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.

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.

The maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a few
hours, was now sitting beside a three-legged table, breakfasting of
bread and bacon.  This was eaten on the plateless system, which is
performed by placing a slice of bread upon the table, the meat flat
upon the bread, a mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt
upon the whole, then cutting them vertically downwards with a large
pocket-knife till wood is reached, when the severed lump is impaled
on the knife, elevated, and sent the proper way of food.

The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish
his powers as a mill.  He had been without them for so many years
that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an
acquisition.  Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic
curve approaches a straight line--less directly as he got nearer,
till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.

In the ashpit was a heap of potatoes roasting, and a boiling pipkin
of charred bread, called "coffee", for the benefit of whomsoever
should call, for Warren's was a sort of clubhouse, used as an
alternative to the inn.

"I say, says I, we get a fine day, and then down comes a snapper at
night," was a remark now suddenly heard spreading into the malthouse
from the door, which had been opened the previous moment.  The form
of Henery Fray advanced to the fire, stamping the snow from his boots
when about half-way there.  The speech and entry had not seemed to be
at all an abrupt beginning to the maltster, introductory matter being
often omitted in this neighbourhood, both from word and deed, and
the maltster having the same latitude allowed him, did not hurry to
reply.  He picked up a fragment of cheese, by pecking upon it with
his knife, as a butcher picks up skewers.

Henery appeared in a drab kerseymere great-coat, buttoned over his
smock-frock, the white skirts of the latter being visible to the
distance of about a foot below the coat-tails, which, when you
got used to the style of dress, looked natural enough, and even
ornamental--it certainly was comfortable.

Matthew Moon, Joseph Poorgrass, and other carters and waggoners
followed at his heels, with great lanterns dangling from their hands,
which showed that they had just come from the cart-horse stables,
where they had been busily engaged since four o'clock that morning.

"And how is she getting on without a baily?" the maltster inquired.
Henery shook his head, and smiled one of the bitter smiles, dragging
all the flesh of his forehead into a corrugated heap in the centre.

"She'll rue it--surely, surely!" he said.  "Benjy Pennyways were not
a true man or an honest baily--as big a betrayer as Judas Iscariot
himself.  But to think she can carr' on alone!" He allowed his head
to swing laterally three or four times in silence.  "Never in all my
creeping up--never!"

This was recognized by all as the conclusion of some gloomy speech
which had been expressed in thought alone during the shake of the
head; Henery meanwhile retained several marks of despair upon his
face, to imply that they would be required for use again directly
he should go on speaking.

"All will be ruined, and ourselves too, or there's no meat in
gentlemen's houses!" said Mark Clark.

"A headstrong maid, that's what she is--and won't listen to no advice
at all.  Pride and vanity have ruined many a cobbler's dog.  Dear,
dear, when I think o' it, I sorrows like a man in travel!"

"True, Henery, you do, I've heard ye," said Joseph Poorgrass in a
voice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn smile of misery.

"'Twould do a martel man no harm to have what's under her bonnet,"
said Billy Smallbury, who had just entered, bearing his one tooth
before him.  "She can spaik real language, and must have some sense
somewhere.  Do ye foller me?"

"I do, I do; but no baily--I deserved that place," wailed Henery,
signifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at visions of a high
destiny apparently visible to him on Billy Smallbury's smock-frock.
"There, 'twas to be, I suppose.  Your lot is your lot, and Scripture
is nothing; for if you do good you don't get rewarded according to
your works, but be cheated in some mean way out of your recompense."

"No, no; I don't agree with'ee there," said Mark Clark.  "God's a
perfect gentleman in that respect."

"Good works good pay, so to speak it," attested Joseph Poorgrass.

A short pause ensued, and as a sort of _entr'acte_ Henery turned and
blew out the lanterns, which the increase of daylight rendered no
longer necessary even in the malthouse, with its one pane of glass.

"I wonder what a farmer-woman can want with a harpsichord, dulcimer,
pianner, or whatever 'tis they d'call it?" said the maltster.  "Liddy
saith she've a new one."

"Got a pianner?"

"Ay.  Seems her old uncle's things were not good enough for her.
She've bought all but everything new.  There's heavy chairs for the
stout, weak and wiry ones for the slender; great watches, getting on
to the size of clocks, to stand upon the chimbley-piece."

"Pictures, for the most part wonderful frames."

"And long horse-hair settles for the drunk, with horse-hair pillows
at each end," said Mr. Clark.  "Likewise looking-glasses for the
pretty, and lying books for the wicked."

A firm loud tread was now heard stamping outside; the door was opened
about six inches, and somebody on the other side exclaimed--

"Neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?"

"Ay, sure, shepherd," said the conclave.

The door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled from
top to bottom with the blow.  Mr. Oak appeared in the entry with a
steaming face, hay-bands wound about his ankles to keep out the snow,
a leather strap round his waist outside the smock-frock, and looking
altogether an epitome of the world's health and vigour.  Four lambs
hung in various embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the
dog George, whom Gabriel had contrived to fetch from Norcombe,
stalked solemnly behind.

"Well, Shepherd Oak, and how's lambing this year, if I mid say it?"
inquired Joseph Poorgrass.

"Terrible trying," said Oak.  "I've been wet through twice a-day,
either in snow or rain, this last fortnight.  Cainy and I haven't
tined our eyes to-night."

"A good few twins, too, I hear?"

"Too many by half.  Yes; 'tis a very queer lambing this year.  We
shan't have done by Lady Day."

"And last year 'twer all over by Sexajessamine Sunday," Joseph
remarked.

"Bring on the rest Cain," said Gabriel, "and then run back to the
ewes.  I'll follow you soon."

Cainy Ball--a cheery-faced young lad, with a small circular orifice
by way of mouth, advanced and deposited two others, and retired as he
was bidden.  Oak lowered the lambs from their unnatural elevation,
wrapped them in hay, and placed them round the fire.

"We've no lambing-hut here, as I used to have at Norcombe," said
Gabriel, "and 'tis such a plague to bring the weakly ones to a house.
If 'twasn't for your place here, malter, I don't know what I should
do i' this keen weather.  And how is it with you to-day, malter?"

"Oh, neither sick nor sorry, shepherd; but no younger."

"Ay--I understand."

"Sit down, Shepherd Oak," continued the ancient man of malt.  "And
how was the old place at Norcombe, when ye went for your dog?  I
should like to see the old familiar spot; but faith, I shouldn't know
a soul there now."

"I suppose you wouldn't.  'Tis altered very much."

"Is it true that Dicky Hill's wooden cider-house is pulled down?"

"Oh yes--years ago, and Dicky's cottage just above it."

"Well, to be sure!"

"Yes; and Tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted that used to bear two
hogsheads of cider; and no help from other trees."

"Rooted?--you don't say it!  Ah! stirring times we live in--stirring
times."

"And you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle of the
place?  That's turned into a solid iron pump with a large stone
trough, and all complete."

"Dear, dear--how the face of nations alter, and what we live to see
nowadays!  Yes--and 'tis the same here.  They've been talking but now
of the mis'ess's strange doings."

"What have you been saying about her?" inquired Oak, sharply turning
to the rest, and getting very warm.

"These middle-aged men have been pulling her over the coals for pride
and vanity," said Mark Clark; "but I say, let her have rope enough.
Bless her pretty face--shouldn't I like to do so--upon her cherry
lips!" The gallant Mark Clark here made a peculiar and well known
sound with his own.

"Mark," said Gabriel, sternly, "now you mind this! none of that
dalliance-talk--that smack-and-coddle style of yours--about Miss
Everdene.  I don't allow it.  Do you hear?"

"With all my heart, as I've got no chance," replied Mr. Clark,
cordially.

"I suppose you've been speaking against her?" said Oak, turning to
Joseph Poorgrass with a very grim look.

"No, no--not a word I--'tis a real joyful thing that she's no worse,
that's what I say," said Joseph, trembling and blushing with terror.
"Matthew just said--"

"Matthew Moon, what have you been saying?" asked Oak.

"I?  Why ye know I wouldn't harm a worm--no, not one underground
worm?" said Matthew Moon, looking very uneasy.

"Well, somebody has--and look here, neighbours," Gabriel, though one
of the quietest and most gentle men on earth, rose to the occasion,
with martial promptness and vigour.  "That's my fist."  Here he
placed his fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the
mathematical centre of the maltster's little table, and with it gave
a bump or two thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly
took in the idea of fistiness before he went further.  "Now--the
first man in the parish that I hear prophesying bad of our mistress,
why" (here the fist was raised and let fall as Thor might have done
with his hammer in assaying it)--"he'll smell and taste that--or I'm
a Dutchman."

All earnestly expressed by their features that their minds did not
wander to Holland for a moment on account of this statement, but were
deploring the difference which gave rise to the figure; and Mark
Clark cried "Hear, hear; just what I should ha' said." The dog George
looked up at the same time after the shepherd's menace, and though he
understood English but imperfectly, began to growl.

"Now, don't ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down!" said Henery,
with a deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of the kind in
Christianity.

"We hear that ye be a extraordinary good and clever man, shepherd,"
said Joseph Poorgrass with considerable anxiety from behind the
maltster's bedstead, whither he had retired for safety.  "'Tis a
great thing to be clever, I'm sure," he added, making movements
associated with states of mind rather than body; "we wish we were,
don't we, neighbours?"

"Ay, that we do, sure," said Matthew Moon, with a small anxious laugh
towards Oak, to show how very friendly disposed he was likewise.

"Who's been telling you I'm clever?" said Oak.

"'Tis blowed about from pillar to post quite common," said Matthew.
"We hear that ye can tell the time as well by the stars as we can by
the sun and moon, shepherd."

"Yes, I can do a little that way," said Gabriel, as a man of medium
sentiments on the subject.

"And that ye can make sun-dials, and prent folks' names upon their
waggons almost like copper-plate, with beautiful flourishes, and
great long tails.  A excellent fine thing for ye to be such a clever
man, shepherd.  Joseph Poorgrass used to prent to Farmer James
Everdene's waggons before you came, and 'a could never mind which way
to turn the J's and E's--could ye, Joseph?" Joseph shook his head
to express how absolute was the fact that he couldn't.  "And so you
used to do 'em the wrong way, like this, didn't ye, Joseph?" Matthew
marked on the dusty floor with his whip-handle

   [the word J A M E S appears here with the "J" and the "E"
   printed backwards]

"And how Farmer James would cuss, and call thee a fool, wouldn't he,
Joseph, when 'a seed his name looking so inside-out-like?" continued
Matthew Moon with feeling.

"Ay--'a would," said Joseph, meekly.  "But, you see, I wasn't so much
to blame, for them J's and E's be such trying sons o' witches for the
memory to mind whether they face backward or forward; and I always
had such a forgetful memory, too."

"'Tis a very bad affliction for ye, being such a man of calamities in
other ways."

"Well, 'tis; but a happy Providence ordered that it should be no
worse, and I feel my thanks.  As to shepherd, there, I'm sure mis'ess
ought to have made ye her baily--such a fitting man for't as you be."

"I don't mind owning that I expected it," said Oak, frankly.
"Indeed, I hoped for the place.  At the same time, Miss Everdene has
a right to be her own baily if she choose--and to keep me down to be
a common shepherd only."  Oak drew a slow breath, looked sadly into
the bright ashpit, and seemed lost in thoughts not of the most
hopeful hue.

The genial warmth of the fire now began to stimulate the nearly
lifeless lambs to bleat and move their limbs briskly upon the hay,
and to recognize for the first time the fact that they were born.
Their noise increased to a chorus of baas, upon which Oak pulled the
milk-can from before the fire, and taking a small tea-pot from the
pocket of his smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of
the helpless creatures which were not to be restored to their dams
how to drink from the spout--a trick they acquired with astonishing
aptitude.

"And she don't even let ye have the skins of the dead lambs, I hear?"
resumed Joseph Poorgrass, his eyes lingering on the operations of Oak
with the necessary melancholy.

"I don't have them," said Gabriel.

"Ye be very badly used, shepherd," hazarded Joseph again, in the hope
of getting Oak as an ally in lamentation after all.  "I think she's
took against ye--that I do."

"Oh no--not at all," replied Gabriel, hastily, and a sigh escaped
him, which the deprivation of lamb skins could hardly have caused.

Before any further remark had been added a shade darkened the door,
and Boldwood entered the malthouse, bestowing upon each a nod of a
quality between friendliness and condescension.

"Ah! Oak, I thought you were here," he said.  "I met the mail-cart
ten minutes ago, and a letter was put into my hand, which I opened
without reading the address.  I believe it is yours.  You must excuse
the accident please."

"Oh yes--not a bit of difference, Mr. Boldwood--not a bit," said
Gabriel, readily.  He had not a correspondent on earth, nor was there
a possible letter coming to him whose contents the whole parish would
not have been welcome to peruse.

Oak stepped aside, and read the following in an unknown hand:--

   DEAR FRIEND,--I do not know your name, but I think these
   few lines will reach you, which I wrote to thank you for
   your kindness to me the night I left Weatherbury in a
   reckless way.  I also return the money I owe you, which you
   will excuse my not keeping as a gift.  All has ended well,
   and I am happy to say I am going to be married to the young
   man who has courted me for some time--Sergeant Troy, of
   the 11th Dragoon Guards, now quartered in this town.  He
   would, I know, object to my having received anything except
   as a loan, being a man of great respectability and high
   honour--indeed, a nobleman by blood.

   I should be much obliged to you if you would keep the
   contents of this letter a secret for the present, dear
   friend.  We mean to surprise Weatherbury by coming there
   soon as husband and wife, though I blush to state it to one
   nearly a stranger.  The sergeant grew up in Weatherbury.
   Thanking you again for your kindness,

            I am, your sincere well-wisher,
                     FANNY ROBIN.

"Have you read it, Mr. Boldwood?" said Gabriel; "if not, you had
better do so.  I know you are interested in Fanny Robin."

Boldwood read the letter and looked grieved.

"Fanny--poor Fanny! the end she is so confident of has not yet
come, she should remember--and may never come.  I see she gives no
address."

"What sort of a man is this Sergeant Troy?" said Gabriel.

"H'm--I'm afraid not one to build much hope upon in such a case as
this," the farmer murmured, "though he's a clever fellow, and up to
everything.  A slight romance attaches to him, too.  His mother was
a French governess, and it seems that a secret attachment existed
between her and the late Lord Severn.  She was married to a poor
medical man, and soon after an infant was born; and while money was
forthcoming all went on well.  Unfortunately for her boy, his best
friends died; and he got then a situation as second clerk at a
lawyer's in Casterbridge.  He stayed there for some time, and might
have worked himself into a dignified position of some sort had he not
indulged in the wild freak of enlisting.  I have much doubt if ever
little Fanny will surprise us in the way she mentions--very much
doubt. A silly girl!--silly girl!"

The door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running Cainy
Ball out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny
trumpet, from which he coughed with noisy vigour and great distension
of face.

"Now, Cain Ball," said Oak, sternly, "why will you run so fast and
lose your breath so?  I'm always telling you of it."

"Oh--I--a puff of mee breath--went--the--wrong way, please, Mister
Oak, and made me cough--hok--hok!"

"Well--what have you come for?"

"I've run to tell ye," said the junior shepherd, supporting his
exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost, "that you must come
directly.  Two more ewes have twinned--that's what's the matter,
Shepherd Oak."

"Oh, that's it," said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present
his thoughts on poor Fanny.  "You are a good boy to run and tell me,
Cain, and you shall smell a large plum pudding some day as a treat.
But, before we go, Cainy, bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot
and have done with 'em."

Oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it
into the pot, and imprinted on the buttocks of the infant sheep the
initials of her he delighted to muse on--"B. E.," which signified to
all the region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to Farmer
Bathsheba Everdene, and to no one else.

"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off. Good morning, Mr. Boldwood."
The shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he
had himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the
lambing field hard by--their frames being now in a sleek and hopeful
state, pleasantly contrasting with their death's-door plight of half
an hour before.

Boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and
turned back.  He followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating
return.  On approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed,
the farmer drew out his pocket-book, unfastened it, and allowed it to
lie open on his hand.  A letter was revealed--Bathsheba's.

"I was going to ask you, Oak," he said, with unreal carelessness, "if
you know whose writing this is?"

Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed
face, "Miss Everdene's."

Oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name.
He now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought.  The
letter could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry
would not have been necessary.

Boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready
with their "Is it I?" in preference to objective reasoning.

"The question was perfectly fair," he returned--and there was
something incongruous in the serious earnestness with which he
applied himself to an argument on a valentine.  "You know it is
always expected that privy inquiries will be made: that's where
the--fun lies."  If the word "fun" had been "torture," it could not
have been uttered with a more constrained and restless countenance
than was Boldwood's then.

Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to
his house to breakfast--feeling twinges of shame and regret at having
so far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger.  He
again placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of
the circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriel's information.

ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'

On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of
women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church
called All Saints', in the distant barrack-town before-mentioned, at
the end of a service without a sermon.  They were about to disperse,
when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central
passage, arrested their attention.  The step echoed with a ring
unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs.  Everybody looked.  A
young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a
sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment
which was only the more marked by the intense vigour of his step, and
by the determination upon his face to show none.  A slight flush had
mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these
women; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till
he came close to the altar railing.  Here for a moment he stood
alone.

The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice,
perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space.  He
whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his
turn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they
also went up the chancel steps.

"'Tis a wedding!" murmured some of the women, brightening.  "Let's
wait!"

The majority again sat down.

There was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones
turned their heads.  From the interior face of the west wall of the
tower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell
beneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery
that struck the large bell in the tower.  Between the tower and the
church was a close screen, the door of which was kept shut during
services, hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight.  At present,
however, the door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on
the bell, and the mannikin's retreat into the nook again, were
visible to many, and audible throughout the church.

The jack had struck half-past eleven.

"Where's the woman?" whispered some of the spectators.

The young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of the old
pillars around.  He faced the south-east, and was as silent as he was
still.

The silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on,
and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved.  The rattle of the
quarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its
fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the
congregation to start palpably.

"I wonder where the woman is!" a voice whispered again.

There began now that slight shifting of feet, that artificial
coughing among several, which betrays a nervous suspense.  At length
there was a titter.  But the soldier never moved.  There he stood,
his face to the south-east, upright as a column, his cap in his hand.

The clock ticked on.  The women threw off their nervousness, and
titters and giggling became more frequent.  Then came a dead silence.
Every one was waiting for the end.  Some persons may have noticed how
extraordinarily the striking of quarters seems to quicken the flight
of time.  It was hardly credible that the jack had not got wrong with
the minutes when the rattle began again, the puppet emerged, and the
four quarters were struck fitfully as before.  One could almost be
positive that there was a malicious leer upon the hideous creature's
face, and a mischievous delight in its twitchings.  Then followed the
dull and remote resonance of the twelve heavy strokes in the tower
above.  The women were impressed, and there was no giggle this time.

The clergyman glided into the vestry, and the clerk vanished.  The
sergeant had not yet turned; every woman in the church was waiting to
see his face, and he appeared to know it.  At last he did turn, and
stalked resolutely down the nave, braving them all, with a compressed
lip.  Two bowed and toothless old almsmen then looked at each other
and chuckled, innocently enough; but the sound had a strange weird
effect in that place.

Opposite to the church was a paved square, around which several
overhanging wood buildings of old time cast a picturesque shade.  The
young man on leaving the door went to cross the square, when, in the
middle, he met a little woman.  The expression of her face, which had
been one of intense anxiety, sank at the sight of his nearly to
terror.

"Well?" he said, in a suppressed passion, fixedly looking at her.

"Oh, Frank--I made a mistake!--I thought that church with the spire
was All Saints', and I was at the door at half-past eleven to a
minute as you said.  I waited till a quarter to twelve, and found
then that I was in All Souls'.  But I wasn't much frightened, for
I thought it could be to-morrow as well."

"You fool, for so fooling me!  But say no more."

"Shall it be to-morrow, Frank?" she asked blankly.

"To-morrow!" and he gave vent to a hoarse laugh.  "I don't go through
that experience again for some time, I warrant you!"

"But after all," she expostulated in a trembling voice, "the mistake
was not such a terrible thing!  Now, dear Frank, when shall it be?"

"Ah, when?  God knows!" he said, with a light irony, and turning from
her walked rapidly away.

IN THE MARKET-PLACE

On Saturday Boldwood was in Casterbridge market house as usual, when
the disturber of his dreams entered and became visible to him.  Adam
had awakened from his deep sleep, and behold! there was Eve.  The
farmer took courage, and for the first time really looked at her.

Material causes and emotional effects are not to be arranged in
regular equation.  The result from capital employed in the production
of any movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the
cause itself is absurdly minute.  When women are in a freakish mood,
their usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect,
seemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that Bathsheba
was fated to be astonished to-day.

Boldwood looked at her--not slily, critically, or understandingly,
but blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing
train--as something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood.
To Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary
complements--comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and
permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical,
unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely
erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty
to consider.

He saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and profile, and
the roundness of her chin and throat.  He saw then the side of her
eyelids, eyes, and lashes, and the shape of her ear.  Next he noticed
her figure, her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes.

Boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was right in
his thought, for it seemed impossible that this romance in the flesh,
if so sweet as he imagined, could have been going on long without
creating a commotion of delight among men, and provoking more inquiry
than Bathsheba had done, even though that was not a little.  To the
best of his judgement neither nature nor art could improve this
perfect one of an imperfect many.  His heart began to move within
him.  Boldwood, it must be remembered, though forty years of age, had
never before inspected a woman with the very centre and force of his
glance; they had struck upon all his senses at wide angles.

Was she really beautiful?  He could not assure himself that his
opinion was true even now.  He furtively said to a neighbour, "Is
Miss Everdene considered handsome?"

"Oh yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you
remember.  A very handsome girl indeed."

A man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions
on the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere
child's word on the point has the weight of an R.A.'s.  Boldwood was
satisfied now.

