CHAPTER XIV

EFFECT OF THE LETTER—SUNRISE

At dusk, on the evening of St. Valentine’s Day, Boldwood sat down to

supper as usual, by a beaming fire of aged logs. Upon the mantel-shelf

before him was a time-piece, surmounted by a spread eagle, and upon the

eagle’s wings was the letter Bathsheba had sent. Here the bachelor’s

gaze was continually fastening itself, till the large red seal became

as a blot of blood on the retina of his eye; and as he ate and drank he

still read in fancy the words thereon, although they were too remote

for his sight—

“MARRY ME.”

The pert injunction was like those crystal substances which, colourless

themselves, assume the tone of objects about them. Here, in the quiet

of Boldwood’s parlour, where everything that was not grave was

extraneous, and where the atmosphere was that of a Puritan Sunday

lasting all the week, the letter and its dictum changed their tenor

from the thoughtlessness of their origin to a deep solemnity, imbibed

from their accessories now.

Since the receipt of the missive in the morning, Boldwood had felt the

symmetry of his existence to be slowly getting distorted in the

direction of an ideal passion. The disturbance was as the first

floating weed to Columbus—the contemptibly little suggesting

possibilities of the infinitely great.

The letter must have had an origin and a motive. That the latter was of

the smallest magnitude compatible with its existence at all, Boldwood,

of course, did not know. And such an explanation did not strike him as

a possibility even. It is foreign to a mystified condition of mind to

realize of the mystifier that the processes of approving a course

suggested by circumstance, and of striking out a course from inner

impulse, would look the same in the result. The vast difference between

starting a train of events, and directing into a particular groove a

series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by

the issue.

When Boldwood went to bed he placed the valentine in the corner of the

looking-glass. He was conscious of its presence, even when his back was

turned upon it. It was the first time in Boldwood’s life that such an

event had occurred. The same fascination that caused him to think it an

act which had a deliberate motive prevented him from regarding it as an

impertinence. He looked again at the direction. The mysterious

influences of night invested the writing with the presence of the

unknown writer. Somebody’s—some _woman’s_—hand had travelled softly

over the paper bearing his name; her unrevealed eyes had watched every

curve as she formed it; her brain had seen him in imagination the

while. Why should she have imagined him? Her mouth—were the lips red or

pale, plump or creased?—had curved itself to a certain expression as

the pen went on—the corners had moved with all their natural

tremulousness: what had been the expression?

The vision of the woman writing, as a supplement to the words written,

had no individuality. She was a misty shape, and well she might be,

considering that her original was at that moment sound asleep and

oblivious of all love and letter-writing under the sky. Whenever

Boldwood dozed she took a form, and comparatively ceased to be a

vision: when he awoke there was the letter justifying the dream.

The moon shone to-night, and its light was not of a customary kind. His

window admitted only a reflection of its rays, and the pale sheen had

that reversed direction which snow gives, coming upward and lighting up

his ceiling in an unnatural way, casting shadows in strange places, and

putting lights where shadows had used to be.

The substance of the epistle had occupied him but little in comparison

with the fact of its arrival. He suddenly wondered if anything more

might be found in the envelope than what he had withdrawn. He jumped

out of bed in the weird light, took the letter, pulled out the flimsy

sheet, shook the envelope—searched it. Nothing more was there. Boldwood

looked, as he had a hundred times the preceding day, at the insistent

red seal: “Marry me,” he said aloud.

The solemn and reserved yeoman again closed the letter, and stuck it in

the frame of the glass. In doing so he caught sight of his reflected

features, wan in expression, and insubstantial in form. He saw how

closely compressed was his mouth, and that his eyes were wide-spread

and vacant. Feeling uneasy and dissatisfied with himself for this

nervous excitability, he returned to bed.

Then the dawn drew on. The full power of the clear heaven was not equal

to that of a cloudy sky at noon, when Boldwood arose and dressed

himself. He descended the stairs and went out towards the gate of a

field to the east, leaning over which he paused and looked around.

It was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the year, and the

sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to the northward, and murky

to the east, where, over the snowy down or ewe-lease on Weatherbury

Upper Farm, and apparently resting upon the ridge, the only half of the

sun yet visible burnt rayless, like a red and flameless fire shining

over a white hearthstone. The whole effect resembled a sunset as

childhood resembles age.

In other directions, the fields and sky were so much of one colour by

the snow, that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts

the horizon occurred; and in general there was here, too, that

before-mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which

attends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky is

found on the earth, and the shades of earth are in the sky. Over the

west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow, like

tarnished brass.

Boldwood was listlessly noting how the frost had hardened and glazed

the surface of the snow, till it shone in the red eastern light with

the polish of marble; how, in some portions of the slope, withered

grass-bents, encased in icicles, bristled through the smooth wan

coverlet in the twisted and curved shapes of old Venetian glass; and

how the footprints of a few birds, which had hopped over the snow

whilst it lay in the state of a soft fleece, were now frozen to a short

permanency. A half-muffled noise of light wheels interrupted him.

Boldwood turned back into the road. It was the mail-cart—a crazy,

two-wheeled vehicle, hardly heavy enough to resist a puff of wind. The

driver held out a letter. Boldwood seized it and opened it, expecting

another anonymous one—so greatly are people’s ideas of probability a

mere sense that precedent will repeat itself.

“I don’t think it is for you, sir,” said the man, when he saw

Boldwood’s action. “Though there is no name, I think it is for your

shepherd.”

Boldwood looked then at the address—

To the New Shepherd,

Weatherbury Farm,

Near Casterbridge

“Oh—what a mistake!—it is not mine. Nor is it for my shepherd. It is

for Miss Everdene’s. You had better take it on to him—Gabriel Oak—and

say I opened it in mistake.”

At this moment, on the ridge, up against the blazing sky, a figure was

visible, like the black snuff in the midst of a candle-flame. Then it

moved and began to bustle about vigorously from place to place,

carrying square skeleton masses, which were riddled by the same rays. A

small figure on all fours followed behind. The tall form was that of

Gabriel Oak; the small one that of George; the articles in course of

transit were hurdles.

“Wait,” said Boldwood. “That’s the man on the hill. I’ll take the

letter to him myself.”

To Boldwood it was now no longer merely a letter to another man. It was

an opportunity. Exhibiting a face pregnant with intention, he entered

the snowy field.

Gabriel, at that minute, descended the hill towards the right. The glow

stretched down in this direction now, and touched the distant roof of

Warren’s Malthouse—whither the shepherd was apparently bent: Boldwood

followed at a distance.