The Return of the Native
“Yes, I always do. I was glad to see him disappointed. He will be there
again tonight.”
“To be again disappointed. The truth is, reddleman, that that lady, so
far from wishing to stand in the way of Thomasin’s marriage with Mr.
Wildeve, would be very glad to promote it.”
Venn felt much astonishment at this avowal, though he did not show it
clearly; that exhibition may greet remarks which are one remove from
expectation, but it is usually withheld in complicated cases of two
removes and upwards. “Indeed, miss,” he replied.
“How do you know that Mr. Wildeve will come to Rainbarrow again
tonight?” she asked.
“I heard him say to himself that he would. He’s in a regular temper.”
Eustacia looked for a moment what she felt, and she murmured, lifting
her deep dark eyes anxiously to his, “I wish I knew what to do. I don’t
want to be uncivil to him; but I don’t wish to see him again; and I
have some few little things to return to him.”
“If you choose to send ’em by me, miss, and a note to tell him that you
wish to say no more to him, I’ll take it for you quite privately. That
would be the most straightforward way of letting him know your mind.”
“Very well,” said Eustacia. “Come towards my house, and I will bring it
out to you.”
She went on, and as the path was an infinitely small parting in the
shaggy locks of the heath, the reddleman followed exactly in her trail.
She saw from a distance that the captain was on the bank sweeping the
horizon with his telescope; and bidding Venn to wait where he stood she
entered the house alone.
In ten minutes she returned with a parcel and a note, and said, in
placing them in his hand, “Why are you so ready to take these for me?”
“Can you ask that?”
“I suppose you think to serve Thomasin in some way by it. Are you as
anxious as ever to help on her marriage?”
Venn was a little moved. “I would sooner have married her myself,” he
said in a low voice. “But what I feel is that if she cannot be happy
without him I will do my duty in helping her to get him, as a man
ought.”
Eustacia looked curiously at the singular man who spoke thus. What a
strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of
selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion,
and sometimes its only one! The reddleman’s disinterestedness was so
well deserving of respect that it overshot respect by being barely
comprehended; and she almost thought it absurd.
“Then we are both of one mind at last,” she said.
“Yes,” replied Venn gloomily. “But if you would tell me, miss, why you
take such an interest in her, I should be easier. It is so sudden and
strange.”
Eustacia appeared at a loss. “I cannot tell you that, reddleman,” she
said coldly.
Venn said no more. He pocketed the letter, and, bowing to Eustacia,
went away.
Rainbarrow had again become blended with night when Wildeve ascended
the long acclivity at its base. On his reaching the top a shape grew up
from the earth immediately behind him. It was that of Eustacia’s
emissary. He slapped Wildeve on the shoulder. The feverish young
inn-keeper and ex-engineer started like Satan at the touch of
Ithuriel’s spear.
“The meeting is always at eight o’clock, at this place,” said Venn,
“and here we are—we three.”
“We three?” said Wildeve, looking quickly round.
“Yes; you, and I, and she. This is she.” He held up the letter and
parcel.
Wildeve took them wonderingly. “I don’t quite see what this means,” he
said. “How do you come here? There must be some mistake.”
“It will be cleared from your mind when you have read the letter.
Lanterns for one.” The reddleman struck a light, kindled an inch of
tallow-candle which he had brought, and sheltered it with his cap.
“Who are you?” said Wildeve, discerning by the candle-light an obscure
rubicundity of person in his companion. “You are the reddleman I saw on
the hill this morning—why, you are the man who——”
“Please read the letter.”
“If you had come from the other one I shouldn’t have been surprised,”
murmured Wildeve as he opened the letter and read. His face grew
serious.
“To Mr. WILDEVE.
“After some thought I have decided once and for all that we must hold
no further communication. The more I consider the matter the more I am
convinced that there must be an end to our acquaintance. Had you been
uniformly faithful to me throughout these two years you might now have
some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly
consider what I bore during the period of your desertion, and how I
passively put up with your courtship of another without once
interfering, you will, I think, own that I have a right to consult my
own feelings when you come back to me again. That these are not what
they were towards you may, perhaps, be a fault in me, but it is one
which you can scarcely reproach me for when you remember how you left
me for Thomasin.
The little articles you gave me in the early part of our friendship
are returned by the bearer of this letter. They should rightly have
been sent back when I first heard of your engagement to her.
“EUSTACIA.”
By the time that Wildeve reached her name the blankness with which he
had read the first half of the letter intensified to mortification. “I
am made a great fool of, one way and another,” he said pettishly. “Do
you know what is in this letter?”
The reddleman hummed a tune.
“Can’t you answer me?” asked Wildeve warmly.
“Ru-um-tum-tum,” sang the reddleman.
Wildeve stood looking on the ground beside Venn’s feet, till he allowed
his eyes to travel upwards over Diggory’s form, as illuminated by the
candle, to his head and face. “Ha-ha! Well, I suppose I deserve it,
considering how I have played with them both,” he said at last, as much
to himself as to Venn. “But of all the odd things that ever I knew, the
oddest is that you should so run counter to your own interests as to
bring this to me.”