And this charming woman had in effect said to him, "Marry me."  Why
should she have done that strange thing?  Boldwood's blindness to
the difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and
originating what they do not suggest, was well matched by Bathsheba's
insensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings.

She was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young farmer,
adding up accounts with him as indifferently as if his face had been
the pages of a ledger.  It was evident that such a nature as his had
no attraction for a woman of Bathsheba's taste.  But Boldwood grew
hot down to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the
first time the threshold of "the injured lover's hell."  His first
impulse was to go and thrust himself between them.  This could be
done, but only in one way--by asking to see a sample of her corn.
Boldwood renounced the idea.  He could not make the request; it was
debasing loveliness to ask it to buy and sell, and jarred with his
conceptions of her.

All this time Bathsheba was conscious of having broken into that
dignified stronghold at last.  His eyes, she knew, were following her
everywhere.  This was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a
triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay.
But it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she
valued it only as she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.

Being a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects wherein
her heart was not involved, Bathsheba genuinely repented that a freak
which had owed its existence as much to Liddy as to herself, should
ever have been undertaken, to disturb the placidity of a man she
respected too highly to deliberately tease.

She that day nearly formed the intention of begging his pardon on
the very next occasion of their meeting.  The worst features of this
arrangement were that, if he thought she ridiculed him, an apology
would increase the offence by being disbelieved; and if he thought
she wanted him to woo her, it would read like additional evidence of
her forwardness.

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 manoeuvre 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.

THE SHEEP-WASHING--THE OFFER

Boldwood did eventually call upon her.  She was not at home.  "Of
course not," he murmured.  In contemplating Bathsheba as a woman, he
had forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturist--that
being as much of a farmer, and as extensive a farmer, as himself,
her probable whereabouts was out-of-doors at this time of the year.
This, and the other oversights Boldwood was guilty of, were natural
to the mood, and still more natural to the circumstances.  The
great aids to idealization in love were present here: occasional
observation of her from a distance, and the absence of social
intercourse with her--visual familiarity, oral strangeness.  The
smaller human elements were kept out of sight; the pettinesses that
enter so largely into all earthly living and doing were disguised by
the accident of lover and loved-one not being on visiting terms; and
there was hardly awakened a thought in Boldwood that sorry household
realities appertained to her, or that she, like all others, had
moments of commonplace, when to be least plainly seen was to be most
prettily remembered.  Thus a mild sort of apotheosis took place
in his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed within his own
horizon, a troubled creature like himself.

It was the end of May when the farmer determined to be no longer
repulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense.  He had by this
time grown used to being in love; the passion now startled him less
even when it tortured him more, and he felt himself adequate to the
situation.  On inquiring for her at her house they had told him she
was at the sheep-washing, and he went off to seek her there.

The sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of brickwork in
the meadows, full of the clearest water.  To birds on the wing its
glassy surface, reflecting the light sky, must have been visible for
miles around as a glistening Cyclops' eye in a green face.  The grass
about the margin at this season was a sight to remember long--in a
minor sort of way.  Its activity in sucking the moisture from the
rich damp sod was almost a process observable by the eye.  The
outskirts of this level water-meadow were diversified by rounded and
hollow pastures, where just now every flower that was not a buttercup
was a daisy.  The river slid along noiselessly as a shade, the
swelling reeds and sedge forming a flexible palisade upon its moist
brink.  To the north of the mead were trees, the leaves of which
were new, soft, and moist, not yet having stiffened and darkened
under summer sun and drought, their colour being yellow beside a
green--green beside a yellow.  From the recesses of this knot of
foliage the loud notes of three cuckoos were resounding through the
still air.

Boldwood went meditating down the slopes with his eyes on his boots,
which the yellow pollen from the buttercups had bronzed in artistic
gradations.  A tributary of the main stream flowed through the
basin of the pool by an inlet and outlet at opposite points of its
diameter.  Shepherd Oak, Jan Coggan, Moon, Poorgrass, Cain Ball,
and several others were assembled here, all dripping wet to the
very roots of their hair, and Bathsheba was standing by in a new
riding-habit--the most elegant she had ever worn--the reins of her
horse being looped over her arm.  Flagons of cider were rolling about
upon the green.  The meek sheep were pushed into the pool by Coggan
and Matthew Moon, who stood by the lower hatch, immersed to their
waists; then Gabriel, who stood on the brink, thrust them under as
they swam along, with an instrument like a crutch, formed for the
purpose, and also for assisting the exhausted animals when the wool
became saturated and they began to sink.  They were let out against
the stream, and through the upper opening, all impurities flowing
away below.  Cainy Ball and Joseph, who performed this latter
operation, were if possible wetter than the rest; they resembled
dolphins under a fountain, every protuberance and angle of their
clothes dribbling forth a small rill.

Boldwood came close and bade her good morning, with such constraint
that she could not but think he had stepped across to the washing for
its own sake, hoping not to find her there; more, she fancied his
brow severe and his eye slighting.  Bathsheba immediately contrived
to withdraw, and glided along by the river till she was a stone's
throw off.  She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a
consciousness that love was encircling her like a perfume.  Instead
of turning or waiting, Bathsheba went further among the high sedges,
but Boldwood seemed determined, and pressed on till they were
completely past the bend of the river. Here, without being seen,
they could hear the splashing and shouts of the washers above.

"Miss Everdene!" said the farmer.

She trembled, turned, and said "Good morning."  His tone was so
utterly removed from all she had expected as a beginning.  It was
lowness and quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep meanings, their
form, at the same time, being scarcely expressed.  Silence has
sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied
soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more
impressive than speech.  In the same way, to say a little is often to
tell more than to say a great deal.  Boldwood told everything in that
word.

