Chapter: <CHAPTER>
2--The People at Blooms-End Make Ready


All that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of Eustacia's
ruminations created a bustle of preparation at Blooms-End. Thomasin had
been persuaded by her aunt, and by an instinctive impulse of loyalty
towards her cousin Clym, to bestir herself on his account with an
alacrity unusual in her during these most sorrowful days of her life. At
the time that Eustacia was listening to the rick-makers' conversation
on Clym's return, Thomasin was climbing into a loft over her aunt's
fuelhouse, where the store-apples were kept, to search out the best and
largest of them for the coming holiday-time.

The loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which the pigeons
crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; and
from this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figure of
the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the soft brown
fern, which, from its abundance, was used on Egdon in packing away
stores of all kinds. The pigeons were flying about her head with the
greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visible above
the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as she stood
halfway up the ladder, looking at a spot into which she was not climber
enough to venture.

"Now a few russets, Tamsin. He used to like them almost as well as
ribstones."

Thomasin turned and rolled aside the fern from another nook, where more
mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell. Before picking them out
she stopped a moment.

"Dear Clym, I wonder how your face looks now?" she said, gazing
abstractedly at the pigeon-hole, which admitted the sunlight so directly
upon her brown hair and transparent tissues that it almost seemed to
shine through her.

"If he could have been dear to you in another way," said Mrs. Yeobright
from the ladder, "this might have been a happy meeting."

"Is there any use in saying what can do no good, Aunt?"

"Yes," said her aunt, with some warmth. "To thoroughly fill the air with
the past misfortune, so that other girls may take warning and keep clear
of it."

Thomasin lowered her face to the apples again. "I am a warning to
others, just as thieves and drunkards and gamblers are," she said in a
low voice. "What a class to belong to! Do I really belong to them? 'Tis
absurd! Yet why, Aunt, does everybody keep on making me think that I do,
by the way they behave towards me? Why don't people judge me by my acts?
Now, look at me as I kneel here, picking up these apples--do I look
like a lost woman?... I wish all good women were as good as I!" she added
vehemently.

"Strangers don't see you as I do," said Mrs. Yeobright; "they judge from
false report. Well, it is a silly job, and I am partly to blame."

"How quickly a rash thing can be done!" replied the girl. Her lips were
quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes that she could
hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continued industriously
searching to hide her weakness.

"As soon as you have finished getting the apples," her aunt said,
descending the ladder, "come down, and we'll go for the holly. There is
nobody on the heath this afternoon, and you need not fear being
stared at. We must get some berries, or Clym will never believe in our
preparations."

Thomasin came down when the apples were collected, and together they
went through the white palings to the heath beyond. The open hills were
airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it often appears
on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illumination independently
toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming
visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffroned light was
imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay still remoter
scenes wrapped in frigid grey.

They reached the place where the hollies grew, which was in a conical
pit, so that the tops of the trees were not much above the general level
of the ground. Thomasin stepped up into a fork of one of the bushes, as
she had done under happier circumstances on many similar occasions,
and with a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off the
heavily berried boughs.

"Don't scratch your face," said her aunt, who stood at the edge of the
pit, regarding the girl as she held on amid the glistening green and
scarlet masses of the tree. "Will you walk with me to meet him this
evening?"

"I should like to. Else it would seem as if I had forgotten him," said
Thomasin, tossing out a bough. "Not that that would matter much; I
belong to one man; nothing can alter that. And that man I must marry,
for my pride's sake."

"I am afraid--" began Mrs. Yeobright.

"Ah, you think, 'That weak girl--how is she going to get a man to marry
her when she chooses?' But let me tell you one thing, Aunt: Mr. Wildeve
is not a profligate man, any more than I am an improper woman. He has
an unfortunate manner, and doesn't try to make people like him if they
don't wish to do it of their own accord."

"Thomasin," said Mrs. Yeobright quietly, fixing her eye upon her niece,
"do you think you deceive me in your defence of Mr. Wildeve?"

"How do you mean?"

"I have long had a suspicion that your love for him has changed its
colour since you have found him not to be the saint you thought him, and
that you act a part to me."

"He wished to marry me, and I wish to marry him."

"Now, I put it to you: would you at this present moment agree to be his
wife if that had not happened to entangle you with him?"

Thomasin looked into the tree and appeared much disturbed. "Aunt,"
she said presently, "I have, I think, a right to refuse to answer that
question."

"Yes, you have."

"You may think what you choose. I have never implied to you by word or
deed that I have grown to think otherwise of him, and I never will. And
I shall marry him."

"Well, wait till he repeats his offer. I think he may do it, now that he
knows--something I told him. I don't for a moment dispute that it is the
most proper thing for you to marry him. Much as I have objected to him
in bygone days, I agree with you now, you may be sure. It is the only
way out of a false position, and a very galling one."

"What did you tell him?"

"That he was standing in the way of another lover of yours."

"Aunt," said Thomasin, with round eyes, "what DO you mean?"

"Don't be alarmed; it was my duty. I can say no more about it now, but
when it is over I will tell you exactly what I said, and why I said it."

Thomasin was perforce content.

"And you will keep the secret of my would-be marriage from Clym for the
present?" she next asked.

"I have given my word to. But what is the use of it? He must soon know
what has happened. A mere look at your face will show him that something
is wrong."

Thomasin turned and regarded her aunt from the tree. "Now, hearken to
me," she said, her delicate voice expanding into firmness by a force
which was other than physical. "Tell him nothing. If he finds out that I
am not worthy to be his cousin, let him. But, since he loved me once, we
will not pain him by telling him my trouble too soon. The air is full of
the story, I know; but gossips will not dare to speak of it to him for
the first few days. His closeness to me is the very thing that will
hinder the tale from reaching him early. If I am not made safe from
sneers in a week or two I will tell him myself."

The earnestness with which Thomasin spoke prevented further objections.
Her aunt simply said, "Very well. He should by rights have been told at
the time that the wedding was going to be. He will never forgive you for
your secrecy."

"Yes, he will, when he knows it was because I wished to spare him, and
that I did not expect him home so soon. And you must not let me stand in
the way of your Christmas party. Putting it off would only make matters
worse."

"Of course I shall not. I do not wish to show myself beaten before all
Egdon, and the sport of a man like Wildeve. We have enough berries now,
I think, and we had better take them home. By the time we have decked
the house with this and hung up the mistletoe, we must think of starting
to meet him."

Thomasin came out of the tree, shook from her hair and dress the loose
berries which had fallen thereon, and went down the hill with her aunt,
each woman bearing half the gathered boughs. It was now nearly four
o'clock, and the sunlight was leaving the vales. When the west grew red
the two relatives came again from the house and plunged into the heath
in a different direction from the first, towards a point in the distant
highway along which the expected man was to return.



</CHAPTER>

 Mrs. Yeobright badgers Thomasin out of her funk and enlists her in Operation: Clym's Visit. The two women clean the house and prepare Clym's room. They then head outside to gather ferns and apples. Thomasin talks about her situation and is upset that she's being labeled as a scarlet woman when she hasn't done anything wrong. Her aunt kind of brushes her off with an "oh well, tough luck" and the two head off to gather some holly. Thomasin defends Wildeve and her situation, but her aunt tells her to come off it and tell the truth. Thomasin refuses to say whether or not she regrets getting involved with him and both women agree that the only thing to do now is to marry the guy, whether she even really wants to or not. Then Thomasin asks her aunt to keep everything a secret from Clym for as long as possible since she doesn't want him to think badly of her. The two agree that the Christmas party should go forward as planned too. Later the two women set off down a highway to meet Clym on his way home.

