CHAPTER XVIII

Boldwood in Meditation—Regret

Boldwood was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and his

person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter

quarter of the parish could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose god was

their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this nook

for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good

society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very least,

but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day. They heard the

sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to expectancy: it

was only Mr. Boldwood coming home again.

His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are to a

farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower portions

being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door, open half-way

down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails of 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 the midst of each. Over these, and

lost to the eye gazing in from the outer light, the mouths of the same

animals could be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and

plumpness by quantities of oats and hay. The restless and shadowy

figure of a colt wandered about a loose-box at the end, whilst the

steady grind of all the eaters was occasionally diversified by the

rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot.

Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwood

himself. This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after

looking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate

would walk and meditate of an evening till the moon’s rays streamed in

through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the scene.

His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the

crowd and bustle of the market-house. In this meditative walk his foot

met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine

reddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure

the still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and broad

chin. A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the only

interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large forehead.

The phases of Boldwood’s life were ordinary enough, but his was not an

ordinary nature. That stillness, which struck casual observers more

than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so precisely

like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect balance of

enormous antagonistic forces—positives and negatives in fine

adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once. If

an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling not mastering

him was entirely latent. Stagnant or rapid, it was never slow. He was

always hit mortally, or he was missed.

He had no light and careless touches in his constitution, either for

good or for evil. Stern in the outlines of action, mild in the details,

he was serious throughout all. He saw no absurd sides to the follies of

life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the eyes of merry men

and scoffers, and those to whom all things show life as a jest, he was

not intolerable to the earnest and those acquainted with grief. Being a

man who read all the dramas of life seriously, if he failed to please

when they were comedies, there was no frivolous treatment to reproach

him for when they chanced to end tragically.

Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon

which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic

intensity. Had she known Boldwood’s moods, her blame would have been

fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover, had she

known her present power for good or evil over this man, she would have

trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present, unluckily for

her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet told her what

Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it was possible to form

guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old floodmarks faintly

visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused them.

Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across the

level fields. Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the other

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 laid up for

mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks, had

veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come

abruptly—almost without a beginning. It was that period in the vernal

quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The

vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in

the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where

everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of

frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and

pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of

cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.

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 him up

as the moon lights up a great tower. A man’s body is as the shell, or

the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous, overflowing or

self-contained. There was a change in Boldwood’s exterior from its

former impassibleness; and his face showed that he was now living

outside his defences for the first time, and with a fearful sense of

exposure. It is the usual experience of strong natures when they love.

At last he arrived at a conclusion. It was to go across and inquire

boldly of her.

The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years, without

a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its effect. It

has been observed more than once that the causes of love are chiefly

subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to the truth of the

proposition. No mother existed to absorb his devotion, no sister for

his tenderness, no idle ties for sense. He became surcharged with the

compound, which was genuine lover’s love.

He approached the gate of the meadow. Beyond it the ground was

melodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating of the

flock mingling with both. Mistress and man were engaged in the

operation of making a lamb “take,” which is performed whenever an ewe

has lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe being given

her as a substitute. Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and was tying

the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customary manner,

whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four hurdles, into

which the mother and foisted lamb were driven, where they would remain

till the old sheep conceived an affection for the young one.

Bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manœuvre and saw the

farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full

bloom. Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an April

day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly

discerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the form

of a keenly self-conscious reddening. He also turned and beheld

Boldwood.

At once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had shown him,

Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by that means,

and carried on since, he knew not how.

Farmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were aware of

his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned upon his

new sensibility. He was still in the road, and by moving on he hoped

that neither would recognize that he had originally intended to enter

the field. He passed by with an utter and overwhelming sensation of

ignorance, shyness, and doubt. Perhaps in her manner there were signs

that she wished to see him—perhaps not—he could not read a woman. The

cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to consist of the subtlest

meanings expressed in misleading ways. Every turn, look, word, and

accent contained a mystery quite distinct from its obvious import, and

not one had ever been pondered by him until now.

As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that Farmer

Boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness. She collected the

probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself

responsible for Boldwood’s appearance there. It troubled her much to

see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle.

Bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a

trifler with the affections of men, and a censor’s experience on seeing

an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling of

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 steady

flow of this man’s life. But a resolution to avoid an evil is seldom

framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance

impossible.