Wildeve stared. Venn looked coolly towards Wildeve, and, without a
word being spoken, he deliberately sat himself down where Christian
had been seated, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a
sovereign, and laid it on the stone.
"You have been watching us from behind that bush?" said Wildeve.
The reddleman nodded. "Down with your stake," he said. "Or haven't
you pluck enough to go on?"
Now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much more easily
begun with full pockets than left off with the same; and though
Wildeve in a cooler temper might have prudently declined this
invitation, the excitement of his recent success carried him
completely away. He placed one of the guineas on a slab beside the
reddleman's sovereign. "Mine is a guinea," he said.
"A guinea that's not your own," said Venn sarcastically.
"It is my own," answered Wildeve haughtily. "It is my wife's, and
what is hers is mine."
"Very well; let's make a beginning." He shook the box, and threw
eight, ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to twenty-seven.
This encouraged Wildeve. He took the box; and his three casts
amounted to forty-five.
Down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against his first one
which Wildeve laid. This time Wildeve threw fifty-one points, but no
pair. The reddleman looked grim, threw a raffle of aces, and pocketed
the stakes.
"Here you are again," said Wildeve contemptuously. "Double the
stakes." He laid two of Thomasin's guineas, and the reddleman his two
pounds. Venn won again. New stakes were laid on the stone, and the
gamblers proceeded as before.
Wildeve was a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginning
to tell upon his temper. He writhed, fumed, shifted his seat; and
the beating of his heart was almost audible. Venn sat with lips
impassively closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles;
he scarcely appeared to breathe. He might have been an Arab, or an
automaton; he would have been like a red sandstone statue but for the
motion of his arm with the dice-box.
The game fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in favour of the other,
without any great advantage on the side of either. Nearly twenty
minutes were passed thus. The light of the candle had by this time
attracted heathflies, moths, and other winged creatures of night,
which floated round the lantern, flew into the flame, or beat about
the faces of the two players.
But neither of the men paid much attention to these things, their eyes
being concentrated upon the little flat stone, which to them was an
arena vast and important as a battlefield. By this time a change had
come over the game; the reddleman won continually. At length sixty
guineas--Thomasin's fifty, and ten of Clym's--had passed into his
hands. Wildeve was reckless, frantic, exasperated.
"'Won back his coat,'" said Venn slily.
Another throw, and the money went the same way.
"'Won back his hat,'" continued Venn.
"Oh, oh!" said Wildeve.
"'Won back his watch, won back his money, and went out of the door
a rich man,'" added Venn sentence by sentence, as stake after stake
passed over to him.
"Five more!" shouted Wildeve, dashing down the money. "And three
casts be hanged--one shall decide."
The red automaton opposite lapsed into silence, nodded, and followed
his example. Wildeve rattled the box, and threw a pair of sixes and
five points. He clapped his hands; "I have done it this
time--hurrah!"
"There are two playing, and only one has thrown," said the reddleman,
quietly bringing down the box. The eyes of each were then so intently
converged upon the stone that one could fancy their beams were
visible, like rays in a fog.
Venn lifted the box, and behold a triplet of sixes was disclosed.
Wildeve was full of fury. While the reddleman was grasping the stakes
Wildeve seized the dice and hurled them, box and all, into the
darkness, uttering a fearful imprecation. Then he arose and began
stamping up and down like a madman.
"It is all over, then?" said Venn.
"No, no!" cried Wildeve. "I mean to have another chance yet. I
must!"
"But, my good man, what have you done with the dice?"
"I threw them away--it was a momentary irritation. What a fool I am!
Here--come and help me to look for them--we must find them again."
Wildeve snatched up the lantern and began anxiously prowling among the
furze and fern.
"You are not likely to find them there," said Venn, following. "What
did you do such a crazy thing as that for? Here's the box. The dice
can't be far off."
