The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (best e books to read txt) 📕

To court their own discomfiture by love is a common instinct with certain perfervid women. Conflicting sensations of love, fear, and shame reduced Eustacia to a state of the utmost uneasiness. To escape was her great and immediate desire. The other mummers appeared to be in no hurry to leave; and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her that 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.

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.