— you here? Have a glass of grog?”
Venn declined, on the plea of it being too early, and stated that his business was with Miss Vye. The captain surveyed him from cap to waistcoat and from waistcoat to leggings for a few moments, and finally asked him to go indoors.
Miss Vye was not to be seen by anybody just then; and the reddleman waited in the window-bench of the kitchen, his hands hanging across his divergent knees, and his cap hanging from his hands.
“I suppose the young lady is not up yet?” he presently said to the servant.
“Not quite yet. Folks never call upon ladies at this time of day.”
“Then I’ll step outside,” said Venn. “If she is willing to see me, will she please send out word, and I’ll come in.”
The reddleman left the house and loitered on the hill adjoining. A considerable time elapsed, and no request for his presence was brought. He was beginning to think that his scheme had failed, when he beheld the form of Eustacia herself coming leisurely towards him. A sense of novelty in giving audience to that singular figure had been sufficient to draw her forth.
She seemed to feel, after a bare look at Diggory Venn, that the man had come on a strange errand, and that he was not so mean as she had thought him; for her close approach did not cause him to writhe uneasily, or shift his feet, or show any of those little signs which escape an ingenuous rustic at the advent of the uncommon in womankind. On his inquiring if he might have a conversation with her she replied, “Yes, walk beside me,” and continued to move on.
Before they had gone far it occurred to the perspicacious reddleman that he would have acted more wisely by appearing less unimpressionable, and he resolved to correct the error as soon as he could find opportunity.
“I have made so bold, miss, as to step across and tell you some strange news which has come to my ears about that man.”
“Ah! what man?”
He jerked his elbow to the southeast — the direction of the Quiet Woman.
Eustacia turned quickly to him. “Do you mean Mr. Wildeve?”
“Yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and I have come to let you know of it, because I believe you might have power to drive it away.”
“I? What is the trouble?”
“It is quite a secret. It is that he may refuse to marry Thomasin Yeobright after all.”
Eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her part in such a drama as this. She replied coldly, “I do not wish to listen to this, and you must not expect me to interfere.”
“But, miss, you will hear one word?”
“I cannot. I am not interested in the marriage, and even if I were I could not compel Mr. Wildeve to do my bidding.”
“As the only lady on the heath I think you might,” said Venn with subtle indirectness. “This is how the case stands. Mr. Wildeve would marry Thomasin at once, and make all matters smooth, if so be there were not another woman in the case. This other woman is some person he has picked up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, I believe. He will never marry her, and yet through her he may never marry the woman who loves him dearly. Now, if you, miss, who have so much sway over us menfolk, were to insist that he should treat your young neighbour Tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman, he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery.”
“Ah, my life!” said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire. “You think too much of my influence over menfolk indeed, reddleman. If I had such a power as you imagine I would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been kind to me — which Thomasin Yeobright has not particularly, to my knowledge.”
“Can it be that you really don’t know of it — how much she had always thought of you?”
“I have never heard a word of it. Although we live only two miles apart I have never been inside her aunt’s house in my life.”
The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Venn that thus far he had utterly failed. He inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to unmask his second argument.
“Well, leaving that out of the question, ’tis in your power, I assure you, Miss Vye, to do a great deal of good to another woman.”
She shook her head.
“Your comeliness is law with Mr. Wildeve. It is law with all men who see ‘ee. They say, ‘This well-favoured lady coming — what’s her name? How handsome!’ Handsomer than Thomasin Yeobright,” the reddleman persisted, saying to himself, “God forgive a rascal for lying!” And she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so. There was a certain obscurity in Eustacia’s beauty, and Venn’s eye was not trained. In her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling splendour.
Eustacia could not help replying, though conscious that she endangered her dignity thereby. “Many women are lovelier than Thomasin,” she said, “so not much attaches to that.”
The reddleman suffered the wound and went on: “He is a man who notices the looks of women, and you could twist him to your will like withywind, if you only had the mind.”
“Surely what she cannot do who has been so much with him I cannot do living up here away from him.”
The reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. “Miss Vye!” he said.
“Why do you say that — as if you doubted me?” She spoke faintly, and her breathing was quick. “The idea of your speaking in that tone to me!” she added, with a forced smile of hauteur. “What could have been in your mind to lead you to speak like that?”
“Miss Vye, why should you make believe that you don’t know this man? — I know why, certainly. He is beneath you, and you are ashamed.”
“You are mistaken. What do you mean?”
The reddleman had decided to play the card of truth. “I was at the meeting by Rainbarrow last night and heard every word,” he said. “The woman that stands between Wildeve and Thomasin is yourself.”
It was a disconcerting lift of the curtain, and the mortification of Candaules’ wife glowed in her. The moment had arrived when her lip would tremble in spite of herself, and when the gasp could no longer be kept down.
“I am unwell,” she said hurriedly. “No — it is not that — I am not in a humour to hear you further. Leave me, please.”
“I must speak, Miss Vye, in spite of paining you. What I would put before you is this. However it may come about — whether she is to blame, or you — her case is without doubt worse than yours. Your giving up Mr. Wildeve will be a real advantage to you, for how could you marry him? Now she cannot get off so easily — everybody will blame her if she loses him. Then I ask you — not because her right is best, but because her situation is worst — to give him up to her.”
“No — I won’t, I won’t!”