Wildeve turned the light eagerly upon the spot where Venn had found
the box, and mauled the herbage right and left. In the course of a few
minutes one of the dice was found. They searched on for some time,
but no other was to be seen.
"Never mind," said Wildeve; "let's play with one."
"Agreed," said Venn.
Down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea stakes; and
the play went on smartly. But Fortune had unmistakably fallen in love
with the reddleman tonight. He won steadily, till he was the owner of
fourteen more of the gold pieces. Seventy-nine of the hundred guineas
were his, Wildeve possessing only twenty-one. The aspect of the two
opponents was now singular. Apart from motions, a complete diorama
of the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes. A diminutive
candle-flame was mirrored in each pupil, and it would have been
possible to distinguish therein between the moods of hope and the
moods of abandonment, even as regards the reddleman, though his facial
muscles betrayed nothing at all. Wildeve played on with the
recklessness of despair.
"What's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle; and they both
looked up.
They were surrounded by dusky forms between four and five feet high,
standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern. A moment's
inspection revealed that the encircling figures were heath-croppers,
their heads being all towards the players, at whom they gazed
intently.
"Hoosh!" said Wildeve, and the whole forty or fifty animals at once
turned and galloped away. Play was again resumed.
Ten minutes passed away. Then a large death's head moth advanced from
the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight
at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. Wildeve
had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast;
and now it was impossible.
"What the infernal!" he shrieked. "Now, what shall we do? Perhaps I
have thrown six--have you any matches?"
"None," said Venn.
"Christian had some--I wonder where he is. Christian!"
But there was no reply to Wildeve's shout, save a mournful whining
from the herons which were nesting lower down the vale. Both men
looked blankly round without rising. As their eyes grew accustomed to
the darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among the
grass and fern. These lights dotted the hillside like stars of a low
magnitude.
"Ah--glowworms," said Wildeve. "Wait a minute. We can continue the
game."
Venn sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he had
gathered thirteen glowworms--as many as he could find in a space of
four or five minutes--upon a foxglove leaf which he pulled for the
purpose. The reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his
adversary return with these. "Determined to go on, then?" he said
drily.
"I always am!" said Wildeve angrily. And shaking the glowworms from
the leaf he ranged them with a trembling hand in a circle on the
stone, leaving a space in the middle for the descent of the dice-box,
over which the thirteen tiny lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. The
game was again renewed. It happened to be that season of the year at
which glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light
they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possible
on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two
or three.
The incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment was
great. Amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which they
sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chink
of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless
players.
Wildeve had lifted the box as soon as the lights were obtained, and
the solitary die proclaimed that the game was still against him.
"I won't play any more--you've been tampering with the dice," he
shouted.
"How--when they were your own?" said the reddleman.
"We'll change the game: the lowest point shall win the stake--it may
cut off my ill luck. Do you refuse?"
"No--go on," said Venn.
"O, there they are again--damn them!" cried Wildeve, looking up. The
heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with
erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as
if they were wondering what mankind and candle-light could have to do
in these haunts at this untoward hour.
"What a plague those creatures are--staring at me so!" he said, and
flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued as
before.
Wildeve had now ten guineas left; and each laid five. Wildeve threw
three points; Venn two, and raked in the coins. The other seized the
die, and clenched his teeth upon it in sheer rage, as if he would
bite it in pieces. "Never give in--here are my last five!" he cried,
throwing them down. "Hang the glowworms--they are going out. Why
don't you burn, you little fools? Stir them up with a thorn."
He probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled them over,
till the bright side of their tails was upwards.
"There's light enough. Throw on," said Venn.
Wildeve brought down the box within the shining circle and looked
eagerly. He had thrown ace. "Well done!--I said it would turn, and
it has turned." Venn said nothing; but his hand shook slightly.
He threw ace also.
"O!" said Wildeve. "Curse me!"
The die smacked the stone a second time. It was ace again. Venn
looked gloomy, threw: the die was seen to be lying in two pieces,
the cleft sides uppermost.
