CHAPTER XVIII
BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION--REGRET
Boldwood was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury Farm, andhis person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoterquarter of the parish could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose godwas their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about thisnook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to seegood society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the veryleast, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day. Theyheard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated toexpectancy: it was only Mr. Boldwood coming home again.
His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which areto a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lowerportions being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door,open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tailsof half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls;and as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay,in shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down themidst of each. Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from theouter light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busilysustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oatsand hay. The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about aloose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters wasoccasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of afoot.
Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwoodhimself. This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, afterlooking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibatewould walk and meditate of an evening till the moon's rays streamedin through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped thescene.
His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in thecrowd and bustle of the market-house. In this meditative walk hisfoot met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his finereddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscurethe still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent andbroad chin. A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were theonly interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his largeforehead.
The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was notan ordinary nature. That stillness, which struck casual observersmore than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed soprecisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfectbalance of enormous antagonistic forces--positives and negatives infine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity atonce. If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feelingnot mastering him was entirely latent. Stagnant or rapid, it wasnever slow. He was always hit mortally, or he was missed.
He had no light and careless touches in his constitution, eitherfor good or for evil. Stern in the outlines of action, mild in thedetails, he was serious throughout all. He saw no absurd sides tothe follies of life, and thus, though not quite companionable in theeyes of merry men and scoffers, and those to whom all things showlife as a jest, he was not intolerable to the earnest and thoseacquainted with grief. Being a man who read all the dramas of lifeseriously, if he failed to please when they were comedies, there wasno frivolous treatment to reproach him for when they chanced to endtragically.
Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape uponwhich she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropicintensity. Had she known Boldwood's moods, her blame would havebeen fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover,had she known her present power for good or evil over this man, shewould have trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present,unluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yettold her what Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it waspossible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from oldfloodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tideswhich caused them.
Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across thelevel fields. Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on theother side of this a meadow belonging to Bathsheba's farm.
It was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep,when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laidup for mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for severalweeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had comeabruptly--almost without a beginning. It was that period in thevernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for theseason. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps torise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and tracklessplantations, where everything seems helpless and still after thebond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, unitedthrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which thepowerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmyefforts.
Boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures.They were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak, and Cainy Ball.
When Bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it lighted himup as the moon lights up a great tower. A man's body is as theshell, or the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous,overflowing or self-contained. There was a change in Boldwood'sexterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that hewas now living outside his defences for the first time, and with afearful sense of exposure. It is the usual experience of strongnatures when they love.
At last he arrived at a conclusion. It was to go across and inquireboldly of her.
The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years,without a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked itseffect. It has been observed more than once that the causes of loveare chiefly subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to thetruth of the proposition. No mother existed to absorb his devotion,no sister for his tenderness, no idle ties for sense. He becamesurcharged with the compound, which was genuine lover's love.
He approached the gate of the meadow. Beyond it the ground wasmelodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating ofthe flock mingling with both. Mistress and man were engaged in theoperation of making a lamb "take," which is performed whenever an ewehas lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe beinggiven her as a substitute. Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, andwas tying the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customarymanner, whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of fourhurdles, into which the Mother and foisted lamb were driven, wherethey would remain till the old sheep conceived an affection for theyoung one.
Bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manoeuvre and saw thefarmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in fullbloom. Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of anApril day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantlydiscerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in theform of a keenly self-conscious reddening. He also turned and beheldBoldwood.
At once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had shownhim, Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by thatmeans, and carried on since, he knew not how.
Farmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were awareof his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned uponhis new sensibility. He was still in the road, and by moving on hehoped that neither would recognize that he had originally intendedto enter the field. He passed by with an utter and overwhelmingsensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt. Perhaps in her mannerthere were signs that she wished to see him--perhaps not--he couldnot read a woman. The cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed toconsist of the subtlest meanings expressed in misleading ways. Everyturn, look, word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct fromits obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him untilnow.
As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that FarmerBoldwood had walked by on business or in idleness. She collectedthe probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herselfresponsible for Boldwood's appearance there. It troubled her muchto see what a great flam
e a little wildfire was likely to kindle.Bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately atrifler with the affections of men, and a censor's experience onseeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feelingof surprise that Bathsheba could be so different from such a one,and yet so like what a flirt is supposed to be.
She resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt the steadyflow of this man's life. But a resolution to avoid an evil isseldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidanceimpossible.