IV. Rough Coercion Is Employed
Those words of Thomasin, which seemed so little, but meant so much, remained in the ears of Diggory Venn: “Help me to keep him home in the evenings.”
On this occasion Venn had arrived on Egdon Heath only to cross to the other side—he had no further connection with the interests of the Yeobright family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. Yet he suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of manœuvring on Thomasin’s account.
He sat in his van and considered. From Thomasin’s words and manner he had plainly gathered that Wildeve neglected her. For whom could he neglect her if not for Eustacia? Yet it was scarcely credible that things had come to such a head as to indicate that Eustacia systematically encouraged him. Venn resolved to reconnoitre somewhat carefully the lonely road which led along the vale from Wildeve’s dwelling to Clym’s house at Alderworth.
At this time, as has been seen, Wildeve was quite innocent of any predetermined act of intrigue, and except at the dance on the green he had not once met Eustacia since her marriage. But that the spirit of intrigue was in him had been shown by a recent romantic habit of his—a habit of going out after dark and strolling towards Alderworth, there looking at the moon and stars, looking at Eustacia’s house, and walking back at leisure.
Accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival, the reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over the front gate of Clym’s garden, sigh, and turn to go back again. It was plain that Wildeve’s intrigue was rather ideal than real. Venn retreated before him down the hill to a place where the path was merely a deep groove between the heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a few minutes, and retired. When Wildeve came on to that spot his ankle was caught by something, and he fell headlong.
As soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and listened. There was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. Feeling about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. Wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on with tolerable quickness. On reaching home he found the cord to be of a reddish colour. It was just what he had expected.
Although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to physical fear, this species of coup-de-Jarnac from one he knew too well troubled the mind of Wildeve. But his movements were unaltered thereby. A night or two later he again went along the vale to Alderworth, taking the precaution of keeping out of any path. The sense that he was watched, that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes, added piquancy to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long as the danger was of no fearful sort. He imagined that Venn and Mrs. Yeobright were in league, and felt that there was a certain legitimacy in combating such a coalition.
The heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted; and Wildeve, after looking over Eustacia’s garden gate for some little time, with a cigar in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. He could see into the room, and Eustacia was sitting there alone. Wildeve contemplated her for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly, whereupon moths flew out alarmed. Securing one, he returned to the window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. The moth made towards the candle upon Eustacia’s table, hovered round it two or three times, and flew into the flame.
Eustacia started up. This had been a well-known signal in old times when Wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to Mistover. She at once knew that Wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her husband came in from upstairs. Eustacia’s face burnt crimson at the unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that it too frequently lacked.
“You have a very high colour, dearest,” said Yeobright, when he came close enough to see it. “Your appearance would be no worse if it were always so.”
“I am warm,” said Eustacia. “I think I will go into the air for a few minutes.”
“Shall I go with you?”
“O no. I am only going to the gate.”
She arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping began upon the front door.
“I’ll go—I’ll go,” said Eustacia in an unusually quick tone for her; and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown; but nothing appeared there.
“You had better not at this time of the evening,” he said. Clym stepped before her into the passage, and Eustacia waited, her somnolent manner covering her inner heat and agitation.
She listened, and Clym opened the door. No words were uttered outside, and presently he closed it and came back, saying, “Nobody was there. I wonder what that could have meant?”
He was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation offered itself, and Eustacia said nothing, the additional fact that she knew of only adding more mystery to the performance.
Meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved Eustacia from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least. Whilst Wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had come behind him up to the gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand, looked on for a moment at the other’s operation by the window, walked up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner and over the hedge.
“Damn him!” said Wildeve. “He has been watching me again.”
As his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping Wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. Halfway down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. When Wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent gunshots fell among the leaves around him.
There was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun’s discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. This attack was a more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before Wildeve recovered his equanimity. A new and most unpleasant system of menace had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm. Wildeve had looked upon Venn’s first attempt as a species of horseplay, which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the perilous.
Had Wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest Venn had become he might have been still more alarmed. The reddleman had been almost exasperated by the sight of Wildeve outside Clym’s house, and he was prepared to go to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. The doubtful legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of Venn. It troubles few such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted. From the impeachment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch’s short way with the scamps of Virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are mockeries of law.
About half a mile below Clym’s secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of Alderworth, and Wildeve went straight to the constable’s cottage. Almost the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable’s truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the means to his purpose. On inquiry, however, of the constable’s wife he learnt that the constable was not at home. Wildeve said he would wait.
The minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive. Wildeve cooled down from his state of high indignation to a restless dissatisfaction with himself, the scene, the constable’s wife, and the whole set of circumstances. He arose and left the house. Altogether, the experience of that evening had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on misdirected tenderness, and Wildeve was in no mood to ramble again to Alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance from Eustacia.
Thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in his rude contrivances for keeping down Wildeve’s inclination to rove in the evening. He had nipped in the bud the possible meeting between Eustacia and her old lover this very night. But he had not anticipated that the tendency of his action would be to divert Wildeve’s movement rather than to stop it. The gambling with the guineas had not conduced to make him a welcome guest to Clym; but to call upon his wife’s relative was natural, and he was determined to see Eustacia. It was necessary to choose some less untoward hour than ten o’clock at night. “Since it is unsafe to go in the evening,” he said, “I’ll go by day.”
Meanwhile Venn had left the heath and gone to call upon Mrs. Yeobright, with whom he had been on friendly terms since she had learnt what a providential countermove he had made towards the restitution of the family guineas. She wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no objection to see him.
He gave her a full account of Clym’s affliction, and of the state in which he was living; then, referring to Thomasin, touched gently upon the apparent sadness of her days. “Now, ma’am, depend upon it,” he said, “you couldn’t do a better thing for either of ’em than to make yourself at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at first.”
“Both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; therefore I have no interest in their households. Their troubles are of their own making.” Mrs. Yeobright tried to speak severely; but the account of her son’s state had moved her more than she cared to show.
“Your visits would make Wildeve walk straighter than he is inclined to do, and might prevent unhappiness down the heath.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw something tonight out there which I didn’t like at all. I wish your son’s house and Mr. Wildeve’s were a hundred miles apart instead of four or five.”
“Then there was an understanding between him and Clym’s wife when he made a fool of Thomasin!”
“We’ll hope there’s no understanding now.”
“And our hope will probably be very vain. O Clym! O Thomasin!”
“There’s no harm done yet. In fact, I’ve persuaded Wildeve to mind his own business.”
“How?”
“O, not by talking—by a plan of mine called the silent system.”
“I hope you’ll succeed.”
“I shall if you help me by calling and making friends with your son. You’ll have a chance then of using your eyes.”
“Well, since it has come to this,” said Mrs. Yeobright sadly, “I will own to you, reddleman, that I thought of going. I should be much happier if we were reconciled. The marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut short, and I should wish to die in peace. He is my only son; and since sons are made of such stuff I am not sorry I have no other. As for Thomasin, I never expected much from her; and she has not disappointed me. But I forgave her long ago; and I forgive him now. I’ll go.”
At this very time of the reddleman’s conversation with Mrs. Yeobright at Blooms-End another conversation on the same subject was languidly proceeding at Alderworth.
All the day Clym had borne himself as if his mind were too full of its own matter to allow him to care about outward things, and his words now showed what had occupied his thoughts. It was just after the mysterious knocking that he began the theme. “Since I have been away today, Eustacia, I have considered that something must be done to heal up this ghastly breach between my dear mother and myself. It troubles me.”
“What do you propose to do?” said Eustacia abstractedly, for she could not clear away from her the excitement caused by Wildeve’s recent manœuvre for an interview.
“You seem to take a very mild interest in what I propose, little or much,” said Clym, with tolerable warmth.
“You mistake me,” she answered, reviving at his reproach. “I am only thinking.”
“What of?”
“Partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt up in the wick of the candle,” she said slowly. “But you know I always take an interest in what you say.”
“Very well, dear. Then I think I must go and call upon her.” ...He went on with tender feeling: “It is a thing I am not at all too proud to do, and only a fear that I might irritate her has kept me away so long. But I must do something. It is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go on.”
“What have you to blame yourself about?”
“She is getting old, and her life is lonely, and I am her only son.”
“She has Thomasin.”
“Thomasin is not her daughter; and if she were that would not excuse me. But this is beside the point. I have made up my mind to go to her, and all I wish to ask you is whether you will do your best to help me—that is, forget the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled, meet her halfway by welcoming her to our house, or by accepting a welcome to hers?”
At first Eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do anything on the whole globe than what he suggested. But the lines of her mouth softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened, and she said, “I will put nothing in your way; but after what has passed it is asking too much that I go and make advances.”
“You never distinctly told me what did pass between you.”
“I could not do it then, nor can I now. Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that may be the case here.” She paused a few moments, and added, “If you had never returned to your native place, Clym, what a blessing it would have been for you!... It has altered the destinies of——”
“Three people.”
“Five,” Eustacia thought; but she kept that in.