"I've thrown nothing at all," he said.
"Serves me right--I split the die with my teeth. Here--take your
money. Blank is less than one."
"I don't wish it."
"Take it, I say--you've won it!" And Wildeve threw the stakes against
the reddleman's chest. Venn gathered them up, arose, and withdrew
from the hollow, Wildeve sitting stupefied.
When he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the extinguished
lantern in his hand, went towards the high-road. On reaching it he
stood still. The silence of night pervaded the whole heath except in
one direction; and that was towards Mistover. There he could hear the
noise of light wheels, and presently saw two carriage-lamps descending
the hill. Wildeve screened himself under a bush and waited.
The vehicle came on and passed before him. It was a hired carriage,
and behind the coachman were two persons whom he knew well. There sat
Eustacia and Yeobright, the arm of the latter being round her waist.
They turned the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary home
which Clym had hired and furnished, about five miles to the eastward.
Wildeve forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his lost
love, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in geometrical
progression with each new incident that reminded him of their hopeless
division. Brimming with the subtilized misery that he was capable of
feeling, he followed the opposite way towards the inn.
About the same moment that Wildeve stepped into the highway Venn also
had reached it at a point a hundred yards further on; and he, hearing
the same wheels, likewise waited till the carriage should come up.
When he saw who sat therein he seemed to be disappointed. Reflecting
a minute or two, during which interval the carriage rolled on, he
crossed the road, and took a short cut through the furze and heath to
a point where the turnpike-road bent round in ascending a hill. He
was now again in front of the carriage, which presently came up at a
walking pace. Venn stepped forward and showed himself.
Eustacia started when the lamp shone upon him, and Clym's arm was
involuntarily withdrawn from her waist. He said, "What, Diggory? You
are having a lonely walk."
"Yes--I beg your pardon for stopping you," said Venn. "But I am
waiting about for Mrs. Wildeve: I have something to give her from Mrs.
Yeobright. Can you tell me if she's gone home from the party yet?"
"No. But she will be leaving soon. You may possibly meet her at the
corner."
Venn made a farewell obeisance, and walked back to his former
position, where the by-road from Mistover joined the highway. Here
he remained fixed for nearly half an hour, and then another pair
of lights came down the hill. It was the old-fashioned wheeled
nondescript belonging to the captain, and Thomasin sat in it alone,
driven by Charley.
The reddleman came up as they slowly turned the corner. "I beg pardon
for stopping you, Mrs. Wildeve," he said. "But I have something to
give you privately from Mrs. Yeobright." He handed a small parcel; it
consisted of the hundred guineas he had just won, roughly twisted up
in a piece of paper.
Thomasin recovered from her surprise, and took the packet. "That's
all, ma'am--I wish you good night," he said, and vanished from her
view.
Thus Venn, in his anxiety to rectify matters, had placed in Thomasin's
hands not only the fifty guineas which rightly belonged to her, but
also the fifty intended for her cousin Clym. His mistake had been
based upon Wildeve's words at the opening of the game, when he
indignantly denied that the guinea was not his own. It had not been
comprehended by the reddleman that at half-way through the performance
the game was continued with the money of another person; and it was an
error which afterwards helped to cause more misfortune than treble the
loss in money value could have done.
The night was now somewhat advanced; and Venn plunged deeper into the
heath, till he came to a ravine where his van was standing--a spot not
more than two hundred yards from the site of the gambling bout. He
entered this movable home of his, lit his lantern, and, before closing
his door for the night, stood reflecting on the circumstances of
the preceding hours. While he stood the dawn grew visible in the
north-east quarter of the heavens, which, the clouds having cleared
off, was bright with a soft sheen at this midsummer time, though it
was only between one and two o'clock. Venn, thoroughly weary, then
shut his door and flung himself down to sleep.
BOOK FOURTH
THE CLOSED DOOR
I