II
The People at Blooms-End Make Ready
All that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of Eustacia'sruminations created a bustle of preparation at Blooms-End. Thomasinhad been persuaded by her aunt, and by an instinctive impulse ofloyalty towards her cousin Clym, to bestir herself on his accountwith an alacrity unusual in her during these most sorrowful days ofher life. At the time that Eustacia was listening to the rickmakers'conversation on Clym's return, Thomasin was climbing into a loft overher aunt's fuel-house, where the store-apples were kept, to search outthe best and largest of them for the coming holiday-time.
The loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which the pigeonscrept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; andfrom this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figureof the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the softbrown fern, which, from its abundance, was used on Egdon in packingaway stores of all kinds. The pigeons were flying about her head withthe greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visibleabove the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as shestood half-way up the ladder, looking at a spot into which she was notclimber enough to venture.
"Now a few russets, Tamsin. He used to like them almost as well asribstones."
Thomasin turned and rolled aside the fern from another nook, wheremore mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell. Before pickingthem out she stopped a moment.
"Dear Clym, I wonder how your face looks now?" she said, gazingabstractedly at the pigeon-hole, which admitted the sunlight sodirectly upon her brown hair and transparent tissues that it almostseemed to shine through her.
"If he could have been dear to you in another way," said Mrs.Yeobright from the ladder, "this might have been a happy meeting."
"Is there any use in saying what can do no good, aunt?"
"Yes," said her aunt, with some warmth. "To thoroughly fill the airwith the past misfortune, so that other girls may take warning andkeep clear of it."
Thomasin lowered her face to the apples again. "I am a warning toothers, just as thieves and drunkards and gamblers are," she said ina low voice. "What a class to belong to! Do I really belong to them?'Tis absurd! Yet why, aunt, does everybody keep on making me thinkthat I do, by the way they behave towards me? Why don't people judgeme by my acts? Now, look at me as I kneel here, picking up theseapples--do I look like a lost woman?... I wish all good women were asgood as I!" she added vehemently.
"Strangers don't see you as I do," said Mrs. Yeobright; "they judgefrom false report. Well, it is a silly job, and I am partly toblame."
"How quickly a rash thing can be done!" replied the girl. Her lipswere quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes thatshe could hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continuedindustriously searching to hide her weakness.
"As soon as you have finished getting the apples," her aunt said,descending the ladder, "come down, and we'll go for the holly. Thereis nobody on the heath this afternoon, and you need not fear beingstared at. We must get some berries, or Clym will never believe inour preparations."
Thomasin came down when the apples were collected, and together theywent through the white palings to the heath beyond. The open hillswere airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it oftenappears on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illuminationindependently toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscapestreaming visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffronedlight was imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these laystill remoter scenes wrapped in frigid grey.
They reached the place where the hollies grew, which was in a conicalpit, so that the tops of the trees were not much above the generallevel of the ground. Thomasin stepped up into a fork of one of thebushes, as she had done under happier circumstances on many similaroccasions, and with a small chopper that they had brought she began tolop off the heavily-berried boughs.
"Don't scratch your face," said her aunt, who stood at the edge of thepit, regarding the girl as she held on amid the glistening green andscarlet masses of the tree. "Will you walk with me to meet him thisevening?"
"I should like to. Else it would seem as if I had forgotten him,"said Thomasin, tossing out a bough. "Not that that would matter much;I belong to one man; nothing can alter that. And that man I mustmarry, for my pride's sake."
"I am afraid--" began Mrs. Yeobright.
"Ah, you think, 'That weak girl--how is she going to get a man tomarry her when she chooses?' But let me tell you one thing, aunt: Mr.Wildeve is not a profligate man, any more than I am an improper woman.He has an unfortunate manner, and doesn't try to make people like himif they don't wish to do it of their own accord."
"Thomasin," said Mrs. Yeobright quietly, fixing her eye upon herniece, "do you think you deceive me in your defence of Mr. Wildeve?"
"How do you mean?"
"I have long had a suspicion that your love for him has changed itscolour since you have found him not to be the saint you thought him,and that you act a part to me."
"He wished to marry me, and I wish to marry him."
"Now, I put it to you: would you at this present moment agree to behis wife if that had not happened to entangle you with him?"
Thomasin looked into the tree and appeared much disturbed. "Aunt," shesaid presently, "I have, I think, a right to refuse to answer thatquestion."
"Yes, you have."
"You may think what you choose. I have never implied to you by wordor deed that I have grown to think otherwise of him, and I never will.And I shall marry him."
"Well, wait till he repeats his offer. I think he may do it, now thathe knows--something I told him. I don't for a moment dispute thatit is the most proper thing for you to marry him. Much as I haveobjected to him in bygone days, I agree with you now, you may be sure.It is the only way out of a false position, and a very galling one."
"What did you tell him?"
"That he was standing in the way of another lover of yours."
"Aunt," said Thomasin, with round eyes, "what DO you mean?"
"Don't be alarmed; it was my duty. I can say no more about it now,but when it is over I will tell you exactly what I said, and why Isaid it."
Thomasin was perforce content.
"And you will keep the secret of my would-be marriage from Clym forthe present?" she next asked.
"I have given my word to. But what is the use of it? He must soonknow what has happened. A mere look at your face will show him thatsomething is wrong."
Thomasin turned and regarded her aunt from the tree. "Now, hearken tome," she said, her delicate voice expanding into firmness by a forcewhich was other than physical. "Tell him nothing. If he finds outthat I am not worthy to be his cousin, let him. But, since he lovedme once, we will not pain him by telling him my trouble too soon. Theair is full of the story, I know; but gossips will not dare to speakof it to him for the first few days. His closeness to me is the verything that will hinder the tale from reaching him early. If I am notmade safe from sneers in a week or two I will tell him myself."
The earnestness with which Thomasin spoke prevented furtherobjections. Her aunt simply said, "Very well. He should by rightshave been told at the time that the wedding was going to be. He willnever forgive you for your secrecy."
"Yes, he will, when he knows it was because I wished to spare him, andthat I did not expect him home so soon. And you must not let me standin the way of your Christmas party. Putting it off would only makematters worse."
"Of course I shall not. I do not wish to show myself beaten beforeall Egdon, and the sport of a man like Wildeve. We have enoughberries now, I think, and we had better take them home. By the timewe have decked the house with this and hung up the mistletoe, we mustthink of starting to meet him."
Thomasin came out of the tree, shook from her hair and dress the looseberries which had fallen thereon, and went down the hill with heraunt, each woman bearing half the gathered boughs. It was now nearlyfour o
'clock, and the sunlight was leaving the vales. When the westgrew red the two relatives came again from the house and plunged intothe heath in a different direction from the first, towards a point inthe distant highway along which the expected man was to return.