The Return of the Native
she preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to the door
as imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped out.
The calm, lone scene reassured her. She went forward to the palings and
leant over them, looking at the moon. She had stood thus but a little
time when the door again opened. Expecting to see the remainder of the
band Eustacia turned; but no—Clym Yeobright came out as softly as she
had done, and closed the door behind him.
He advanced and stood beside her. “I have an odd opinion,” he said,
“and should like to ask you a question. Are you a woman—or am I wrong?”
“I am a woman.”
His eyes lingered on her with great interest. “Do girls often play as
mummers now? They never used to.”
“They don’t now.”
“Why did you?”
“To get excitement and shake off depression,” she said in low tones.
“What depressed you?”
“Life.”
“That’s a cause of depression a good many have to put up with.”
“Yes.”
A long silence. “And do you find excitement?” asked Clym at last.
“At this moment, perhaps.”
“Then you are vexed at being discovered?”
“Yes; though I thought I might be.”
“I would gladly have asked you to our party had I known you wished to
come. Have I ever been acquainted with you in my youth?”
“Never.”
“Won’t you come in again, and stay as long as you like?”
“No. I wish not to be further recognized.”
“Well, you are safe with me.” After remaining in thought a minute he
added gently, “I will not intrude upon you longer. It is a strange way
of meeting, and I will not ask why I find a cultivated woman playing
such a part as this.”
She did not volunteer the reason which he seemed to hope for, and he
wished her good night, going thence round to the back of the house,
where he walked up and down by himself for some time before
re-entering.
Eustacia, warmed with an inner fire, could not wait for her companions
after this. She flung back the ribbons from her face, opened the gate,
and at once struck into the heath. She did not hasten along. Her
grandfather was in bed at this hour, for she so frequently walked upon
the hills on moonlight nights that he took no notice of her comings and
goings, and, enjoying himself in his own way, left her to do likewise.
A more important subject than that of getting indoors now engrossed
her. Yeobright, if he had the least curiosity, would infallibly
discover her name. What then? She first felt a sort of exultation at
the way in which the adventure had terminated, even though at moments
between her exultations she was abashed and blushful. Then this
consideration recurred to chill her: What was the use of her exploit?
She was at present a total stranger to the Yeobright family. The
unreasonable nimbus of romance with which she had encircled that man
might be her misery. How could she allow herself to become so
infatuated with a stranger? And to fill the cup of her sorrow there
would be Thomasin, living day after day in inflammable proximity to
him; for she had just learnt that, contrary to her first belief, he was
going to stay at home some considerable time.
She reached the wicket at Mistover Knap, but before opening it she
turned and faced the heath once more. The form of Rainbarrow stood
above the hills, and the moon stood above Rainbarrow. The air was
charged with silence and frost. The scene reminded Eustacia of a
circumstance which till that moment she had totally forgotten. She had
promised to meet Wildeve by the Barrow this very night at eight, to
give a final answer to his pleading for an elopement.
She herself had fixed the evening and the hour. He had probably come to
the spot, waited there in the cold, and been greatly disappointed.
“Well, so much the better—it did not hurt him,” she said serenely.
Wildeve had at present the rayless outline of the sun through smoked
glass, and she could say such things as that with the greatest
facility.
She remained deeply pondering; and Thomasin’s winning manner towards
her cousin arose again upon Eustacia’s mind.
“O that she had been married to Damon before this!” she said. “And she
would if it hadn’t been for me! If I had only known—if I had only
known!”
Eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and,
sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder,
entered the shadow of the roof. She threw off her trappings in the
outhouse, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber.
VII.
A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness
The old captain’s prevailing indifference to his granddaughter’s
movements left her free as a bird to follow her own courses; but it so
happened that he did take upon himself the next morning to ask her why
she had walked out so late.
“Only in search of events, Grandfather,” she said, looking out of the
window with that drowsy latency of manner which discovered so much
force behind it whenever the trigger was pressed.
“Search of events—one would think you were one of the bucks I knew at
one-and-twenty.”
“It is lonely here.”
“So much the better. If I were living in a town my whole time would be
taken up in looking after you. I fully expected you would have been
home when I returned from the Woman.”
“I won’t conceal what I did. I wanted an adventure, and I went with the
mummers. I played the part of the Turkish Knight.”
“No, never? Ha, ha! Good gad! I didn’t expect it of you, Eustacia.”
“It was my first performance, and it certainly will be my last. Now I
have told you—and remember it is a secret.”
“Of course. But, Eustacia, you never did—ha! ha! Dammy, how ’twould
have pleased me forty years ago! But remember, no more of it, my girl.
