The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was told throughout
Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. All the known
incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and
modified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance to
the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues. Yet, upon the
whole, neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death.
Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic
histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many,
attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long
years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay.
On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different.
Strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of one
more; but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginings
amount to appreciable preparation for it. The very suddenness of
her bereavement dulled, to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet,
irrationally enough, a consciousness that the husband she had lost
ought to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning at all.
On the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off the dead husband
in his young wife's eyes, and to be the necessary cloud to the
rainbow.
But the horrors of the unknown had passed. Vague misgivings about her
future as a deserted wife were at an end. The worst had once been
matter of trembling conjecture; it was now matter of reason only,
a limited badness. Her chief interest, the little Eustacia, still
remained. There was humility in her grief, no defiance in her
attitude; and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to be
stilled.
Could Thomasin's mournfulness now and Eustacia's serenity during life
have been reduced to common measure, they would have touched the same
mark nearly. But Thomasin's former brightness made shadow of that
which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself.
The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the
autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was
strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day. Outward
events flattered Thomasin not a little. Wildeve had died intestate,
and she and the child were his only relatives. When administration
had been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue of her husband's
uncle's property had come into her hands, it was found that the sum
waiting to be invested for her own and the child's benefit was little
less than ten thousand pounds.
Where should she live? The obvious place was Blooms-End. The old
rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of a
frigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-case
she brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobs
on its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as the
rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared to
her by every early recollection. Clym very gladly admitted her as a
tenant, confining his own existence to two rooms at the top of the
back staircase, where he lived on quietly, shut off from Thomasin and
the three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now that she
was a mistress of money, going his own ways, and thinking his own
thoughts.
His sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance; and yet
the alteration was chiefly within. It might have been said that he
had a wrinkled mind. He had no enemies, and he could get nobody to
reproach him, which was why he so bitterly reproached himself.
He did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune, so far as
to say that to be born is a palpable dilemma, and that instead of
men aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate how
to retreat out of it without shame. But that he and his had been
sarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such irons thrust into
their souls he did not maintain long. It is usually so, except with
the sternest of men. Human beings, in their generous endeavour to
construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, have
always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality
than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters
of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their
tears.
Thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in his presence, he
found relief in a direction of his own choosing when left to himself.
For a man of his habits the house and the hundred and twenty pounds a
year which he had inherited from his mother were enough to supply all
worldly needs. Resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but upon
the proportion of spendings to takings.
He frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized upon
him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its
tale. His imagination would then people the spot with its ancient
inhabitants: forgotten Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him,
and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see
them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched
and perfect as at the time of their erection. Those of the dyed
barbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparison
with those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper beside
writers on parchment. Their records had perished long ago by the
plough, while the works of these remained. Yet they all had lived
and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics.
It reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution of
immortality.
Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and
sparkling starlight. The year previous Thomasin had hardly been
conscious of the season's advance; this year she laid her heart open
to external influences of every kind. The life of this sweet cousin,
her baby, and her servants, came to Clym's senses only in the form of
sounds through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally
large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight
noises from the other part of the house that he almost could witness
the scenes they signified. A faint beat of half-seconds conjured up
Thomasin rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing
the baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raised
the picture of Humphrey's, Fairway's, or Sam's heavy feet crossing the
stone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a gay tune in a
high key, betokened a visit from Grandfer Cantle; a sudden break-off
in the Grandfer's utterances implied the application to his lips of a
mug of small beer, a bustling and slamming of doors meant starting to
go to market; for Thomasin, in spite of her added scope of gentility,
led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save every
possible pound for her little daughter.
One summer day Clym was in the garden, immediately outside the parlour
window, which was as usual open. He was looking at the pot-flowers on
the sill; they had been revived and restored by Thomasin to the state
in which his mother had left them. He heard a slight scream from
Thomasin, who was sitting inside the room.
"O, how you frightened me!" she said to some one who had entered. "I
thought you were the ghost of yourself."
Clym was curious enough to advance a little further and look in at the
window. To his astonishment there stood within the room Diggory Venn,
no longer a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues of
an ordinary Christian countenance, white shirt-front, light flowered
waistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat. Nothing
in this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its great
difference from what he had formerly been. Red, and all approach to
red, was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him;
for what is there that persons just out of harness dread so much as
reminders of the trade which has enriched them?
Yeobright went round to the door and entered.
"I was so alarmed!" said Thomasin, smiling from one to the other. "I
couldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! It seemed
supernatural."
"I gave up dealing in reddle last Christmas," said Venn. "It was a
profitable trade, and I found that by that time I had made enough to
take the dairy of fifty cows that my father had in his lifetime. I
always thought of getting to that place again if I changed at all, and
now I am there."
"How did you manage to become white, Diggory?" Thomasin asked.
"I turned so by degrees, ma'am."
"You look much better than ever you did before."
Venn appeared confused; and Thomasin, seeing how inadvertently she
had spoken to a man who might possibly have tender feelings for
her still, blushed a little. Clym saw nothing of this, and added
good-humouredly--
"What shall we have to frighten Thomasin's baby with, now you have
become a human being again?"
"Sit down, Diggory," said Thomasin, "and stay to tea."
Venn moved as if he would retire to the kitchen, when Thomasin said
with pleasant pertness as she went on with some sewing, "Of course
you must sit down here. And where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, Mr.
Venn?"
