Far From the Madding Crowd

Chapter 13

Sortes sanctorum – The valentine

It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of February. Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her. The mouldy pile was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own, for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the day; and Bathsheba’s new piano, which was an old one in other annals, looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid the unpleasantness. Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to exercise it.

On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather. Liddy looking at it said, –

‘Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of the Bible and key?’

‘Don’t be so foolish, Liddy. As if such things could be.’

‘Well, there’s a good deal in it, all the same.’

‘Nonsense, child.’

‘And it makes your heart beat fearful. Some believe in it; some don’t; I do.’

‘Very well, let’s try it,’ said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a dependant, and entering into the spirit of divination at once. ‘Go and get the front door key.’

Liddy fetched it. ‘I wish it wasn’t Sunday,’ she said, on returning. ‘Perhaps ’tis wrong.’

‘What’s right week days is right Sundays,’ replied her mistress in a tone which was a proof in itself.

The book was opened – the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away at much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in former days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to the vision. The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye. They slightly thrilled and abashed her. It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the concrete. Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention, and placed the key on the book. A rusty patch immediately upon the verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the purpose.

‘Now keep steady, and be silent,’ said Bathsheba.

The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed guiltily.

‘Who did you try?’ said Liddy curiously. ‘I shall not tell you.’

‘Did you notice Mr Boldwood’s doings in church this morning, miss?’ Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had taken.

‘No, indeed,’ said Bathsheba, with serene indifference.

‘His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss.’

‘I know it.’

‘And you did not see his goings on!’

‘Certainly I did not, I tell you.’

Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively.

This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting. ‘What did he do?’ Bathsheba said perforce.

‘Didn’t turn his head to look at you once all the service.’

‘Why should he?’ again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look. ‘I didn’t ask him to.’

‘Oh, no. But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he didn’t. There, ’tis like him. Rich and gentlemanly, what does he care?’

Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy’s comprehension, rather than that she had nothing to say.

‘Dear me – I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday,’ she exclaimed at length.

‘Valentine! who for, miss?’ said Liddy. ‘Farmer Boldwood?’

It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right.

‘Well, no. It is only for little Teddy Coggan. I have promised him something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him. Liddy, you may as well bring me my desk and I’ll direct it at once.’

Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous market-day at the chief stationer’s in Casterbridge. In the centre was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion than any generalities by a printer could possibly be.

‘Here’s a place for writing,’ said Bathsheba. ‘What shall I put?’

‘Something of this sort, I should think,’ returned Liddy promptly: –

‘The rose is red,

The violet blue,

Carnation’s sweet,

And so are you.’

‘Yes, that shall be it. It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child like him,’ said Bathsheba. She inserted the words in a small though legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped her pen for the direction.

‘What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how he would wonder!’ said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows, and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated.

Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length. Boldwood’s had begun to be a troublesome image – a species of Daniel in her kingdom who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. She was far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity. Still, it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man in the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy should talk about it. So Liddy’s idea was at first rather harassing than piquant.

‘No, I won’t do that. He wouldn’t see any humour in it.’

‘He’d worry to death,’ said the persistent Liddy.

‘Really, I don’t care particularly to send it to Teddy,’ remarked her mistress. ‘He’s rather a naughty child sometimes.’

‘Yes – that he is.’

‘Let’s toss, as men do,’ said Bathsheba idly. ‘Now then, head, Boldwood; tail, Teddy. No, we won’t toss money on a Sunday, that would be tempting the devil indeed.’

‘Toss this hymn-book; there can’t be no sinfulness in that, miss.’

‘Very well. Open, Boldwood – shut, Teddy. No; it’s more likely to fall open. Open, Teddy – shut, Boldwood.’

The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut.

Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with off-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood.

‘Now light a candle, Liddy. Which seal shall we use? Here’s a unicorn’s head – there’s nothing in that. What’s this? – two doves – no. It ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not, Lidd? Here’s one with a motto – I remember it is some funny one, but I can’t read it. We’ll try this, and if it doesn’t do we’ll have another.’

A large red seal was duly affixed. Bathsheba looked closely at the hot wax to discover the words.

‘Capital!’ she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely. ‘’Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerk too.’

Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read –

‘Marry Me.’

The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury again in the morning.

So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing.

Chapter 14

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 fascin ation 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 reverse 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 his 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.

Chapter 15

A morning meeting – The letter again

The scarlet and orange light outside the malthouse did not penetrate to its interior, which was, as usual, lighted by a rival glow of similar hue, radiating from the hearth.

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