The Return of the Native
change of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped in arctic frigidity
by comparison with the tropical sensations here. She had entered the
dance from the troubled hours of her late life as one might enter a
brilliant chamber after a night walk in a wood. Wildeve by himself
would have been merely an agitation; Wildeve added to the dance, and
the moonlight, and the secrecy, began to be a delight. Whether his
personality supplied the greater part of this sweetly compounded
feeling, or whether the dance and the scene weighed the more therein,
was a nice point upon which Eustacia herself was entirely in a cloud.
People began to say “Who are they?” but no invidious inquiries were
made. Had Eustacia mingled with the other girls in their ordinary daily
walks the case would have been different: here she was not
inconvenienced by excessive inspection, for all were wrought to their
brightest grace by the occasion. Like the planet Mercury surrounded by
the lustre of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without much
notice in the temporary glory of the situation.
As for Wildeve, his feelings are easy to guess. Obstacles were a
ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment in a delirium of
exquisite misery. To clasp as his for five minutes what was another
man’s through all the rest of the year was a kind of thing he of all
men could appreciate. He had long since begun to sigh again for
Eustacia; indeed, it may be asserted that signing the marriage register
with Thomasin was the natural signal to his heart to return to its
first quarters, and that the extra complication of Eustacia’s marriage
was the one addition required to make that return compulsory.
Thus, for different reasons, what was to the rest an exhilarating
movement was to these two a riding upon the whirlwind. The dance had
come like an irresistible attack upon whatever sense of social order
there was in their minds, to drive them back into old paths which were
now doubly irregular. Through three dances in succession they spun
their way; and then, fatigued with the incessant motion, Eustacia
turned to quit the circle in which she had already remained too long.
Wildeve led her to a grassy mound a few yards distant, where she sat
down, her partner standing beside her. From the time that he addressed
her at the beginning of the dance till now they had not exchanged a
word.
“The dance and the walking have tired you?” he said tenderly.
“No; not greatly.”
“It is strange that we should have met here of all places, after
missing each other so long.”
“We have missed because we tried to miss, I suppose.”
“Yes. But you began that proceeding—by breaking a promise.”
“It is scarcely worth while to talk of that now. We have formed other
ties since then—you no less than I.”
“I am sorry to hear that your husband is ill.”
“He is not ill—only incapacitated.”
“Yes—that is what I mean. I sincerely sympathize with you in your
trouble. Fate has treated you cruelly.”
She was silent awhile. “Have you heard that he has chosen to work as a
furze-cutter?” she said in a low, mournful voice.
“It has been mentioned to me,” answered Wildeve hesitatingly. “But I
hardly believed it.”
“It is true. What do you think of me as a furze-cutter’s wife?”
“I think the same as ever of you, Eustacia. Nothing of that sort can
degrade you—you ennoble the occupation of your husband.”
“I wish I could feel it.”
“Is there any chance of Mr. Yeobright getting better?”
“He thinks so. I doubt it.”
“I was quite surprised to hear that he had taken a cottage. I thought,
in common with other people, that he would have taken you off to a home
in Paris immediately after you had married him. ‘What a gay, bright
future she has before her!’ I thought. He will, I suppose, return there
with you, if his sight gets strong again?”
Observing that she did not reply he regarded her more closely. She was
almost weeping. Images of a future never to be enjoyed, the revived
sense of her bitter disappointment, the picture of the neighbour’s
suspended ridicule which was raised by Wildeve’s words, had been too
much for proud Eustacia’s equanimity.
Wildeve could hardly control his own too forward feelings when he saw
her silent perturbation. But he affected not to notice this, and she
soon recovered her calmness.
“You do not intend to walk home by yourself?” he asked.
“O yes,” said Eustacia. “What could hurt me on this heath, who have
nothing?”
“By diverging a little I can make my way home the same as yours. I
shall be glad to keep you company as far as Throope Corner.” Seeing
that Eustacia sat on in hesitation he added, “Perhaps you think it
unwise to be seen in the same road with me after the events of last
summer?”
“Indeed I think no such thing,” she said haughtily. “I shall accept
whose company I choose, for all that may be said by the miserable
inhabitants of Egdon.”
“Then let us walk on—if you are ready. Our nearest way is towards that
holly bush with the dark shadow that you see down there.”
Eustacia arose, and walked beside him in the direction signified,
brushing her way over the damping heath and fern, and followed by the
strains of the merrymakers, who still kept up the dance. The moon had
now waxed bright and silvery, but the heath was proof against such
illumination, and there was to be observed the striking scene of a
dark, rayless tract of country under an atmosphere charged from its
zenith to its extremities with whitest light. To an eye above them
their two faces would have appeared amid the expanse like two pearls on
a table of ebony.
On this account the irregularities of the path were not visible, and
Wildeve occasionally stumbled; whilst Eustacia found it necessary to
perform some graceful feats of balancing whenever a small tuft of
heather or root of furze protruded itself through the grass of the
narrow track and entangled her feet. At these junctures in her progress
a hand was invariably stretched forward to steady her, holding her
firmly until smooth ground was again reached, when the hand was again
withdrawn to a respectful distance.
They performed the journey for the most part in silence, and drew near
to Throope Corner, a few hundred yards from which a short path branched
away to Eustacia’s house. By degrees they discerned coming towards them
a pair of human figures, apparently of the male sex.
When they came a little nearer Eustacia broke the silence by saying,
“One of those men is my husband. He promised to come to meet me.”
“And the other is my greatest enemy,” said Wildeve.
“It looks like Diggory Venn.”
“That is the man.”
“It is an awkward meeting,” said she; “but such is my fortune. He knows
too much about me, unless he could know more, and so prove to himself
that what he now knows counts for nothing. Well, let it be—you must
deliver me up to them.”
“You will think twice before you direct me to do that. Here is a man
who has not forgotten an item in our meetings at Rainbarrow—he is in
company with your husband. Which of them, seeing us together here, will
believe that our meeting and dancing at the gipsy party was by chance?”
“Very well,” she whispered gloomily. “Leave me before they come up.”
Wildeve bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across the fern and
furze, Eustacia slowly walking on. In two or three minutes she met her
husband and his companion.
“My journey ends here for tonight, reddleman,” said Yeobright as soon
as he perceived her. “I turn back with this lady. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Yeobright,” said Venn. “I hope to see you better
soon.”
The moonlight shone directly upon Venn’s face as he spoke, and revealed
all its lines to Eustacia. He was looking suspiciously at her. That
Venn’s keen eye had discerned what Yeobright’s feeble vision had not—a
man in the act of withdrawing from Eustacia’s side—was within the
limits of the probable.
If Eustacia had been able to follow the reddleman she would soon have
found striking confirmation of her thought. No sooner had Clym given
her his arm and led her off the scene than the reddleman turned back
from the beaten track towards East Egdon, whither he had been strolling
merely to accompany Clym in his walk, Diggory’s van being again in the
neighbourhood. Stretching out his long legs, he crossed the pathless
portion of the heath somewhat in the direction which Wildeve had taken.
Only a man accustomed to nocturnal rambles could at this hour have
descended those shaggy slopes with Venn’s velocity without falling
headlong into a pit, or snapping off his leg by jamming his foot into
some rabbit burrow. But Venn went on without much inconvenience to
himself, and the course of his scamper was towards the Quiet Woman Inn.
This place he reached in about half an hour, and he was well aware that
no person who had been near Throope Corner when he started could have
got down here before him.
The lonely inn was not yet closed, though scarcely an individual was
there, the business done being chiefly with travellers who passed the
inn on long journeys, and these had now gone on their way. Venn went to
the public room, called for a mug of ale, and inquired of the maid in
an indifferent tone if Mr. Wildeve was at home.
Thomasin sat in an inner room and heard Venn’s voice. When customers
were present she seldom showed herself, owing to her inherent dislike
for the business; but perceiving that no one else was there tonight she
came out.
“He is not at home yet, Diggory,” she said pleasantly. “But I expected
him sooner. He has been to East Egdon to buy a horse.”
“Did he wear a light wideawake?”
“Yes.”
“Then I saw him at Throope Corner, leading one home,” said Venn drily.
“A beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night. He will soon
be here, no doubt.” Rising and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet
face of Thomasin, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the
time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, “Mr. Wildeve seems
to be often away at this time.”
“O yes,” cried Thomasin in what was intended to be a tone of gaiety.
“Husbands will play the truant, you know. I wish you could tell me of
some secret plan that would help me to keep him home at my will in the
evenings.”
“I will consider if I know of one,” replied Venn in that same light
tone which meant no lightness. And then he bowed in a manner of his own
invention and moved to go. Thomasin offered him her hand; and without a
sigh, though with food for many, the reddleman went out.
When Wildeve returned, a quarter of an hour later Thomasin said simply,
and in the abashed manner usual with her now, “Where is the horse,
Damon?”
“O, I have not bought it, after all. The man asks too much.”
“But somebody saw you at Throope Corner leading it home—a beauty, with
a white face and a mane as black as night.”
“Ah!” said Wildeve, fixing his eyes upon her; “who told you that?”
“Venn the reddleman.”
The expression of Wildeve’s face became curiously condensed. “That is a
mistake—it must have been someone else,” he said slowly and testily,
for he perceived that Venn’s countermoves had begun again.
IV.
Rough Coercion Is Employed
Those words of Thomasin, which seemed so little, but meant so much,
remained in the ears of Diggory Venn: “Help me to keep him home in the
evenings.”
On this occasion Venn had arrived on Egdon Heath only to cross to the
other side—he had no further connection with the interests of the
Yeobright family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. Yet he
suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of
manœuvring on Thomasin’s account.
He sat in his van and considered. From Thomasin’s words and manner he
had plainly gathered that Wildeve neglected her. For whom could he