-west, and though we lay in the very mouth of the Gulf Stream, for ten days together there wasn't a halliard we could touch with the naked hand, nor a cloth nor handful of cotton-waste but had to be thawed at the stove before using. Then, with the beginning of March, the wind tacked round to south-west, and stuck there, blowing big guns, and raising a swell that was something cruel. It was one of these gales that tore away the bell from the lighthouse, though hung just over a hundred feet above water-level. As for us, I wonder now how the little boat held by its two-ton anchors, even with three hundred fathom of chain cable to bear the strain and jerk of it; but with the spindrift whipping our faces, and the hail cutting them, we didn't seem to have time to think of that. Bathsheba thought of it, though, in her bed at home—as I've heard since—and lay awake more than one night thinking of it.
But the third week in March the weather moderated; and soon the sun came out and I began to think. On the second afternoon of the fair weather I climbed up under the cage and saw the Islands for the first time; and coming down, I said to my father:
"Suppose that Bathsheba is dead!"
We hadn't said more than a word or two to each other for a week; indeed, till yesterday we had to shout in each other's ear to be heard at all. My father filled a pipe and said, "Don't be a fool."
"I see your hand shaking," said I.
Said he, "That's with the cold. At my age the cold takes a while to leave a man's extremities."
"But," I went on in an obstinate way, "suppose she is dead?"