Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native.pdf - Bookstacks

things that I have said to you.”
Wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. The pause was filled up by the intonation
of a pollard thorn a little way to windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as
through a strainer. It was as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth.
She continued, half sorrowfully, “Since meeting you last, it has occurred to me once or twice that perhaps
it was not for love of me you did not marry her. Tell me, Damon: I’ll try to bear it. Had I nothing whatever
to do with the matter?”
“Do you press me to tell?”
“Yes, I must know. I see I have been too ready to believe in my own power.”
“Well, the immediate reason was that the license would not do for the place, and before I could get another
she ran away. Up to that point you had nothing to do with it. Since then her aunt has spoken to me
in a tone which I don’t at all like.”
“Yes, yes! I am nothing in it—I am nothing in it. You only trifle with me. Heaven, what can I, Eustacia
Vye, be made of to think so much of you!”
“Nonsense; do not be so passionate... Eustacia, how we roved among these bushes last year, when the
hot days had got cool, and the shades of the hills kept us almost invisible in the hollows!”
She remained in moody silence till she said, “Yes; and how I used to laugh at you for daring to look up
to me! But you have well made me suffer for that since.”
“Yes, you served me cruelly enough until I thought I had found some one fairer than you. A blessed find
for me, Eustacia.”
“Do you still think you found somebody fairer?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The scales are balanced so nicely that a feather would turn them.”
“But don’t you really care whether I meet you or whether I don’t?” she said slowly.
“I care a little, but not enough to break my rest,” replied the young man languidly. “No, all that’s past. I
find there are two flowers where I thought there was only one. Perhaps there are three, or four, or any number
as good as the first... Mine is a curious fate. Who would have thought that all this could happen to me?”
She interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love or anger seemed an equally possible issue,
“Do you love me now?”
“Who can say?”
“Tell me; I will know it!”
“I do, and I do not,” said he mischievously. “That is, I have my times and my seasons. One moment you
are too tall, another moment you are too do-nothing, another too melancholy, another too dark, another I
don’t know what, except—that you are not the whole world to me that you used to be, my dear. But you are
a pleasant lady to know, and nice to meet, and I dare say as sweet as ever—almost.”
Eustacia was silent, and she turned from him, till she said, in a voice of suspended mightiness, “I am for
a walk, and this is my way.”
“Well, I can do worse than follow you.”
“You know you can’t do otherwise, for all your moods and changes!” she answered defiantly. “Say what
you will; try as you may; keep away from me all that you can—you will never forget me. You will love me all
your life long. You would jump to marry me!”
“So I would!” said Wildeve. “Such strange thoughts as I’ve had from time to time, Eustacia; and they
come to me this moment. You hate the heath as much as ever; that I know.”
“I do,” she murmured deeply. “‘Tis my cross, my shame, and will be my death!”
“I abhor it too,” said he. “How mournfully the wind blows round us now!”
She did not answer. Its tone was indeed solemn and pervasive. Compound utterances addressed themselves
to their senses, and it was possible to view by ear the features of the neighbourhood. Acoustic pictures
were returned from the darkened scenery; they could hear where the tracts of heather began and ended;
where the furze was growing stalky and tall; where it had been recently cut; in what direction the fir-clump
lay, and how near was the pit in which the hollies grew; for these differing features had their voices no less
than their shapes and colours.