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CHAPTER XVII - 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 today.
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.
Content of CHAPTER XVII - IN THE MARKET-PLACE [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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Read previous: CHAPTER XVI - ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'
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