第25章 THE THREE WOMEN(24)

Eustacia had got beyond the vision of some marriage of inexpressible glory; yet, though her emotions were in full vigour, she cared for no meaner union.Thus we see her in a strange state of isolation.To have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise.But, if congenial to philosophy, it is apt to be dangerous to the commonwealth.In a world where doing means marrying, and the commonwealth is one of hearts and hands, the same peril attends the condition.

And so we see our Eustacia--for at times she was not altogether unlovable--arriving at that stage of enlightenment which feels that nothing is worth while, and filling up the spare hours of her existence by idealizing Wildeve for want of a better object.This was the sole reason of his ascendency: she knew it herself.At moments her pride rebelled against her passion for him, and she even had longed to be free.But there was only one circumstance which could dislodge him, and that was the advent of a greater man.

For the rest, she suffered much from depression of spirits, and took slow walks to recover them, in which she carried her grandfather's telescope and her grandmother's hourglass--the latter because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from watching a material representation of time's gradual glide away.She seldom schemed, but when she did scheme, her plans showed rather the comprehensive strategy of a general than the small arts called womanish, though she could utter oracles of Delphian ambiguity when she did not choose to be direct.In heaven she will probably sit between the Heloises and the Cleopatras.

8 - Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody As soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire he clasped the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if thereby to fortify his courage, and began to run.

There was really little danger in allowing a child to go home alone on this part of Egdon Heath.The distance to the boy's house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part of the small hamlet of Mistover Knap: the third and only remaining house was that of Captain Vye and Eustacia, which stood quite away from the small cottages.

and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly populated slopes.

He ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in an old voice a little song about a sailor-boy and a fair one, and bright gold in store.In the middle of this the child stopped--from a pit under the hill ahead of him shone a light, whence proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise.

Only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy.

The shrivelled voice of the heath did not alarm him, for that was familiar.The thornbushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples.Lights were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of all of them was different from this.Discretion rather than terror prompted the boy to turn back instead of passing the light, with a view of asking Miss Eustacia Vye to let her servant accompany him home.

When the boy had reascended to the top of the valley he found the fire to be still burning on the bank, though lower than before.Beside it, instead of Eustacia's solitary form, he saw two persons, the second being a man.

The boy crept along under the bank to ascertain from the nature of the proceedings if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a creature as Miss Eustacia on his poor trivial account.

After listening under the bank for some minutes to the talk he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner and began to withdraw as silently as he had come.That he did not, upon the whole, think it advisable to interrupt her conversation with Wildeve, without being prepared to bear the whole weight of her displeasure, was obvious.

Here was a Scyllaeo-Charybdean position for a poor boy.

Pausing when again safe from discovery, he finally decided to face the pit phenomenon as the lesser evil.

With a heavy sigh he retraced the slope, and followed the path he had followed before.

The light had gone, the rising dust had disappeared--he hoped for ever.He marched resolutely along, and found nothing to alarm him till, coming within a few yards of the sandpit, he heard a slight noise in front, which led him to halt.

The halt was but momentary, for the noise resolved itself into the steady bites of two animals grazing.

"Two he'th-croppers down here," he said aloud.

"I have never known 'em come down so far afore."The animals were in the direct line of his path, but that the child thought little of; he had played round the fetlocks of horses from his infancy.

On coming nearer, however, the boy was somewhat surprised to find that the little creatures did not run off, and that each wore a clog, to prevent his going astray;this signified that they had been broken in.He could now see the interior of the pit, which, being in the side of the hill, had a level entrance.In the innermost corner the square outline of a van appeared, with its back towards him.A light came from the interior, and threw a moving shadow upon the vertical face of gravel at the further side of the pit into which the vehicle faced.

The child assumed that this was the cart of a gipsy, and his dread of those wanderers reached but to that mild pitch which titillates rather than pains.

Only a few inches of mud wall kept him and his family from being gipsies themselves.He skirted the gravel pit at a respectful distance, ascended the slope, and came forward upon the brow, in order to look into the open door of the van and see the original of the shadow.