The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a
few hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the
Western Circuit, having no business for Raye, he had not gone thither.
At the next town after that they did not open till the following
Monday, trials to begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of
things Raye would have arrived at the latter place on Monday afternoon;
but it was not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and grey wig,
curled in tiers, in the best fashion of Assyrian bas-reliefs, were seen
blowing and bobbing behind him as he hastily walked up the High Street
from his lodgings. But though he entered the assize building there was
nothing for him to do, and sitting at the blue baize table in the well
of the court, he mended pens with a mind far away from the case in
progress. Thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week earlier
he would not have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood of
dissatisfied depression.
He had contrived to see again the pretty rural maiden Anna, the day
after the fair, had walked out of the city with her to the earthworks
of Old Melchester, and feeling a violent fancy for her, had remained in
Melchester all Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; by persuasion obtaining
walks and meetings with the girl six or seven times during the
interval; had in brief won her, body and soul.
He supposed it must have been owing to the seclusion in which he had
lived of late in town that he had given way so unrestrainedly to a
passion for an artless creature whose inexperience had, from the first,
led her to place herself unreservedly in his hands. Much he deplored
trifling with her feelings for the sake of a passing desire; and he
could only hope that she might not live to suffer on his account.
She had begged him to come to her again; entreated him; wept. He had
promised that he would do so, and he meant to carry out that promise.
He could not desert her now. Awkward as such unintentional connections
were, the interspace of a hundred miles—which to a girl of her limited
capabilities was like a thousand—would effectually hinder this summer
fancy from greatly encumbering his life; while thought of her simple
love might do him the negative good of keeping him from idle pleasures
in town when he wished to work hard. His circuit journeys would take
him to Melchester three or four times a year; and then he could always
see her.
The pseudonym, or rather partial name, that he had given her as his
before knowing how far the acquaintance was going to carry him, had
been spoken on the spur of the moment, without any ulterior intention
whatever. He had not afterwards disturbed Anna’s error, but on leaving
her he had felt bound to give her an address at a stationer’s not far
from his chambers, at which she might write to him under the initials
‘C. B.’
In due time Raye returned to his London abode, having called at
Melchester on his way and spent a few additional hours with his
fascinating child of nature. In town he lived monotonously every day.
Often he and his rooms were enclosed by a tawny fog from all the world
besides, and when he lighted the gas to read or write by, his situation
seemed so unnatural that he would look into the fire and think of that
trusting girl at Melchester again and again. Often, oppressed by absurd
fondness for her, he would enter the dim religious nave of the Law
Courts by the north door, elbow other juniors habited like himself, and
like him unretained; edge himself into this or that crowded court where
a sensational case was going on, just as if he were in it, though the
police officers at the door knew as well as he knew himself that he had
no more concern with the business in hand than the patient idlers at
the gallery-door outside, who had waited to enter since eight in the
morning because, like him, they belonged to the classes that live on
expectation. But he would do these things to no purpose, and think how
greatly the characters in such scenes contrasted with the pink and
breezy Anna.
An unexpected feature in that peasant maiden’s conduct was that she had
not as yet written to him, though he had told her she might do so if
she wished. Surely a young creature had never before been so reticent
in such circumstances. At length he sent her a brief line, positively
requesting her to write. There was no answer by the return post, but
the day after a letter in a neat feminine hand, and bearing the
Melchester post-mark, was handed to him by the stationer.
The fact alone of its arrival was sufficient to satisfy his imaginative
sentiment. He was not anxious to open the epistle, and in truth did not
begin to read it for nearly half-an-hour, anticipating readily its
terms of passionate retrospect and tender adjuration. When at last he
turned his feet to the fireplace and unfolded the sheet, he was
surprised and pleased to find that neither extravagance nor vulgarity
was there. It was the most charming little missive he had ever received
from woman. To be sure the language was simple and the ideas were
slight; but it was so self-possessed; so purely that of a young girl
who felt her womanhood to be enough for her dignity that he read it
through twice. Four sides were filled, and a few lines written across,
after the fashion of former days; the paper, too, was common, and not
of the latest shade and surface. But what of those things? He had
received letters from women who were fairly called ladies, but never so
sensible, so human a letter as this. He could not single out any one
sentence and say it was at all remarkable or clever; the _ensemble_ of
the letter it was which won him; and beyond the one request that he
would write or come to her again soon there was nothing to show her
sense of a claim upon him.
To write again and develop a correspondence was the last thing Raye
would have preconceived as his conduct in such a situation; yet he did
send a short, encouraging line or two, signed with his pseudonym, in
which he asked for another letter, and cheeringly promised that he
would try to see her again on some near day, and would never forget how
much they had been to each other during their short acquaintance.