"At Stickleford--about two miles to the right of Alderworth, ma'am,
where the meads begin. I have thought that if Mr. Yeobright would
like to pay me a visit sometimes he shouldn't stay away for want of
asking. I'll not bide to tea this afternoon, thank'ee, for I've got
something on hand that must be settled. 'Tis Maypole-day tomorrow,
and the Shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your neighbours here
to have a pole just outside your palings in the heath, as it is a nice
green place." Venn waved his elbow towards the patch in front of the
house. "I have been talking to Fairway about it," he continued, "and
I said to him that before we put up the pole it would be as well to
ask Mrs. Wildeve."
"I can say nothing against it," she answered. "Our property does not
reach an inch further than the white palings."
"But you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy round a
stick, under your very nose?"
"I shall have no objection at all."
Venn soon after went away, and in the evening Yeobright strolled as
far as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely May sunset, and the birch
trees which grew on this margin of the vast Egdon wilderness had put
on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as
amber. Beside Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the
road, and here were now collected all the young people from within a
radius of a couple of miles. The pole lay with one end supported on a
trestle, and women were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwards
with wildflowers. The instincts of merry England lingered on here
with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition
has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon.
Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan
still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic
gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are
forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval
doctrine.
Yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went home again.
The next morning, when Thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroom
window, there stood the Maypole in the middle of the green, its top
cutting into the sky. It had sprung up in the night, or rather early
morning, like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get a
better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. The sweet
perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air,
which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full
measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its
midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small
flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom; then a zone
of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins,
daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached. Thomasin
noticed all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be so
near.
When afternoon came people began to gather on the green, and Yeobright
was interested enough to look out upon them from the open window
of his room. Soon after this Thomasin walked out from the door
immediately below and turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. She
was dressed more gaily than Yeobright had ever seen her dressed since
the time of Wildeve's death, eighteen months before; since the day of
her marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such advantage.
"How pretty you look today, Thomasin!" he said. "Is it because of the
Maypole?"
"Not altogether." And then she blushed and dropped her eyes, which
he did not specially observe, though her manner seemed to him to be
rather peculiar, considering that she was only addressing himself.
Could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to please
him?
He recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last few weeks,
when they had often been working together in the garden, just as they
had formerly done when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye.
What if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative as
it had formerly been? To Yeobright any possibility of this sort was
a serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought of it.
Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during
Eustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave with her. His passion for
her had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough on
hand for another fire of that sort, as may happen with more boyish
loves. Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be
a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small and
sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.
He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic
brass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock,
with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house,
he withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden,
through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. He could not
bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had tried
hard.
Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came back by the same
path it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. The
boisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did from
behind, he could not see if the May party had all gone till he had
passed through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door.
Thomasin was standing within the porch alone.
She looked at him reproachfully. "You went away just when it began,
Clym," she said.
"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with them, of course?"
"No, I did not."
"You appeared to be dressed on purpose."
"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people were there. One is
there now."
Yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch beyond the
paling, and near the black form of the Maypole he discerned a shadowy
figure, sauntering idly up and down. "Who is it?" he said.
"Mr. Venn," said Thomasin.
"You might have asked him to come in, I think, Tamsie. He has been
very kind to you first and last."
"I will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse, went through the
wicket to where Venn stood under the Maypole.
"It is Mr. Venn, I think?" she inquired.
Venn started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he was--and
said, "Yes."
"Will you come in?"
"I am afraid that I--"
"I have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the very best of
the girls for your partners. Is it that you won't come in because you
wish to stand here, and think over the past hours of enjoyment?"
"Well, that's partly it," said Mr. Venn, with ostentatious sentiment.
"But the main reason why I am biding here like this is that I want to
wait till the moon rises."
"To see how pretty the Maypole looks in the moonlight?"
"No. To look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens."
Thomasin was speechless with surprise. That a man who had to walk
some four or five miles to his home should wait here for such a reason
pointed to only one conclusion: the man must be amazingly interested
in that glove's owner.
"Were you dancing with her, Diggory?" she asked, in a voice which
revealed that he had made himself considerably more interesting to her
by this disclosure.
"No," he sighed.
"And you will not come in, then?"
"Not tonight, thank you, ma'am."
"Shall I lend you a lantern to look for the young person's glove, Mr.
Venn?"
"O no; it is not necessary, Mrs. Wildeve, thank you. The moon will
rise in a few minutes."
Thomasin went back to the porch. "Is he coming in?" said Clym, who
had been waiting where she had left him.
"He would rather not tonight," she said, and then passed by him into
the house; whereupon Clym too retired to his own rooms.
When Clym was gone Thomasin crept upstairs in the dark, and, just
listening by the cot, to assure herself that the child was asleep, she
went to the window, gently lifted the corner of the white curtain,
and looked out. Venn was still there. She watched the growth of
the faint radiance appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, till
presently the edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley
with light. Diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he was
moving about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning the grass for the
precious missing article, walking in zigzags right and left till he
should have passed over every foot of the ground.
"How very ridiculous!" Thomasin murmured to herself, in a tone which
was intended to be satirical. "To think that a man should be so silly
as to go mooning about like that for a girl's glove! A respectable
dairyman, too, and a man of money as he is now. What a pity!"
At last Venn appeared to find it; whereupon he stood up and raised
it to his lips. Then placing it in his breast-pocket--the nearest
receptacle to a man's heart permitted by modern raiment--he ascended
the valley in a mathematically direct line towards his distant home in
the meadows.