第28章 THE THREE WOMEN(27)

Another reason is my aunt.She would not, I know, agree to it, even if I wished to have you.She likes you very well, but she will want me to look a little higher than a small dairy-farmer, and marry a professional man.I hope you will not set your heart against me for writing plainly, but I felt you might try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet.I shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious for your well-doing.I send this by Jane Orchard's little maid,--And remain Diggory, your faithful friend,THOMASIN YEOBRIGHT.

To MR.VENN, Dairy-farmer.

Since the arrival of that letter, on a certain autumn morning long ago, the reddleman and Thomasin had not met till today.During the interval he had shifted his position even further from hers than it had originally been, by adopting the reddle trade; though he was really in very good circumstances still.Indeed, seeing that his expenditure was only one-fourth of his income, he might have been called a prosperous man.

Rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees;and the business to which he had cynically devoted himself was in many ways congenial to Venn.But his wanderings, by mere stress of old emotions, had frequently taken an Egdon direction, though he never intruded upon her who attracted him thither.To be in Thomasin's heath, and near her, yet unseen, was the one ewe-lamb of pleasure left to him.

Then came the incident of that day, and the reddleman, still loving her well, was excited by this accidental service to her at a critical juncture to vow an active devotion to her cause, instead of, as hitherto, sighing and holding aloof.After what had happened it was impossible that he should not doubt the honesty of Wildeve's intentions.

But her hope was apparently centred upon him; and dismissing his regrets Venn determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen way.That this way was, of all others, the most distressing to himself, was awkward enough;but the reddleman's love was generous.

His first active step in watching over Thomasin's interests was taken about seven o'clock the next evening and was dictated by the news which he had learnt from the sad boy.

That Eustacia was somehow the cause of Wildeve's carelessness in relation to the marriage had at once been Venn's conclusion on hearing of the secret meeting between them.

It did not occur to his mind that Eustacia's love signal to Wildeve was the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her grandfather had brought home.

His instinct was to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an antecedent obstacle to Thomasin's happiness.

During the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of Thomasin, but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this.

He had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected a nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain, which seemed to mean that his stay there was to be a comparatively extended one.After this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from Rainbarrow.

He watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain.

Nobody except himself came near the spot that night.

But the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman.He had stood in the shoes of Tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they would give cause for alarm.

The same hour the next evening found him again at the same place; but Eustacia and Wildeve, the expected trysters, did not appear.

He pursued precisely the same course yet four nights longer, and without success.But on the next, being the day-week of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape floating along the ridge and the outline of a young man ascending from the valley.They met in the little ditch encircling the tumulus--the original excavation from which it had been thrown up by the ancient British people.

The reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to Thomasin, was aroused to strategy in a moment.He instantly left the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees.

When he had got as close as he might safely venture without discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conversation of the trysting pair could not be overheard.

Near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas strewn with large turves, which lay edgeways and upside down awaiting removal by Timothy Fairway, previous to the winter weather.He took two of these as he lay, and dragged them over him till one covered his head and shoulders, the other his back and legs.The reddleman would now have been quite invisible, even by daylight;the turves, standing upon him with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if they were growing.He crept along again, and the turves upon his back crept with him.

Had he approached without any covering the chances are that he would not have been perceived in the dusk;approaching thus, it was as though he burrowed underground.

In this manner he came quite close to where the two were standing.

"Wish to consult me on the matter?" reached his ears in the rich, impetuous accents of Eustacia Vye.

"Consult me? It is an indignity to me to talk so--I won't bear it any longer!" She began weeping."I have loved you, and have shown you that I loved you, much to my regret;and yet you can come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult with me whether it would not be better to marry Thomasin.Better--of course it would be.

Marry her--she is nearer to your own position in life than I am!""Yes, yes; that's very well," said Wildeve peremptorily.