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.