For the rest, she suffered much from depression of
spirits, and took slow walks to recover them, in which
she carried her grandfather’s telescope and
her grandmother’s hourglass—the latter
because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from watching
a material representation of time’s gradual
glide away. She seldom schemed, but when she did
scheme, her plans showed rather the comprehensive strategy
of a general than the small arts called womanish,
though she could utter oracles of Delphian ambiguity
when she did not choose to be direct. In heaven
she will probably sit between the Heloises and the
Cleopatras.
Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody
As soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the
fire he clasped the money tight in the palm of his
hand, as if thereby to fortify his courage, and began
to run. There was really little danger in allowing
a child to go home alone on this part of Egdon Heath.
The distance to the boy’s house was not more
than three-eighths of a mile, his father’s cottage,
and one other a few yards further on, forming part
of the small hamlet of Mistover Knap: the third
and only remaining house was that of Captain Vye and
Eustacia, which stood quite away from the small cottages,
and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly
populated slopes.
He ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming
more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in
an old voice a little song about a sailor-boy and
a fair one, and bright gold in store. In the middle
of this the child stopped: from a pit under the
hill ahead of him shone a light, whence proceeded
a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise.
Only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy.
The shrivelled voice of the heath did not alarm him,
for that was familiar. The thorn-bushes which
arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory,
for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit
after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen,
sprawling giants, and hideous cripples. Lights
were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of
all of them was different from this. Discretion
rather than terror prompted the boy to turn back instead
of passing the light, with a view of asking Miss Eustacia
Vye to let her servant accompany him home.
When the boy had reascended to the top of the valley
he found the fire to be still burning on the bank,
though lower than before. Beside it, instead
of Eustacia’s solitary form, he saw two persons,
the second being a man. The boy crept along under
the bank to ascertain from the nature of the proceedings
if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a
creature as Miss Eustacia on his poor trivial account.
After listening under the bank for some minutes to
the talk he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner
and began to withdraw as silently as he had come.
That he did not, upon the whole, think it advisable
to interrupt her conversation with Wildeve, without
being prepared to bear the whole weight of her displeasure,
was obvious.
