The Return of the Native
is so much better than this.”
“I suppose when you first saw me and heard about me I was wrapped in a
sort of golden halo to your eyes—a man who knew glorious things, and
had mixed in brilliant scenes—in short, an adorable, delightful,
distracting hero?”
“Yes,” she said, sobbing.
“And now I am a poor fellow in brown leather.”
“Don’t taunt me. But enough of this. I will not be depressed any more.
I am going from home this afternoon, unless you greatly object. There
is to be a village picnic—a gipsying, they call it—at East Egdon, and I
shall go.”
“To dance?”
“Why not? You can sing.”
“Well, well, as you will. Must I come to fetch you?”
“If you return soon enough from your work. But do not inconvenience
yourself about it. I know the way home, and the heath has no terror for
me.”
“And can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all the way to a
village festival in search of it?”
“Now, you don’t like my going alone! Clym, you are not jealous?”
“No. But I would come with you if it could give you any pleasure;
though, as things stand, perhaps you have too much of me already.
Still, I somehow wish that you did not want to go. Yes, perhaps I am
jealous; and who could be jealous with more reason than I, a half-blind
man, over such a woman as you?”
“Don’t think like it. Let me go, and don’t take all my spirits away!”
“I would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. Go and do whatever you
like. Who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? You have all my heart
yet, I believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag
upon you, I owe you thanks. Yes, go alone and shine. As for me, I will
stick to my doom. At that kind of meeting people would shun me. My hook
and gloves are like the St. Lazarus rattle of the leper, warning the
world to get out of the way of a sight that would sadden them.” He
kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out.
When he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to
herself, “Two wasted lives—his and mine. And I am come to this! Will it
drive me out of my mind?”
She cast about for any possible course which offered the least
improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. She
imagined how all those Budmouth ones who should learn what had become
of her would say, “Look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!”
To Eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that death
appeared the only door of relief if the satire of Heaven should go much
further.
Suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, “But I’ll shake it off.
Yes, I _will_ shake it off! No one shall know my suffering. I’ll be
bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and I’ll laugh in derision. And
I’ll begin by going to this dance on the green.”
She ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous care.
To an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost seem
reasonable. The gloomy corner into which accident as much as
indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate
partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the Supreme
Power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed in
circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than a
blessing.
It was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready for
her walk. There was material enough in the picture for twenty new
conquests. The rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when she
sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her outdoor
attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it, devoid of
harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its environment as
from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation between flesh and
clothes. The heat of the day had scarcely declined as yet, and she went
along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there being ample time for
her idle expedition. Tall ferns buried her in their leafage whenever
her path lay through them, which now formed miniature forests, though
not one stem of them would remain to bud the next year.
The site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawnlike oases
which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux of the
heath district. The brakes of furze and fern terminated abruptly round
the margin, and the grass was unbroken. A green cattletrack skirted the
spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern, and this path
Eustacia followed, in order to reconnoitre the group before joining it.
The lusty notes of the East Egdon band had directed her unerringly, and
she now beheld the musicians themselves, sitting in a blue wagon with
red wheels scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to which
boughs and flowers were tied. In front of this was the grand central
dance of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked by minor dances of inferior
individuals whose gyrations were not always in strict keeping with the
tune.
The young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with a flush on their
faces footed it to the girls, who, with the excitement and the
exercise, blushed deeper than the pink of their numerous ribbons. Fair
ones with long curls, fair ones with short curls, fair ones with
lovelocks, fair ones with braids, flew round and round; and a beholder
might well have wondered how such a prepossessing set of young women of
like size, age, and disposition, could have been collected together
where there were only one or two villages to choose from. In the
background was one happy man dancing by himself, with closed eyes,
totally oblivious of all the rest. A fire was burning under a pollard
thorn a few paces off, over which three kettles hung in a row. Hard by
was a table where elderly dames prepared tea, but Eustacia looked among
them in vain for the cattle-dealer’s wife who had suggested that she
should come, and had promised to obtain a courteous welcome for her.
