A few days later, before the month of August had expired, Eustacia
and Yeobright sat together at their early dinner. Eustacia's manner
had become of late almost apathetic. There was a forlorn look about
her beautiful eyes which, whether she deserved it or not, would have
excited pity in the breast of anyone who had known her during the full
flush of her love for Clym. The feelings of husband and wife varied,
in some measure, inversely with their positions. Clym, the afflicted
man, was cheerful; and he even tried to comfort her, who had never
felt a moment of physical suffering in her whole life.
"Come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again. Some day
perhaps I shall see as well as ever. And I solemnly promise that I'll
leave off cutting furze as soon as I have the power to do anything
better. You cannot seriously wish me to stay idling at home all day?"
"But it is so dreadful--a furze-cutter! and you a man who have lived
about the world, and speak French, and German, and who are fit for
what is so much better than this."
"I suppose when you first saw me and heard about me I was wrapped in
a sort of golden halo to your eyes--a man who knew glorious things,
and had mixed in brilliant scenes--in short, an adorable, delightful,
distracting hero?"
"Yes," she said, sobbing.
"And now I am a poor fellow in brown leather."
"Don't taunt me. But enough of this. I will not be depressed any
more. I am going from home this afternoon, unless you greatly object.
There is to be a village picnic--a gipsying, they call it--at East
Egdon, and I shall go."
"To dance?"
"Why not? You can sing."
"Well, well, as you will. Must I come to fetch you?"
"If you return soon enough from your work. But do not inconvenience
yourself about it. I know the way home, and the heath has no terror
for me."
"And can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all the way to a
village festival in search of it?"
"Now, you don't like my going alone! Clym, you are not jealous?"
"No. But I would come with you if it could give you any pleasure;
though, as things stand, perhaps you have too much of me already.
Still, I somehow wish that you did not want to go. Yes, perhaps I
am jealous; and who could be jealous with more reason than I, a
half-blind man, over such a woman as you?"
"Don't think like it. Let me go, and don't take all my spirits away!"
"I would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. Go and do whatever
you like. Who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? You have all
my heart yet, I believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth
a drag upon you, I owe you thanks. Yes, go alone and shine. As for
me, I will stick to my doom. At that kind of meeting people would
shun me. My hook and gloves are like the St. Lazarus rattle of the
leper, warning the world to get out of the way of a sight that would
sadden them." He kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out.
When he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to
herself, "Two wasted lives--his and mine. And I am come to this! Will
it drive me out of my mind?"
She cast about for any possible course which offered the least
improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. She
imagined how all those Budmouth ones who should learn what had become
of her would say, "Look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!"
To Eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that
death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of Heaven should
go much further.
Suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, "But I'll shake it off.
Yes, I WILL shake it off! No one shall know my suffering. I'll be
bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and I'll laugh in derision. And
I'll begin by going to this dance on the green."
She ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous
care. To an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost
seem reasonable. The gloomy corner into which accident as much as
indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate
partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the Supreme
Power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed
in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than
a blessing.
It was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready
for her walk. There was material enough in the picture for twenty new
conquests. The rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when
she sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her
outdoor attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it,
devoid of harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its
environment as from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation
between flesh and clothes. The heat of the day had scarcely declined
as yet, and she went along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there
being ample time for her idle expedition. Tall ferns buried her in
their leafage whenever her path lay through them, which now formed
miniature forests, though not one stem of them would remain to bud
the next year.
The site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawn-like
oases which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux
of the heath district. The brakes of furze and fern terminated
abruptly round the margin, and the grass was unbroken. A green
cattle-track skirted the spot, without, however, emerging from
the screen of fern, and this path Eustacia followed, in order to
reconnoitre the group before joining it. The lusty notes of the
East Egdon band had directed her unerringly, and she now beheld
the musicians themselves, sitting in a blue waggon with red wheels
scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to which boughs
and flowers were tied. In front of this was the grand central dance
of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked by minor dances of inferior
individuals whose gyrations were not always in strict keeping with
the tune.
The young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with a flush on
their faces footed it to the girls, who, with the excitement and the
exercise, blushed deeper than the pink of their numerous ribbons.
