By the time that Wildeve reached her name the blankness
with which he had read the first half of the letter
intensified to mortification. "I am made a great fool of,
one way and another," he said pettishly. "Do you know
what is in this letter?"
The reddleman hummed a tune.
"Can't you answer me?" asked Wildeve warmly.
"Ru-um-tum-tum," sang the reddleman.
Wildeve stood looking on the ground beside Venn's feet,
till he allowed his eyes to travel upwards over Diggory's form,
as illuminated by the candle, to his head and face.
"Ha-ha! Well, I suppose I deserve
it, considering how I have
played with them both," he said at last, as much to himself
as to Venn. "But of all the odd things that ever I knew,
the oddest is that you should so run counter to your own
interests as to bring this to me."
"My interests?"
"Certainly. 'Twas your interest not to do anything
which would send me courting Thomasin again, now she
has accepted you--or something like it. Mrs. Yeobright
says you are to marry her. 'Tisn't true, then?"
"Good Lord! I heard of this before, but didn't believe it.
When did she say so?"
Wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done.
"I don't believe it now," cried Venn.
"Ru-um-tum-tum," sang Wildeve.
"O Lord--how we can imitate!" said Venn contemptuously.
"I'll have this out. I'll go straight to her."
Diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, Wildeve's eye
passing over his form in withering derision, as if he
were no more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's
figure could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself descended
and plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale.
To lose the two women--he who had been the well-beloved
of both--was too ironical an issue to be endured.
He could only decently save himself by Thomasin;
and once he became her husband, Eustacia's repentance,
he thought, would set in for a long and bitter term.
It was no wonder that Wildeve, ignorant of the new man
at the back of the scene, should have supposed Eustacia
to be playing a part. To believe that the letter was not
the result of some momentary pique, to infer that she really
gave him up to Thomasin, would have required previous
knowledge of her transfiguration by that man's influence.
Who was to know that she had
grown generous in the greediness
of a new passion, that in coveting one cousin she was
dealing liberally with another, that in her eagerness to
appropriate she gave way?
Full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring
the heart of the proud girl, Wildeve went his way.
Meanwhile Diggory Venn had returned to his van,
where he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove.
A new vista was opened up to him. But, however promising
Mrs. Yeobright's views of him might be as a candidate for her
niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour
of Thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his
present wild mode of life. In this he saw little difficulty.
He could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing
Thomasin and detailing his plan. He speedily plunged
himself into toilet operations, pulled a suit of cloth
clothes from a box, and in about twenty minutes stood before
the van-lantern as a reddleman in nothing but his face,
the vermilion shades of which were not to be removed in
a day. Closing the door and fastening it with a padlock,
Venn set off towards Blooms-End.
He had reached the white palings and laid his hand
upon the gate when the door of the house opened,
and quickly closed again. A female form had glided in.
At the same time a man, who had seemingly been standing
with the woman in the porch, came forward from the house
till he was face to face with Venn. It was Wildeve again.
"Man alive, you've been quick at it," said Diggory sarcastically.
"And you slow, as you will find," said Wildeve.
"And," lowering his voice, "you may as well go
back again now. I've claimed her, and got her.
Good night, reddleman!" Thereupon Wildeve walked away.
Venn's heart sank within him, though it had not risen
unduly high. He stood leaning over the palings
in
an indecisive mood for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Then he went up the garden path, knocked, and asked
for Mrs. Yeobright.
Instead of requesting him to enter she came to the porch.
A discourse was carried on between them in low measured
tones for the space of ten minutes or more. At the end
of the time Mrs. Yeobright went in, and Venn sadly retraced
his steps into the heath. When he had again regained
his van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face
at once began to pull off his best clothes, till in the
course of a few minutes he reappeared as the confirmed
and irretrievable reddleman that he had seemed before.