“My interests?”
“Certainly. ’Twas your interest not to do anything which would send me
courting Thomasin again, now she has accepted you—or something like it.
Mrs. Yeobright says you are to marry her. ’Tisn’t true, then?”
“Good Lord! I heard of this before, but didn’t believe it. When did she
say so?”
Wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done.
“I don’t believe it now,” cried Venn.
“Ru-um-tum-tum,” sang Wildeve.
“O Lord—how we can imitate!” said Venn contemptuously. “I’ll have this
out. I’ll go straight to her.”
Diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, Wildeve’s eye passing over his
form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper.
When the reddleman’s figure could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself
descended and plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale.
To lose the two women—he who had been the well-beloved of both—was too
ironical an issue to be endured. He could only decently save himself by
Thomasin; and once he became her husband, Eustacia’s repentance, he
thought, would set in for a long and bitter term. It was no wonder that
Wildeve, ignorant of the new man at the back of the scene, should have
supposed Eustacia to be playing a part. To believe that the letter was
not the result of some momentary pique, to infer that she really gave
him up to Thomasin, would have required previous knowledge of her
transfiguration by that man’s influence. Who was to know that she had
grown generous in the greediness of a new passion, that in coveting one
cousin she was dealing liberally with another, that in her eagerness to
appropriate she gave way?
Full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart of the
proud girl, Wildeve went his way.
Meanwhile Diggory Venn had returned to his van, where he stood looking
thoughtfully into the stove. A new vista was opened up to him. But,
however promising Mrs. Yeobright’s views of him might be as a candidate
for her niece’s hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour of
Thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild mode
of life. In this he saw little difficulty.
He could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing Thomasin
and detailing his plan. He speedily plunged himself into toilet
operations, pulled a suit of cloth clothes from a box, and in about
twenty minutes stood before the van-lantern as a reddleman in nothing
but his face, the vermilion shades of which were not to be removed in a
day. Closing the door and fastening it with a padlock, Venn set off
towards Blooms-End.
He had reached the white palings and laid his hand upon the gate when
the door of the house opened, and quickly closed again. A female form
had glided in. At the same time a man, who had seemingly been standing
with the woman in the porch, came forward from the house till he was
face to face with Venn. It was Wildeve again.
“Man alive, you’ve been quick at it,” said Diggory sarcastically.
“And you slow, as you will find,” said Wildeve. “And,” lowering his
voice, “you may as well go back again now. I’ve claimed her, and got
her. Good night, reddleman!” Thereupon Wildeve walked away.
Venn’s heart sank within him, though it had not risen unduly high. He
stood leaning over the palings in an indecisive mood for nearly a
quarter of an hour. Then he went up the garden path, knocked, and asked
for Mrs. Yeobright.
Instead of requesting him to enter she came to the porch. A discourse
was carried on between them in low measured tones for the space of ten
minutes or more. At the end of the time Mrs. Yeobright went in, and
Venn sadly retraced his steps into the heath. When he had again
regained his van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face at once
began to pull off his best clothes, till in the course of a few minutes
he reappeared as the confirmed and irretrievable reddleman that he had
seemed before.
VIII.
Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart
On that evening the interior of Blooms-End, though cosy and
comfortable, had been rather silent. Clym Yeobright was not at home.
Since the Christmas party he had gone on a few days’ visit to a friend
about ten miles off.
The shadowy form seen by Venn to part from Wildeve in the porch, and
quickly withdraw into the house, was Thomasin’s. On entering she threw
down a cloak which had been carelessly wrapped round her, and came
forward to the light, where Mrs. Yeobright sat at her work-table, drawn
up within the settle, so that part of it projected into the
chimney-corner.
“I don’t like your going out after dark alone, Tamsin,” said her aunt
quietly, without looking up from her work.
“I have only been just outside the door.”
“Well?” inquired Mrs. Yeobright, struck by a change in the tone of
Thomasin’s voice, and observing her. Thomasin’s cheek was flushed to a
pitch far beyond that which it had reached before her troubles, and her
eyes glittered.
“It was _he_ who knocked,” she said.
“I thought as much.”
“He wishes the marriage to be at once.”
“Indeed! What—is he anxious?” Mrs. Yeobright directed a searching look
upon her niece. “Why did not Mr. Wildeve come in?”
“He did not wish to. You are not friends with him, he says. He would
like the wedding to be the day after tomorrow, quite privately; at the
church of his parish—not at ours.”
“Oh! And what did you say?”
“I agreed to it,” Thomasin answered firmly. “I am a practical woman
now. I don’t believe in hearts at all. I would marry him under any
circumstances since—since Clym’s letter.”
A letter was lying on Mrs. Yeobright’s work-basket, and at Thomasin’s
words her aunt reopened it, and silently read for the tenth time that
day:—
“What is the meaning of this silly story that people are circulating
about Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve? I should call such a scandal
humiliating if there was the least chance of its being true. How could