Fair ones with long curls, fair ones with short curls, fair ones
with love-locks, fair ones with braids, flew round and round; and
a beholder might well have wondered how such a prepossessing set
of young women of like size, age, and disposition, could have been
collected together where there were only one or two villages to choose
from. In the background was one happy man dancing by himself, with
closed eyes, totally oblivious of all the rest. A fire was burning
under a pollard thorn a few paces off, over which three kettles hung
in a row. Hard by was a table where elderly dames prepared tea, but
Eustacia looked among them in vain for the cattle-dealer's wife who
had suggested that she should come, and had promised to obtain a
courteous welcome for her.
This unexpected absence of the only local resident whom Eustacia knew
considerably damaged her scheme for an afternoon of reckless gaiety.
Joining in became a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were
she to advance, cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea
and make much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowledge
to themselves. Having watched the company through the figures of two
dances, she decided to walk a little further, to a cottage where she
might get some refreshment, and then return homeward in the shady time
of evening.
This she did; and by the time that she retraced her steps towards the
scene of the gipsying, which it was necessary to repass on her way
to Alderworth, the sun was going down. The air was now so still that
she could hear the band afar off, and it seemed to be playing with
more spirit, if that were possible, than when she had come away. On
reaching the hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little
difference either to Eustacia or to the revellers, for a round yellow
moon was rising before her, though its rays had not yet outmastered
those from the west. The dance was going on just the same, but
strangers had arrived and formed a ring around the figure, so that
Eustacia could stand among these without a chance of being recognized.
A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the
year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts of
those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve
months before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the
time paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all
in all, and they adored none other than themselves.
How many of those impassioned but temporary embraces were destined to
become perpetual was possibly the wonder of some of those who indulged
in them, as well as of Eustacia who looked on. She began to envy
those pirouetters, to hunger for the hope and happiness which the
fascination of the dance seemed to engender within them. Desperately
fond of dancing herself, one of Eustacia's expectations of Paris
had been the opportunity it might afford her of indulgence in this
favourite pastime. Unhappily, that expectation was now extinct within
her for ever.
Whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluctuating in the
increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her name whispered by a voice
over her shoulder. Turning in surprise, she beheld at her elbow one
whose presence instantly caused her to flush to the temples.
It was Wildeve. Till this moment he had not met her eye since the
morning of his marriage, when she had been loitering in the church,
and had startled him by lifting her veil and coming forward to
sign the register as witness. Yet why the sight of him should have
instigated that sudden rush of blood she could not tell.
Before she could speak he whispered, "Do you like dancing as much as
ever?"
"I think I do," she replied in a low voice.
"Will you dance with me?"
"It would be a great change for me; but will it not seem strange?"
"What strangeness can there be in relations dancing together?"
"Ah--yes, relations. Perhaps none."
"Still, if you don't like to be seen, pull down your veil; though
there is not much risk of being known by this light. Lots of
strangers are here."
She did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that
she accepted his offer.
Wildeve gave her his arm and took her down on the outside of the ring
to the bottom of the dance, which they entered. In two minutes more
they were involved in the figure and began working their way upwards
to the top. Till they had advanced halfway thither Eustacia wished
more than once that she had not yielded to his request; from the
middle to the top she felt that, since she had come out to seek
pleasure, she was only doing a natural thing to obtain it. Fairly
launched into the ceaseless glides and whirls which their new position
as top couple opened up to them, Eustacia's pulses began to move too
quickly for long rumination of any kind.
Through the length of five-and-twenty couples they threaded their
giddy way, and a new vitality entered her form. The pale ray of
evening lent a fascination to the experience. There is a certain
degree and tone of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of
the senses, and to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to
movement, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming
sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now
upon these two from the disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt
the symptoms, but Eustacia most of all. The grass under their feet
became trodden away, and the hard beaten surface of the sod, when
viewed aslant towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table.
The air became quite still, the flag above the waggon which held the
musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared only in outline
against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone,
ophicleide, and French horn gleamed out like huge eyes from the shade
of their figures. The pretty dresses of the maids lost their subtler
day colours and showed more or less of a misty white. Eustacia floated
round and round on Wildeve's arm, her face rapt and statuesque; her
soul had passed away from and forgotten her features, which were left
empty and quiescent, as they always are when feeling goes beyond their
register.
How near she was to Wildeve! it was terrible to think of. She could
feel his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. How badly
she had treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. The
enchantment of the dance surprised her. A clear line of difference
divided like a tangible fence her experience within this maze of
motion from her experience without it. Her beginning to dance had
been like a 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
neighbours' 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 some one else," he said slowly and
testily, for he perceived that Venn's countermoves had begun again.