Eustacia awoke. The cracking had been that of
the window shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant
was opening to let in the day, now slowly increasing
to Nature’s meagre allowance at this sickly time
of the year. “O that I had seen his face!”
she said again. “’Twas meant for Mr. Yeobright!”
When she became cooler she perceived that many of
the phases of the dream had naturally arisen out of
the images and fancies of the day before. But
this detracted little from its interest, which lay
in the excellent fuel it provided for newly kindled
fervour. She was at the modulating point between
indifference and love, at the stage called “having
a fancy for.” It occurs once in the history
of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period
when they are in the hands of the weakest will.
The perfervid woman was by this time half in love
with a vision. The fantastic nature of her passion,
which lowered her as an intellect, raised her as a
soul. If she had had a little more self-control
she would have attenuated the emotion to nothing by
sheer reasoning, and so have killed it off. If
she had had a little less pride she might have gone
and circumambulated the Yeobrights’ premises
at Blooms-End at any maidenly sacrifice until she
had seen him. But Eustacia did neither of these
things. She acted as the most exemplary might
have acted, being so influenced; she took an airing
twice or thrice a day upon the Egdon hills, and kept
her eyes employed.
The first occasion passed, and he did not come that
way.
She promenaded a second time, and was again the sole
wanderer there.
The third time there was a dense fog; she looked around,
but without much hope. Even if he had been walking
within twenty yards of her she could not have seen
him.
At the fourth attempt to encounter him it began to
rain in torrents, and she turned back.
The fifth sally was in the afternoon: it was
fine, and she remained out long, walking to the very
top of the valley in which Blooms-End lay. She
saw the white paling about half a mile off; but he
did not appear. It was almost with heart-sickness
that she came home and with a sense of shame at her
weakness. She resolved to look for the man from
Paris no more.
But Providence is nothing if not coquettish; and no
sooner had Eustacia formed this resolve than the opportunity
came which, while sought, had been entirely withholden.
Eustacia Is Led On to an Adventure
In the evening of this last day of expectation, which
was the twenty-third of December, Eustacia was at
home alone. She had passed the recent hour in
lamenting over a rumour newly come to her ears—that
Yeobright’s visit to his mother was to be of
short duration, and would end some time the next week.
“Naturally,” she said to herself.
A man in the full swing of his activities in a gay
city could not afford to linger long on Egdon Heath.
That she would behold face to face the owner of the
awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday
was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs
of his mother’s house like a robin, to do which
was difficult and unseemly.