As the consciousness expands on learning that what was fancied to
be the rumble of wheels is the reverberation of thunder, so did
Bathsheba's at her intuitive conviction.

"I feel--almost too much--to think," he said, with a solemn
simplicity.  "I have come to speak to you without preface.  My life
is not my own since I have beheld you clearly, Miss Everdene--I come
to make you an offer of marriage."

Bathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral countenance, and
all the motion she made was that of closing lips which had previously
been a little parted.

"I am now forty-one years old," he went on.  "I may have been called
a confirmed bachelor, and I was a confirmed bachelor.  I had never
any views of myself as a husband in my earlier days, nor have I made
any calculation on the subject since I have been older.  But we all
change, and my change, in this matter, came with seeing you.  I have
felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in
every respect.  Beyond all things, I want you as my wife."

"I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do not
feel--what would justify me to--in accepting your offer," she
stammered.

This giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the sluices of
feeling that Boldwood had as yet kept closed.

"My life is a burden without you," he exclaimed, in a low voice.  "I
want you--I want you to let me say I love you again and again!"

Bathsheba answered nothing, and the horse upon her arm seemed so
impressed that instead of cropping the herbage she looked up.

"I think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what I have to
tell!"

Bathsheba's momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why he
thought that, till she remembered that, far from being a conceited
assumption on Boldwood's part, it was but the natural conclusion of
serious reflection based on deceptive premises of her own offering.

"I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you," the farmer
continued in an easier tone, "and put my rugged feeling into a
graceful shape: but I have neither power nor patience to learn such
things.  I want you for my wife--so wildly that no other feeling can
abide in me; but I should not have spoken out had I not been led to
hope."

"The valentine again!  O that valentine!" she said to herself, but
not a word to him.

"If you can love me say so, Miss Everdene.  If not--don't say no!"

"Mr. Boldwood, it is painful to have to say I am surprised, so that
I don't know how to answer you with propriety and respect--but am
only just able to speak out my feeling--I mean my meaning; that I am
afraid I can't marry you, much as I respect you.  You are too
dignified for me to suit you, sir."

"But, Miss Everdene!"

"I--I didn't--I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that
valentine--forgive me, sir--it was a wanton thing which no woman with
any self-respect should have done.  If you will only pardon my
thoughtlessness, I promise never to--"

"No, no, no.  Don't say thoughtlessness!  Make me think it was
something more--that it was a sort of prophetic instinct--the
beginning of a feeling that you would like me.  You torture me to say
it was done in thoughtlessness--I never thought of it in that light,
and I can't endure it. Ah!  I wish I knew how to win you! but that I
can't do--I can only ask if I have already got you.  If I have not,
and it is not true that you have come unwittingly to me as I have to
you, I can say no more."

"I have not fallen in love with you, Mr. Boldwood--certainly I must
say that."  She allowed a very small smile to creep for the first
time over her serious face in saying this, and the white row of upper
teeth, and keenly-cut lips already noticed, suggested an idea of
heartlessness, which was immediately contradicted by the pleasant
eyes.

"But you will just think--in kindness and condescension think--if you
cannot bear with me as a husband!  I fear I am too old for you, but
believe me I will take more care of you than would many a man of your
own age.  I will protect and cherish you with all my strength--I will
indeed!  You shall have no cares--be worried by no household affairs,
and live quite at ease, Miss Everdene.  The dairy superintendence
shall be done by a man--I can afford it well--you shall never have
so much as to look out of doors at haymaking time, or to think of
weather in the harvest.  I rather cling to the chaise, because it is
the same my poor father and mother drove, but if you don't like it
I will sell it, and you shall have a pony-carriage of your own.  I
cannot say how far above every other idea and object on earth you
seem to me--nobody knows--God only knows--how much you are to me!"

Bathsheba's heart was young, and it swelled with sympathy for the
deep-natured man who spoke so simply.

"Don't say it! don't!  I cannot bear you to feel so much, and me to
feel nothing.  And I am afraid they will notice us, Mr. Boldwood.
Will you let the matter rest now?  I cannot think collectedly.  I did
not know you were going to say this to me.  Oh, I am wicked to have
made you suffer so!"  She was frightened as well as agitated at his
vehemence.

"Say then, that you don't absolutely refuse.  Do not quite refuse?"

"I can do nothing.  I cannot answer."

"I may speak to you again on the subject?"

"Yes."

"I may think of you?"

"Yes, I suppose you may think of me."

"And hope to obtain you?"

"No--do not hope!  Let us go on."

"I will call upon you again to-morrow."

"No--please not.  Give me time."

"Yes--I will give you any time," he said earnestly and gratefully.
"I am happier now."

"No--I beg you!  Don't be happier if happiness only comes from my
agreeing.  Be neutral, Mr. Boldwood!  I must think."

"I will wait," he said.

And then she turned away.  Boldwood dropped his gaze to the ground,
and stood long like a man who did not know where he was.  Realities
then returned upon him like the pain of a wound received in an
excitement which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on.

PERPLEXITY--GRINDING THE SHEARS--A QUARREL

"He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire,"
Bathsheba mused.

Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind,
did not exercise kindness, here.  The rarest offerings of the purest
loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.

Bathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was eventually able
to look calmly at his offer.  It was one which many women of her own
station in the neighbourhood, and not a few of higher rank, would
have been wild to accept and proud to publish.  In every point of
view, ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable that she,
a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well-to-do,
and respected man.  He was close to her doors: his standing was
sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory.  Had she felt,
which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the
abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him, being a woman
who frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from
her whims.  Boldwood as a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she
esteemed and liked him, yet she did not want him.  It appears that
ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without
marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage
is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the
method is the same on both sides.  But the understood incentive on
the woman's part was wanting here.  Besides, Bathsheba's position
as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the
novelty had not yet begun to wear off.

