can’t stay a minute, thank ye,” he answered to her greeting. “I am driving to East Egdon; but I came round here just to tell you the news. Perhaps you have heard — about Mr. Wildeve’s fortune?”
“No,” said Eustacia blankly.
“Well, he has come into a fortune of eleven thousand pounds — uncle died in Canada, just after hearing that all his family, whom he was sending home, had gone to the bottom in the Cassiopeia; so Wildeve has come into everything, without in the least expecting it.”
Eustacia stood motionless awhile. “How long has he known of this?” she asked.
“Well, it was known to him this morning early, for I knew it at ten o’clock, when Charley came back. Now, he is what I call a lucky man. What a fool you were, Eustacia!”
“In what way?” she said, lifting her eyes in apparent calmness.
“Why, in not sticking to him when you had him.”
“Had him, indeed!”
“I did not know there had ever been anything between you till lately; and, faith, I should have been hot and strong against it if I had known; but since it seems that there was some sniffing between ye, why the deuce didn’t you stick to him?”
Eustacia made no reply, but she looked as if she could say as much upon that subject as he if she chose.
“And how is your poor purblind husband?” continued the old man. “Not a bad fellow either, as far as he goes.”
“He is quite well.”
“It is a good thing for his cousin what-d’ye-call-her? By George, you ought to have been in that galley, my girl! Now I must drive on. Do you want any assistance? What’s mine is yours, you know.”
“Thank you, Grandfather, we are not in want at present,” she said coldly. “Clym cuts furze, but he does it mostly as a useful pastime, because he can do nothing else.”
“He is paid for his pastime, isn’t he? Three shillings a hundred, I heard.”
“Clym has money,” she said, colouring, “but he likes to earn a little.”
“Very well; good night.” And the captain drove on.
When her grandfather was gone Eustacia went on her way mechanically; but her thoughts were no longer concerning her mother-in-law and Clym. Wildeve, notwithstanding his complaints against his fate, had been seized upon by destiny and placed in the sunshine once more. Eleven thousand pounds! From every Egdon point of view he was a rich man. In Eustacia’s eyes, too, it was an ample sum — one sufficient to supply those wants of hers which had been stigmatized by Clym in his more austere moods as vain and luxurious. Though she was no lover of money she loved what money could bring; and the new accessories she imagined around him clothed Wildeve with a great deal of interest. She recollected now how quietly well-dressed he had been that morning — he had probably put on his newest suit, regardless of damage by briars and thorns. And then she thought of his manner towards herself.
“O I see it, I see it,” she said. “How much he wishes he had me now, that he might give me all I desire!”
In recalling the details of his glances and words — at the time scarcely regarded — it became plain to her how greatly they had been dictated by his knowledge of this new event. “Had he been a man to bear a jilt ill-will he would have told me of his good fortune in crowing tones; instead of doing that he mentioned not a word, in deference to my misfortunes, and merely implied that he loved me still, as one superior to him.”
Wildeve’s silence that day on what had happened to him was just the kind of behaviour calculated to make an impression on such a woman. Those delicate touches of good taste were, in fact, one of the strong points in his demeanour towards the other sex. The peculiarity of Wildeve was that, while at one time passionate, upbraiding, and resentful towards a woman, at another he would treat her with such unparalleled grace as to make previous neglect appear as no discourtesy, injury as no insult, interference as a delicate attention, and the ruin of her honour as excess of chivalry. This man, whose admiration today Eustacia had disregarded, whose good wishes she had scarcely taken the trouble to accept, whom she had shown out of the house by the back door, was the possessor of eleven thousand pounds — a man of fair professional education, and one who had served his articles with a civil engineer.
So intent was Eustacia upon Wildeve’s fortunes that she forgot how much closer to her own course were those of Clym; and instead of walking on to meet him at once she sat down upon a stone. She was disturbed in her reverie by a voice behind, and turning her head beheld the old lover and fortunate inheritor of wealth immediately beside her.
She remained sitting, though the fluctuation in her look might have told any man who knew her so well as Wildeve that she was thinking of him.
“How did you come here?” she said in her clear low tone. “I thought you were at home.”
“I went on to the village after leaving your garden; and now I have come back again — that’s all. Which way are you walking, may I ask?”
She waved her hand in the direction of Blooms-End. “I am going to meet my husband. I think I may possibly have got into trouble whilst you were with me today.”
“How could that be?”
“By not letting in Mrs. Yeobright.”
“I hope that visit of mine did you no harm.”
“None. It was not your fault,” she said quietly.
By this time she had risen; and they involuntarily sauntered on together, without speaking, for two or three minutes; when Eustacia broke silence by saying, “I assume I must congratulate you.”
“On what? O yes; on my eleven thousand pounds, you mean. Well, since I didn’t get something else, I must be content with getting that.”
“You seem very indifferent about it. Why didn’t you tell me today when you came?” she said in the tone of a neglected person. “I heard of it quite by accident.”
“I did mean to tell you,” said Wildeve. “But I— well, I will speak frankly — I did not like to mention it when I saw, Eustacia, that your star was not high. The sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would be greatly out of place. Yet, as you stood there beside him, I could not help feeling too that in many respects he was a richer man than I.”
At this Eustacia said, with slumbering mischievousness, “What, would you exchange with him — your fortune for me?”
“I certainly would,” said Wildeve.
“As we are imagining what is impossible and absurd, suppose we change the subject?”
“Very well; and I will tell you of my plans for the future, if you care to hear them. I shall permanently invest nine thousand pounds, keep one thousand as ready money, and with the remaining thousand travel for a year or so.”
“Travel? What a bright idea! Where will you go to?”
“From here to Paris, where I shall pass the winter and spring. Then I shall go to Italy, Greece,
