"Yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and I have
come to let you know of it, because I believe you might have power to
drive it away."
"I? What is the trouble?"
"It is quite a secret. It is that he may refuse to marry Thomasin
Yeobright after all."
Eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her
part in such a drama as this. She replied coldly, "I do not wish to
listen to this, and you must not expect me to interfere."
"But, miss, you will hear one word?"
"I cannot. I am not interested in the marriage, and even if I were I
could not compel Mr. Wildeve to do my bidding."
"As the only lady on the heath I think you might," said Venn with
subtle indirectness. "This is how the case stands. Mr. Wildeve would
marry Thomasin at once, and make all matters smooth, if so be there
were not another woman in the case. This other woman is some person
he has picked up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, I believe.
He will never marry her, and yet through her he may never marry the
woman who loves him dearly. Now, if you, miss, who have so much sway
over us men-folk, were to insist that he should treat your young
neighbour Tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman,
he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery."
"Ah, my life!" said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips
so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it
a similar scarlet fire. "You think too much of my influence over
men-folk indeed, reddleman. If I had such a power as you imagine I
would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been
kind to me--which Thomasin Yeobright has not particularly, to my
knowledge."
"Can it be that you really don't know of it--how much she had always
thought of you?"
"I have never heard a word of it. Although we live only two miles
apart I have never been inside her aunt's house in my life."
The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Venn that thus far
he had utterly failed. He inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to
unmask his second argument.
"Well, leaving that out of the question, 'tis in your power, I assure
you, Miss Vye, to do a great deal of good to another woman."
She shook her head.
"Your comeliness is law with Mr. Wildeve. It is law with all men who
see 'ee. They say, 'This well-favoured lady coming--what's her name?
How handsome!' Handsomer than Thomasin Yeobright," the reddleman
persisted, saying to himself, "God forgive a rascal for lying!" And
she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so. There
was a certain obscurity in Eustacia's beauty, and Venn's eye was not
trained. In her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle,
which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest
neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling
splendour.
Eustacia could not help replying, though conscious that she endangered
her dignity thereby. "Many women are lovelier than Thomasin," she
said, "so not much attaches to that."
The reddleman suffered the wound and went on: "He is a man who
notices the looks of women, and you could twist him to your will like
withywind, if you only had the mind."
"Surely what she cannot do who has been so much with him I cannot do
living up here away from him."
The reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. "Miss Vye!" he
said.
"Why do you say that--as if you doubted me?" She spoke faintly, and
her breathing was quick. "The idea of your speaking in that tone to
me!" she added, with a forced smile of hauteur. "What could have been
in your mind to lead you to speak like that?"
"Miss Vye, why should you make believe that you don't know this
man?--I know why, certainly. He is beneath you, and you are ashamed."
"You are mistaken. What do you mean?"
The reddleman had decided to play the card of truth. "I was at the
meeting by Rainbarrow last night and heard every word," he said. "The
woman that stands between Wildeve and Thomasin is yourself."
It was a disconcerting lift of the curtain, and the mortification of
Candaules' wife glowed in her. The moment had arrived when her lip
would tremble in spite of herself, and when the gasp could no longer
be kept down.
"I am unwell," she said hurriedly. "No--it is not that--I am not in a
humour to hear you further. Leave me, please."
"I must speak, Miss Vye, in spite of paining you. What I would put
before you is this. However it may come about--whether she is to
blame, or you--her case is without doubt worse than yours. Your
giving up Mr. Wildeve will be a real advantage to you, for how could
you marry him? Now she cannot get off so easily--everybody will blame
her if she loses him. Then I ask you--not because her right is best,
but because her situation is worst--to give him up to her."
"No--I won't, I won't!" she said impetuously, quite forgetful of her
previous manner towards the reddleman as an underling. "Nobody has
ever been served so! It was going on well--I will not be beaten
down--by an inferior woman like her. It is very well for you to come
and plead for her, but is she not herself the cause of all her own
trouble? Am I not to show favour to any person I may choose without
asking permission of a parcel of cottagers? She has come between me
and my inclination, and now that she finds herself rightly punished
she gets you to plead for her!"
"Indeed," said Venn earnestly, "she knows nothing whatever about it.
It is only I who ask you to give him up. It will be better for her
and you both. People will say bad things if they find out that a lady
secretly meets a man who has ill-used another woman."
"I have NOT injured her--he was mine before he was hers! He came
back--because--because he liked me best!" she said wildly. "But I
lose all self-respect in talking to you. What am I giving way to!"
"I can keep secrets," said Venn gently. "You need not fear. I am the
only man who knows of your meetings with him. There is but one thing
more to speak of, and then I will be gone. I heard you say to him
that you hated living here--that Egdon Heath was a jail to you."
