The Return of the Native
replied Eustacia quickly. “If you do not love her it is the most
merciful thing in the long run to leave her as she is. That’s always
the best way. There, now I have been unwomanly, I suppose. When you
have left me I am always angry with myself for things that I have said
to you.”
Wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. The
pause was filled up by the intonation of a pollard thorn a little way
to windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as
through a strainer. It was as if the night sang dirges with clenched
teeth.
She continued, half sorrowfully, “Since meeting you last, it has
occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not for love of me you
did not marry her. Tell me, Damon—I’ll try to bear it. Had I nothing
whatever to do with the matter?”
“Do you press me to tell?”
“Yes, I must know. I see I have been too ready to believe in my own
power.”
“Well, the immediate reason was that the license would not do for the
place, and before I could get another she ran away. Up to that point
you had nothing to do with it. Since then her aunt has spoken to me in
a tone which I don’t at all like.”
“Yes, yes! I am nothing in it—I am nothing in it. You only trifle with
me. Heaven, what can I, Eustacia Vye, be made of to think so much of
you!”
“Nonsense; do not be so passionate.... Eustacia, how we roved among
these bushes last year, when the hot days had got cool, and the shades
of the hills kept us almost invisible in the hollows!”
She remained in moody silence till she said, “Yes; and how I used to
laugh at you for daring to look up to me! But you have well made me
suffer for that since.”
“Yes, you served me cruelly enough until I thought I had found someone
fairer than you. A blessed find for me, Eustacia.”
“Do you still think you found somebody fairer?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The scales are balanced so nicely
that a feather would turn them.”
“But don’t you really care whether I meet you or whether I don’t?” she
said slowly.
“I care a little, but not enough to break my rest,” replied the young
man languidly. “No, all that’s past. I find there are two flowers where
I thought there was only one. Perhaps there are three, or four, or any
number as good as the first.... Mine is a curious fate. Who would have
thought that all this could happen to me?”
She interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love or anger
seemed an equally possible issue, “Do you love me now?”
“Who can say?”
“Tell me; I will know it!”
“I do, and I do not,” said he mischievously. “That is, I have my times
and my seasons. One moment you are too tall, another moment you are too
do-nothing, another too melancholy, another too dark, another I don’t
know what, except—that you are not the whole world to me that you used
to be, my dear. But you are a pleasant lady to know and nice to meet,
and I dare say as sweet as ever—almost.”
Eustacia was silent, and she turned from him, till she said, in a voice
of suspended mightiness, “I am for a walk, and this is my way.”
“Well, I can do worse than follow you.”
“You know you can’t do otherwise, for all your moods and changes!” she
answered defiantly. “Say what you will; try as you may; keep away from
me all that you can—you will never forget me. You will love me all your
life long. You would jump to marry me!”
“So I would!” said Wildeve. “Such strange thoughts as I’ve had from
time to time, Eustacia; and they come to me this moment. You hate the
heath as much as ever; that I know.”
“I do,” she murmured deeply. “’Tis my cross, my shame, and will be my
death!”
“I abhor it too,” said he. “How mournfully the wind blows round us
now!”
She did not answer. Its tone was indeed solemn and pervasive. Compound
utterances addressed themselves to their senses, and it was possible to
view by ear the features of the neighbourhood. Acoustic pictures were
returned from the darkened scenery; they could hear where the tracts of
heather began and ended; where the furze was growing stalky and tall;
where it had been recently cut; in what direction the fir-clump lay,
and how near was the pit in which the hollies grew; for these differing
features had their voices no less than their shapes and colours.
“God, how lonely it is!” resumed Wildeve. “What are picturesque ravines
and mists to us who see nothing else? Why should we stay here? Will you
go with me to America? I have kindred in Wisconsin.”
“That wants consideration.”
“It seems impossible to do well here, unless one were a wild bird or a
landscape-painter. Well?”
“Give me time,” she softly said, taking his hand. “America is so far
away. Are you going to walk with me a little way?”
As Eustacia uttered the latter words she retired from the base of the
barrow, and Wildeve followed her, so that the reddleman could hear no
more.
He lifted the turves and arose. Their black figures sank and
disappeared from against the sky. They were as two horns which the
sluggish heath had put forth from its crown, like a mollusc, and had
now again drawn in.
The reddleman’s walk across the vale, and over into the next where his
cart lay, was not sprightly for a slim young fellow of twenty-four. His
spirit was perturbed to aching. The breezes that blew around his mouth
in that walk carried off upon them the accents of a commination.