You may walk on the heath night or day, as you choose, so that you
don’t bother me; but no figuring in breeches again.”
“You need have no fear for me, Grandpapa.”
Here the conversation ceased, Eustacia’s moral training never exceeding
in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if it ever became
profitable to good works, would be a result not dear at the price. But
her thoughts soon strayed far from her own personality; and, full of a
passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not
even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around
her, restless as Ahasuerus the Jew. She was about half a mile from her
residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a
little way in advance—dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight and she
guessed it to signify Diggory Venn.
When the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock of reddle during
the last month had inquired where Venn was to be found, people replied,
“On Egdon Heath.” Day after day the answer was the same. Now, since
Egdon was populated with heath-croppers and furze-cutters rather than
with sheep and shepherds, and the downs where most of the latter were
to be found lay some to the north, some to the west of Egdon, his
reason for camping about there like Israel in Zin was not apparent. The
position was central and occasionally desirable. But the sale of reddle
was not Diggory’s primary object in remaining on the heath,
particularly at so late a period of the year, when most travellers of
his class had gone into winter quarters.
Eustacia looked at the lonely man. Wildeve had told her at their last
meeting that Venn had been thrust forward by Mrs. Yeobright as one
ready and anxious to take his place as Thomasin’s betrothed. His figure
was perfect, his face young and well outlined, his eye bright, his
intelligence keen, and his position one which he could readily better
if he chose. But in spite of possibilities it was not likely that
Thomasin would accept this Ishmaelitish creature while she had a cousin
like Yeobright at her elbow, and Wildeve at the same time not
absolutely indifferent. Eustacia was not long in guessing that poor
Mrs. Yeobright, in her anxiety for her niece’s future, had mentioned
this lover to stimulate the zeal of the other. Eustacia was on the side
of the Yeobrights now, and entered into the spirit of the aunt’s
desire.
“Good morning, miss,” said the reddleman, taking off his cap of
hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill-will from recollection of
their last meeting.
“Good morning, reddleman,” she said, hardly troubling to lift her
heavily shaded eyes to his. “I did not know you were so near. Is your
van here too?”
Venn moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense brake of
purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast dimensions as almost to
form a dell. Brambles, though churlish when handled, are kindly shelter
in early winter, being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their
leaves.
The roof and chimney of Venn’s caravan showed behind the tracery and
tangles of the brake.
“You remain near this part?” she asked with more interest.
“Yes, I have business here.”
“Not altogether the selling of reddle?”
“It has nothing to do with that.”
“It has to do with Miss Yeobright?”
Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said
frankly, “Yes, miss; it is on account of her.”
“On account of your approaching marriage with her?”
Venn flushed through his stain. “Don’t make sport of me, Miss Vye,” he
said.
“It isn’t true?”
“Certainly not.”
She was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere _pis aller_ in
Mrs. Yeobright’s mind; one, moreover, who had not even been informed of
his promotion to that lowly standing. “It was a mere notion of mine,”
she said quietly; and was about to pass by without further speech,
when, looking round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure
serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to the top
where she stood. Owing to the necessary windings of his course his back
was at present towards them. She glanced quickly round; to escape that
man there was only one way. Turning to Venn, she said, “Would you allow
me to rest a few minutes in your van? The banks are damp for sitting
on.”
“Certainly, miss; I’ll make a place for you.”
She followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled dwelling
into which Venn mounted, placing the three-legged stool just within the
door.
“That is the best I can do for you,” he said, stepping down and
retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of his pipe as he
walked up and down.
Eustacia bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool, ensconced from
view on the side towards the trackway. Soon she heard the brushing of
other feet than the reddleman’s, a not very friendly “Good day” uttered
by two men in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the
foot-fall of one of them in a direction onwards. Eustacia stretched her
neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back and
shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why.
It was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any
generosity at all in its composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a
once-loved one who is beloved no more.
When Eustacia descended to proceed on her way the reddleman came near.
“That was Mr. Wildeve who passed, miss,” he said slowly, and expressed
by his face that he expected her to feel vexed at having been sitting
unseen.
“Yes, I saw him coming up the hill,” replied Eustacia. “Why should you
tell me that?” It was a bold question, considering the reddleman’s
knowledge of her past love; but her undemonstrative manner had power to
repress the opinions of those she treated as remote from her.
“I am glad to hear that you can ask it,” said the reddleman bluntly.
“And, now I think of it, it agrees with what I saw last night.”
“Ah—what was that?” Eustacia wished to leave him, but wished to know.
“Mr. Wildeve stayed at Rainbarrow a long time waiting for a lady who
didn’t come.”
“You waited too, it seems?”