He entered the van, where there was a fire in a stove.
Without lighting his candle he sat down at once on
the three-legged stool, and pondered on what he had
seen and heard touching that still loved-one of his.
He uttered a sound which was neither sigh nor sob,
but was even more indicative than either of a troubled
mind.
“My Tamsie,” he whispered heavily.
“What can be done? Yes, I will see that
Eustacia Vye.”
A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion
The next morning, at the time when the height of the
sun appeared very insignificant from any part of the
heath as compared with the altitude of Rainbarrow,
and when all the little hills in the lower levels were
like an archipelago in a fog-formed Aegean, the reddleman
came from the brambled nook which he had adopted as
his quarters and ascended the slopes of Mistover Knap.
Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary,
several keen round eyes were always ready on such
a wintry morning as this to converge upon a passer-by.
Feathered species sojourned here in hiding which would
have created wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard
haunted the spot, and not many years before this five
and twenty might have been seen in Egdon at one time.
Marsh-harriers looked up from the valley by Wildeve’s.
A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill,
a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever
been seen in England; but a barbarian rested neither
night nor day till he had shot the African truant,
and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought
fit to enter Egdon no more.
A traveller who should walk and observe any of these
visitants as Venn observed them now could feel himself
to be in direct communication with regions unknown
to man. Here in front of him was a wild mallard—just
arrived from the home of the north wind. The creature
brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge.
Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering
auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot,—the
category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But
the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as
he looked at the reddleman to think that a present
moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade of
memories.
Venn passed on through these towards the house of
the isolated beauty who lived up among them and despised
them. The day was Sunday; but as going to church,
except to be married or buried, was exceptional at
Egdon, this made little difference. He had determined
upon the bold stroke of asking for an interview with
Miss Vye—to attack her position as Thomasin’s
rival either by art or by storm, showing therein,
somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry
characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from
clowns to kings. The great Frederick making war
on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing terms
to the beautiful Queen of Prussia, were not more dead
to difference of sex than the reddleman was, in his
peculiar way, in planning the displacement of Eustacia.