He entered the van, where there was a fire in a stove. Without lighting
his candle he sat down at once on the three-legged stool, and pondered
on what he had seen and heard touching that still-loved one of his. He
uttered a sound which was neither sigh nor sob, but was even more
indicative than either of a troubled mind.
“My Tamsie,” he whispered heavily. “What can be done? Yes, I will see
that Eustacia Vye.”
X.
A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion
The next morning, at the time when the height of the sun appeared very
insignificant from any part of the heath as compared with the altitude
of Rainbarrow, and when all the little hills in the lower levels were
like an archipelago in a fog-formed Ægean, the reddleman came from the
brambled nook which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the
slopes of Mistover Knap.
Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen
round eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to
converge upon a passer-by. Feathered species sojourned here in hiding
which would have created wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard haunted
the spot, and not many years before this five and twenty might have
been seen in Egdon at one time. Marsh-harriers looked up from the
valley by Wildeve’s. A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this
hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in
England; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot
the African truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers
thought fit to enter Egdon no more.
A traveller who should walk and observe any of these visitants as Venn
observed them now could feel himself to be in direct communication with
regions unknown to man. Here in front of him was a wild mallard—just
arrived from the home of the north wind. The creature brought within
him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm
episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin
underfoot—the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird,
like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to
think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade
of memories.
Venn passed on through these towards the house of the isolated beauty
who lived up among them and despised them. The day was Sunday; but as
going to church, except to be married or buried, was exceptional at
Egdon, this made little difference. He had determined upon the bold
stroke of asking for an interview with Miss Vye—to attack her position
as Thomasin’s rival either by art or by storm, showing therein,
somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a
certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. The great Frederick
making war on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing terms to the
beautiful Queen of Prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex
than the reddleman was, in his peculiar way, in planning the
displacement of Eustacia.
To call at the captain’s cottage was always more or less an undertaking
for the inferior inhabitants. Though occasionally chatty, his moods
were erratic, and nobody could be certain how he would behave at any
particular moment. Eustacia was reserved, and lived very much to
herself. Except the daughter of one of the cotters, who was their
servant, and a lad who worked in the garden and stable, scarcely anyone
but themselves ever entered the house. They were the only genteel
people of the district except the Yeobrights, and though far from rich,
they did not feel that necessity for preserving a friendly face towards
every man, bird, and beast which influenced their poorer neighbours.
When the reddleman entered the garden the old man was looking through
his glass at the stain of blue sea in the distant landscape, the little
anchors on his buttons twinkling in the sun. He recognized Venn as his
companion on the highway, but made no remark on that circumstance,
merely saying, “Ah, reddleman—you here? Have a glass of grog?”
Venn declined, on the plea of it being too early, and stated that his
business was with Miss Vye. The captain surveyed him from cap to
waistcoat and from waistcoat to leggings for a few moments, and finally
asked him to go indoors.
Miss Vye was not to be seen by anybody just then; and the reddleman
waited in the window-bench of the kitchen, his hands hanging across his
divergent knees, and his cap hanging from his hands.
“I suppose the young lady is not up yet?” he presently said to the
servant.
“Not quite yet. Folks never call upon ladies at this time of day.”
“Then I’ll step outside,” said Venn. “If she is willing to see me, will
she please send out word, and I’ll come in.”
The reddleman left the house and loitered on the hill adjoining. A
considerable time elapsed, and no request for his presence was brought.
He was beginning to think that his scheme had failed, when he beheld
the form of Eustacia herself coming leisurely towards him. A sense of
novelty in giving audience to that singular figure had been sufficient
to draw her forth.
She seemed to feel, after a bare look at Diggory Venn, that the man had
come on a strange errand, and that he was not so mean as she had
thought him; for her close approach did not cause him to writhe
uneasily, or shift his feet, or show any of those little signs which
escape an ingenuous rustic at the advent of the uncommon in womankind.
On his inquiring if he might have a conversation with her she replied,
“Yes, walk beside me,” and continued to move on.
Before they had gone far it occurred to the perspicacious reddleman
that he would have acted more wisely by appearing less
unimpressionable, and he resolved to correct the error as soon as he
could find opportunity.
“I have made so bold, miss, as to step across and tell you some strange
news which has come to my ears about that man.”
“Ah! what man?”
He jerked his elbow to the southeast—the direction of the Quiet Woman.
Eustacia turned quickly to him. “Do you mean Mr. Wildeve?”
“Yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and I have
come to let you know of it, because I believe you might have power to
drive it away.”
“I? What is the trouble?”
“It is quite a secret. It is that he may refuse to marry Thomasin
Yeobright after all.”
Eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her