This unexpected absence of the only local resident whom Eustacia knew
considerably damaged her scheme for an afternoon of reckless gaiety.
Joining in became a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were
she to advance, cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea and
make much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowledge to
themselves. Having watched the company through the figures of two
dances, she decided to walk a little further, to a cottage where she
might get some refreshment, and then return homeward in the shady time
of evening.
This she did, and by the time that she retraced her steps towards the
scene of the gipsying, which it was necessary to repass on her way to
Alderworth, the sun was going down. The air was now so still that she
could hear the band afar off, and it seemed to be playing with more
spirit, if that were possible, than when she had come away. On reaching
the hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little difference
either to Eustacia or to the revellers, for a round yellow moon was
rising before her, though its rays had not yet outmastered those from
the west. The dance was going on just the same, but strangers had
arrived and formed a ring around the figure, so that Eustacia could
stand among these without a chance of being recognized.
A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year
long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts of those
waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months
before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the time
paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all,
and they adored none other than themselves.
How many of those impassioned but temporary embraces were destined to
become perpetual was possibly the wonder of some of those who indulged
in them, as well as of Eustacia who looked on. She began to envy those
pirouetters, to hunger for the hope and happiness which the fascination
of the dance seemed to engender within them. Desperately fond of
dancing herself, one of Eustacia’s expectations of Paris had been the
opportunity it might afford her of indulgence in this favourite
pastime. Unhappily, that expectation was now extinct within her for
ever.
Whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluctuating in the
increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her name whispered by a voice
over her shoulder. Turning in surprise, she beheld at her elbow one
whose presence instantly caused her to flush to the temples.
It was Wildeve. Till this moment he had not met her eye since the
morning of his marriage, when she had been loitering in the church, and
had startled him by lifting her veil and coming forward to sign the
register as witness. Yet why the sight of him should have instigated
that sudden rush of blood she could not tell.
Before she could speak he whispered, “Do you like dancing as much as
ever?”
“I think I do,” she replied in a low voice.
“Will you dance with me?”
“It would be a great change for me; but will it not seem strange?”
“What strangeness can there be in relations dancing together?”
“Ah—yes, relations. Perhaps none.”
“Still, if you don’t like to be seen, pull down your veil; though there
is not much risk of being known by this light. Lots of strangers are
here.”
She did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that
she accepted his offer.
Wildeve gave her his arm and took her down on the outside of the ring
to the bottom of the dance, which they entered. In two minutes more
they were involved in the figure and began working their way upwards to
the top. Till they had advanced halfway thither Eustacia wished more
than once that she had not yielded to his request; from the middle to
the top she felt that, since she had come out to seek pleasure, she was
only doing a natural thing to obtain it. Fairly launched into the
ceaseless glides and whirls which their new position as top couple
opened up to them, Eustacia’s pulses began to move too quickly for long
rumination of any kind.
Through the length of five-and-twenty couples they threaded their giddy
way, and a new vitality entered her form. The pale ray of evening lent
a fascination to the experience. There is a certain degree and tone of
light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to
promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives
the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving
in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the
disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia
most of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away, and the
hard, beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the
moonlight, shone like a polished table. The air became quite still, the
flag above the wagon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and
the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the
circular mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and French horn gleamed
out like huge eyes from the shade of their figures. The pretty dresses
of the maids lost their subtler day colours and showed more or less of
a misty white. Eustacia floated round and round on Wildeve’s arm, her
face rapt and statuesque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten
her features, which were left empty and quiescent, as they always are
when feeling goes beyond their register.
How near she was to Wildeve! it was terrible to think of. She could
feel his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. How badly she
had treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. The
enchantment of the dance surprised her. A clear line of difference
divided like a tangible fence her experience within this maze of motion
from her experience without it. Her beginning to dance had been like a