“But you can’t charge yourself with crimes
in that way,” said Venn. “You may
as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder
by the child, for without the parents the child would
never have been begot.”
“Yes, Venn, that is very true; but you don’t
know all the circumstances. If it had pleased
God to put an end to me it would have been a good
thing for all. But I am getting used to the horror
of my existence. They say that a time comes when
men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with
it. Surely that time will soon come to me!”
“Your aim has always been good,” said
Venn. “Why should you say such desperate
things?”
“No, they are not desperate. They are only
hopeless; and my great regret is that for what I have
done no man or law can punish me!”
The Inevitable Movement Onward
The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was
told throughout Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks
and months. All the known incidents of their
love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and modified,
till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance
to the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues.
Yet, upon the whole, neither the man nor the woman
lost dignity by sudden death. Misfortune had
struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic
histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as
with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting
meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect,
and decay.
On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat
different. Strangers who had heard of many such
cases now merely heard of one more; but immediately
where a blow falls no previous imaginings amount to
appreciable preparation for it. The very suddenness
of her bereavement dulled, to some extent, Thomasin’s
feelings; yet, irrationally enough, a consciousness
that the husband she had lost ought to have been a
better man did not lessen her mourning at all.
On the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off
the dead husband in his young wife’s eyes, and
to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow.
But the horrors of the unknown had passed. Vague
misgivings about her future as a deserted wife were
at an end. The worst had once been matter of
trembling conjecture; it was now matter of reason only,
a limited badness. Her chief interest, the little
Eustacia, still remained. There was humility
in her grief, no defiance in her attitude; and when
this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to be stilled.
Could Thomasin’s mournfulness now and Eustacia’s
serenity during life have been reduced to common measure,
they would have touched the same mark nearly.
But Thomasin’s former brightness made shadow
of that which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself.