"I did say so. There is a sort of beauty in the scenery, I know; but
it is a jail to me. The man you mention does not save me from that
feeling, though he lives here. I should have cared nothing for him
had there been a better person near."
The reddleman looked hopeful; after these words from her his third
attempt seemed promising. "As we have now opened our minds a bit,
miss," he said, "I'll tell you what I have got to propose. Since I
have taken to the reddle trade I travel a good deal, as you know."
She inclined her head, and swept round so that her eyes rested in the
misty vale beneath them.
"And in my travels I go near Budmouth. Now Budmouth is a wonderful
place--wonderful--a great salt sheening sea bending into the land
like a bow--thousands of gentlepeople walking up and down--bands of
music playing--officers by sea and officers by land walking among the
rest--out of every ten folks you meet nine of 'em in love."
"I know it," she said disdainfully. "I know Budmouth better than you.
I was born there. My father came to be a military musician there from
abroad. Ah, my soul, Budmouth! I wish I was there now."
The reddleman was surprised to see how a slow fire could blaze on
occasion. "If you were, miss," he replied, "in a week's time you
would think no more of Wildeve than of one of those he'th-croppers
that we see yond. Now, I could get you there."
"How?" said Eustacia, with intense curiosity in her heavy eyes.
"My uncle has been for five and twenty years the trusty man of a rich
widow-lady who has a beautiful house facing the sea. This lady has
become old and lame, and she wants a young company-keeper to read and
sing to her, but can't get one to her mind to save her life, though
she've advertised in the papers, and tried half a dozen. She would
jump to get you, and uncle would make it all easy."
"I should have to work, perhaps?"
"No, not real work: you'd have a little to do, such as reading and
that. You would not be wanted till New Year's Day."
"I knew it meant work," she said, drooping to languor again.
"I confess there would be a trifle to do in the way of amusing her;
but though idle people might call it work, working people would call
it play. Think of the company and the life you'd lead, miss; the
gaiety you'd see, and the gentleman you'd marry. My uncle is to
inquire for a trustworthy young lady from the country, as she don't
like town girls."
"It is to wear myself out to please her! and I won't go. O, if I
could live in a gay town as a lady should, and go my own ways, and do
my own doings, I'd give the wrinkled half of my life! Yes, reddleman,
that would I."
"Help me to get Thomasin happy, miss, and the chance shall be yours,"
urged her companion.
"Chance--'tis no chance," she said proudly. "What can a poor man like
you offer me, indeed?--I am going indoors. I have nothing more to
say. Don't your horses want feeding, or your reddlebags want mending,
or don't you want to find buyers for your goods, that you stay idling
here like this?"
Venn spoke not another word. With his hands behind him he turned
away, that she might not see the hopeless disappointment in his face.
The mental clearness and power he had found in this lonely girl had
indeed filled his manner with misgiving even from the first few
minutes of close quarters with her. Her youth and situation had led
him to expect a simplicity quite at the beck of his method. But a
system of inducement which might have carried weaker country lasses
along with it had merely repelled Eustacia. As a rule, the word
Budmouth meant fascination on Egdon. That Royal port and watering
place, if truly mirrored in the minds of the heath-folk, must have
combined, in a charming and indescribable manner, a Carthaginian
bustle of building with Tarentine luxuriousness and Baian health and
beauty. Eustacia felt little less extravagantly about the place; but
she would not sink her independence to get there.
When Diggory Venn had gone quite away, Eustacia walked to the bank and
looked down the wild and picturesque vale towards the sun, which was
also in the direction of Wildeve's. The mist had now so far collapsed
that the tips of the trees and bushes around his house could just be
discerned, as if boring upwards through a vast white cobweb which
cloaked them from the day. There was no doubt that her mind was
inclined thitherward; indefinitely, fancifully--twining and untwining
about him as the single object within her horizon on which dreams
might crystallize. The man who had begun by being merely her
amusement, and would never have been more than her hobby but for his
skill in deserting her at the right moments, was now again her desire.
Cessation in his love-making had revivified her love. Such feeling
as Eustacia had idly given to Wildeve was dammed into a flood by
Thomasin. She had used to tease Wildeve, but that was before another
had favoured him. Often a drop of irony into an indifferent situation
renders the whole piquant.
"I will never give him up--never!" she said impetuously.
The reddleman's hint that rumour might show her to disadvantage had
no permanent terror for Eustacia. She was as unconcerned at that
contingency as a goddess at a lack of linen. This did not originate
in inherent shamelessness, but in her living too far from the world to
feel the impact of public opinion. Zenobia in the desert could hardly
have cared what was said about her at Rome. As far as social ethics
were concerned Eustacia approached the savage state, though in emotion
she was all the while an epicure. She had advanced to the secret
recesses of sensuousness, yet had hardly crossed the threshold of
conventionality.