But a disquiet filled her which was somewhat to her credit, for it
would have affected few.  Beyond the mentioned reasons with which
she combated her objections, she had a strong feeling that, having
been the one who began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the
consequences.  Still the reluctance remained.  She said in the same
breath that it would be ungenerous not to marry Boldwood, and that
she couldn't do it to save her life.

Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect.  An
Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed
actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion.
Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always
remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but,
unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into
deeds.

The next day to that of the declaration she found Gabriel Oak at the
bottom of her garden, grinding his shears for the sheep-shearing.
All the surrounding cottages were more or less scenes of the same
operation; the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts
of the village as from an armoury previous to a campaign.  Peace and
war kiss each other at their hours of preparation--sickles, scythes,
shears, and pruning-hooks, ranking with swords, bayonets, and lances,
in their common necessity for point and edge.

Cainy Ball turned the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, his head
performing a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the
wheel.  Oak stood somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of
sharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his
body thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced side-ways, with
a critical compression of the lips and contraction of the eyelids to
crown the attitude.

His mistress came up and looked upon them in silence for a minute or
two; then she said--

"Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare.  I'll turn the
winch of the grindstone.  I want to speak to you, Gabriel."

Cain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle.  Gabriel had glanced up
in intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again.
Bathsheba turned the winch, and Gabriel applied the shears.

The peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful
tendency to benumb the mind.  It is a sort of attenuated variety of
Ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history
of gaols.  The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the
body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump
somewhere between the eyebrows and the crown.  Bathsheba felt the
unpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen turns.

"Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears?" she said.  "My
head is in a whirl, and I can't talk."

Gabriel turned.  Bathsheba then began, with some awkwardness,
allowing her thoughts to stray occasionally from her story to attend
to the shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening.

"I wanted to ask you if the men made any observations on my going
behind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood yesterday?"

"Yes, they did," said Gabriel.  "You don't hold the shears right,
miss--I knew you wouldn't know the way--hold like this."

He relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two hands completely in
his own (taking each as we sometimes slap a child's hand in teaching
him to write), grasped the shears with her.  "Incline the edge so,"
he said.

Hands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a
peculiarly long time by the instructor as he spoke.

"That will do," exclaimed Bathsheba.  "Loose my hands.  I won't have
them held!  Turn the winch."

Gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the
grinding went on.

"Did the men think it odd?" she said again.

"Odd was not the idea, miss."

"What did they say?"

"That Farmer Boldwood's name and your own were likely to be flung
over pulpit together before the year was out."

"I thought so by the look of them!  Why, there's nothing in it.  A
more foolish remark was never made, and I want you to contradict it!
that's what I came for."

Gabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between his moments of
incredulity, relieved.

"They must have heard our conversation," she continued.

"Well, then, Bathsheba!" said Oak, stopping the handle, and gazing
into her face with astonishment.

"Miss Everdene, you mean," she said, with dignity.

"I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of marriage, I bain't
going to tell a story and say he didn't to please you.  I have
already tried to please you too much for my own good!"

Bathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity.  She did not know
whether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with
him for having got over it--his tone being ambiguous.

"I said I wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going
to be married to him," she murmured, with a slight decline in her
assurance.

"I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene.  And I could
likewise give an opinion to 'ee on what you have done."

"I daresay.  But I don't want your opinion."

"I suppose not," said Gabriel bitterly, and going on with his
turning, his words rising and falling in a regular swell and cadence
as he stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according
to his position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally
along the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground.

With Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always
happen, time gained was prudence insured.  It must be added, however,
that time was very seldom gained.  At this period the single opinion
in the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder
than her own was Gabriel Oak's.  And the outspoken honesty of his
character was such that on any subject, even that of her love for,
or marriage with, another man, the same disinterestedness of opinion
might be calculated on, and be had for the asking.  Thoroughly
convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve
constrained him not to injure that of another.  This is a lover's
most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.
Knowing he would reply truly she asked the question, painful as
she must have known the subject would be.  Such is the selfishness
of some charming women.  Perhaps it was some excuse for her thus
torturing honesty to her own advantage, that she had absolutely no
other sound judgment within easy reach.

"Well, what is your opinion of my conduct," she said, quietly.

"That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman."

In an instant Bathsheba's face coloured with the angry crimson of
a Danby sunset.  But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the
reticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more
noticeable.

The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake.

"Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my reprimanding you, for I
know it is rudeness; but I thought it would do good."

She instantly replied sarcastically--

"On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that I see in your
abuse the praise of discerning people!"

"I am glad you don't mind it, for I said it honestly and with every
serious meaning."

"I see.  But, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you
are amusing--just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes
say a sensible word."

It was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper,
and on that account Gabriel had never in his life kept his own
better.  He said nothing.  She then broke out--

"I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies?  In
my not marrying you, perhaps!"

"Not by any means," said Gabriel quietly.  "I have long given up
thinking of that matter."

"Or wishing it, I suppose," she said; and it was apparent that she
expected an unhesitating denial of this supposition.

Whatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words--

"Or wishing it either."

A woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her,
and with a rudeness which is not offensive.  Bathsheba would have
submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel
protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity
of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and
anathematizes--there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a
tenderness in the strife.  This was what she had been expecting,
and what she had not got.  To be lectured because the lecturer saw
her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was
exasperating.  He had not finished, either.  He continued in a more
agitated voice:--

"My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for
playing pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime.
Leading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action.
And even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you
might have let him find it out in some way of true loving-kindness,
and not by sending him a valentine's letter."

