Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to Troy’s wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite of his careful manœuvering all this day, the very worst event that could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had happened now. Oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this afternoon’s work that might cast over Bathsheba’s life a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove.
Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one, “Fanny Robin and child.” Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription “Fanny Robin” only. He then left the room, and went out quietly by the front door.
CHAPTER XLIII
FANNY’S REVENGE
“Do you want me any longer ma’am?” inquired Liddy, at a later hour the same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her hand and addressing Bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large parlour beside the first fire of the season.
“No more to-night, Liddy.”
“I’ll sit up for master if you like, ma’am. I am not at all afraid of Fanny, if I may sit in my own room and have a candle. She was such a childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn’t appear to anybody if it tried, I’m quite sure.”
“Oh no, no! You go to bed. I’ll sit up for him myself till twelve o’clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, I shall give him up and go to bed too.”
“It is half-past ten now.”
“Oh! is it?”
“Why don’t you sit upstairs, ma’am?”