He shook his head at her. “I know you too
well, my Eustacia; I know you too well. There
isn’t a note in you which I don’t know;
and that hot little bosom couldn’t play such
a coldblooded trick to save its life. I saw a
woman on Rainbarrow at dusk looking down towards my
house. I think I drew out you before you drew
out me.”
The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly
in Wildeve now; and he leant forward as if about to
put his face towards her cheek.
“O no,” she said, intractably moving to
the other side of the decayed fire. “What
did you mean by that?”
“Perhaps I may kiss your hand?”
“No, you may not.”
“Then I may shake your hand?”
“No.”
“Then I wish you good night without caring for
either. Good-bye, good-bye.”
She returned no answer, and with the bow of a dancing-master
he vanished on the other side of the pool as he had
come.
Eustacia sighed: it was no fragile maiden sigh,
but a sigh which shook her like a shiver. Whenever
a flash of reason darted like an electric light upon
her lover—as it sometimes would—and
showed his imperfections, she shivered thus.
But it was over in a second, and she loved on.
She knew that he trifled with her; but she loved on.
She scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately,
and up to her bedroom without a light. Amid the
rustles which denoted her to be undressing in the
darkness other heavy breaths frequently came; and
the same kind of shudder occasionally moved through
her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her bed asleep.
Queen of Night
Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity.
On Olympus she would have done well with a little
preparation. She had the passions and instincts
which make a model goddess, that is, those which make
not quite a model woman. Had it been possible
for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp
for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle,
and the shears at her own free will, few in the world
would have noticed the change of government. There
would have been the same inequality of lot, the same
heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the
same generosity before justice, the same perpetual
dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses
and blows that we endure now.
She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy;
without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to
the touch as a cloud. To see her hair was to
fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness
enough to form its shadow: it closed over her
forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western
glow.
Her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper
could always be softened by stroking them down.
When her hair was brushed she would instantly sink
into stillness and look like the Sphinx. If, in
passing under one of the Egdon banks, any of its thick
skeins were caught, as they sometimes were, by a prickly
tuft of the large Ulex Europaeus—which
will act as a sort of hairbrush—she would
go back a few steps, and pass against it a second
time.