Bathsheba laid down the shears.

"I cannot allow any man to--to criticise my private conduct!" she
exclaimed.  "Nor will I for a minute.  So you'll please leave the
farm at the end of the week!"

It may have been a peculiarity--at any rate it was a fact--that when
Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip
trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one.
Her nether lip quivered now.

"Very well, so I will," said Gabriel calmly.  He had been held to
her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking,
rather than by a chain he could not break.  "I should be even better
pleased to go at once," he added.

"Go at once then, in Heaven's name!" said she, her eyes flashing at
his, though never meeting them.  "Don't let me see your face any
more."

"Very well, Miss Everdene--so it shall be."

And he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as
Moses left the presence of Pharaoh.

Boldwood is astonished and deeply moved to receive the anonymous valentine. When the mail is delivered the next day, Boldwood mistakenly snatches and opens a letter addressed to Gabriel since he is excited at the prospect of receiving more mail. When he realizes his mistake, he takes the letter to Gabriel at the pub, where Gabriel has been socializing with some of the other farmworkers. The letter is from Fanny; she returns the money Gabriel lent her, and informs him that she is soon to be married to Sergeant Troy, though she asks Gabriel not to tell anyone yet. Gabriel, however, shares the letter with Boldwood, who worries that Troy will fail to keep his promises. Boldwood then asks Gabriel if he recognizes the writing on the valentine, and Gabriel confirms that the writing is Bathsheba's. This news unsettles Boldwood, who begins to pay close attention to Bathsheba the next time he sees her. Noticing the change in Boldwood's reaction, Bathsheba feels a mixture of triumph and shame, and begins to worry that her careless action might have significant consequences. In early May, Boldwood goes to Bathsheba's farm and asks her to marry him. Bathsheba refuses, but is startled by the intensity with which Boldwood pleads with her to reconsider, insisting that all of his happiness depends on her. She reluctantly concedes that he may raise the topic of marriage again in the future, though she begs him not to cling to hopes of winning her. Afterwards, Bathsheba ponders the economic stability that marrying Boldwood would offer her. The next day, she brings up the conversation with Gabriel. At first she tells him that she doesn't want his opinion, and just wants him to contradict any rumors that she is now engaged to Boldwood, but she eventually permits him to tell her what he thinks about this turn of events. Boldwood rebukes her for playing pranks on Boldwood, leaving Bathsheba hurt and embarrassed. She angrily dismisses him from his job and tells him to leave the farm at once. The next day, some farmhands come hurrying to Bathsheba to tell her that many of the sheep have poisoned themselves and are going to die unless they receive a specialized operation that very few people know how to perform. The farmhands tell her that the only person who can save the sheep is Gabriel, but Bathsheba initially refuses to ask him for help. As the situation becomes more desperate, she sends a messenger demanding that Gabriel return to help her, and he refuses. She sends a letter with a softer tone, and this time Gabriel does come to the farm, where he saves most of the sheep. Realizing his value, she asks him to return to being her shepherd, and he agrees.

Bathsheba's playful gesture of sending the valentine to Boldwood was ill-conceived, but not malicious. Nonetheless, it unleashes a serious set of consequences. Boldwood is lonely and isolated; although he seems very reserved, the prospect that a woman might be attracted to him sends him rapidly spiraling into a kind of obsession with Bathsheba. As soon as she has his attention, Bathsheba becomes uncomfortable with it, since she knows deep down that she not behaved respectfully. Part of why she becomes so angry when Gabriel chastises her is because she was already feeling guilty about her actions. Bathsheba also has reason to regret her careless action since it leads to her having to make an uncomfortable decision about Boldwood's proposal. For all the same reasons she rejected Gabriel's proposal, she is still reluctant to give up her independence and she also does not feel love or desire for Boldwood. At the same time, especially as she reflects afterwards, Bathsheba is shrewd enough to see the practical advantages of the marriage. Her uncertainty is met with Boldwood's insistence on trying to convince her to think about it and come back to the question later. Whereas Gabriel immediately dropped the question when Bathsheba rejected him, Boldwood is persistent and refuses to take no as a final answer. Bathsheba's wavering, and Boldwood's refusal to give up, sets the stage for a long-drawn-out struggle between the two of them. The nature of the small, close-knit community is revealed by how quickly rumors begin to circulate that Bathsheba is going to marry Boldwood. Revealing that she is lonely without friends or family to confide in, Bathsheba turns to Gabriel looking for advice about her dilemma. She is not, however, willing to be vulnerable and admit that she wants his guidance, so she coyly disguises her intentions in bringing up the subject of her relationship with Boldwood. Perhaps because of this lack of transparency, Gabriel is frank that he does not think she has behaved well. On one hand, Gabriel's criticism reflects his love for her: he wants to see her being her best self, and he also does not want to see damage her reputation if she is perceived as trifling with men's affection. However, Bathsheba is somewhat justified in seeing Gabriel as being condescending and failing to respect the boundaries of employer and employee. Despite her attempt to assert her authority and independence by dismissing Gabriel from his job, Bathsheba is almost immediately placed in a vulnerable and needy position when her sheep get sick. She initially mishandles the situation by thinking she can exert authority over him, and has to learn the humbling lesson that she has to earn Gabriel's help by treating him with respect and kindness. In the end, his integrity and his love for her combine to compel him to come and help her. Bathsheba comes to realize how valuable Gabriel's help is to her, and the two of them come to an implicit agreement that they have to respect each other. At the same time, his devotion to her signals that he will likely stand by her no matter what.