Chapter: <CHAPTER>
4--Rough Coercion Is Employed


Those words of Thomasin, which seemed so little, but meant so much,
remained in the ears of Diggory Venn: "Help me to keep him home in the
evenings."

On this occasion Venn had arrived on Egdon Heath only to cross to the
other side--he had no further connection with the interests of the
Yeobright family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. Yet
he suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of
manoeuvring on Thomasin's account.

He sat in his van and considered. From Thomasin's words and manner
he had plainly gathered that Wildeve neglected her. For whom could
he neglect her if not for Eustacia? Yet it was scarcely credible
that things had come to such a head as to indicate that Eustacia
systematically encouraged him. Venn resolved to reconnoitre somewhat
carefully the lonely road which led along the vale from Wildeve's
dwelling to Clym's house at Alderworth.

At this time, as has been seen, Wildeve was quite innocent of any
predetermined act of intrigue, and except at the dance on the green he
had not once met Eustacia since her marriage. But that the spirit of
intrigue was in him had been shown by a recent romantic habit of his--a
habit of going out after dark and strolling towards Alderworth, there
looking at the moon and stars, looking at Eustacia's house, and walking
back at leisure.

Accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival, the
reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over the front gate
of Clym's garden, sigh, and turn to go back again. It was plain that
Wildeve's intrigue was rather ideal than real. Venn retreated before him
down the hill to a place where the path was merely a deep groove
between the heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a few
minutes, and retired. When Wildeve came on to that spot his ankle was
caught by something, and he fell headlong.

As soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and
listened. There was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir
of the summer wind. Feeling about for the obstacle which had flung
him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together
across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain
overthrow. Wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on
with tolerable quickness. On reaching home he found the cord to be of a
reddish colour. It was just what he had expected.

Although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to physical fear,
this species of coup-de-Jarnac from one he knew too well troubled the
mind of Wildeve. But his movements were unaltered thereby. A night
or two later he again went along the vale to Alderworth, taking the
precaution of keeping out of any path. The sense that he was watched,
that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes, added piquancy
to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long as the danger was of no
fearful sort. He imagined that Venn and Mrs. Yeobright were in league,
and felt that there was a certain legitimacy in combating such a
coalition.

The heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted; and Wildeve, after
looking over Eustacia's garden gate for some little time, with a cigar
in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling
had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite
closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. He could see into the
room, and Eustacia was sitting there alone. Wildeve contemplated her
for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly,
whereupon moths flew out alarmed. Securing one, he returned to the
window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. The moth
made towards the candle upon Eustacia's table, hovered round it two or
three times, and flew into the flame.

Eustacia started up. This had been a well-known signal in old times when
Wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to Mistover. She at once knew
that Wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her
husband came in from upstairs. Eustacia's face burnt crimson at the
unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that
it too frequently lacked.

"You have a very high colour, dearest," said Yeobright, when he came
close enough to see it. "Your appearance would be no worse if it were
always so."

"I am warm," said Eustacia. "I think I will go into the air for a few
minutes."

"Shall I go with you?"

"O no. I am only going to the gate."

She arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping
began upon the front door.

"I'll go--I'll go," said Eustacia in an unusually quick tone for her;
and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown;
but nothing appeared there.

"You had better not at this time of the evening," he said. Clym stepped
before her into the passage, and Eustacia waited, her somnolent manner
covering her inner heat and agitation.

She listened, and Clym opened the door. No words were uttered outside,
and presently he closed it and came back, saying, "Nobody was there. I
wonder what that could have meant?"

He was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation
offered itself, and Eustacia said nothing, the additional fact that she
knew of only adding more mystery to the performance.

Meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved Eustacia
from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least.
Whilst Wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had
come behind him up to the gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand,
looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked
up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner
and over the hedge.

"Damn him!" said Wildeve. "He has been watching me again."

As his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping
Wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the
path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. Halfway
down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the
general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. When
Wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent
gunshots fell among the leaves around him.

There was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun's
discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes
furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. This attack was a
more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before Wildeve
recovered his equanimity. A new and most unpleasant system of menace
had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm.
Wildeve had looked upon Venn's first attempt as a species of horseplay,
which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but
now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the
perilous.

Had Wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest Venn had become he might
have been still more alarmed. The reddleman had been almost exasperated
by the sight of Wildeve outside Clym's house, and he was prepared to go
to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young
innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. The doubtful legitimacy of
such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of Venn. It troubles few
such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted.
From the impeachment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch's short way with the
scamps of Virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are
mockeries of law.

About half a mile below Clym's secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where
lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of
Alderworth, and Wildeve went straight to the constable's cottage. Almost
the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable's
truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the
means to his purpose. On inquiry, however, of the constable's wife he
learnt that the constable was not at home. Wildeve said he would wait.

The minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive. Wildeve cooled
down from his state of high indignation to a restless dissatisfaction
with himself, the scene, the constable's wife, and the whole set of
circumstances. He arose and left the house. Altogether, the experience
of that evening had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on
misdirected tenderness, and Wildeve was in no mood to ramble again to
Alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance from Eustacia.

Thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in his rude
contrivances for keeping down Wildeve's inclination to rove in the
evening. He had nipped in the bud the possible meeting between Eustacia
and her old lover this very night. But he had not anticipated that the
tendency of his action would be to divert Wildeve's movement rather than
to stop it. The gambling with the guineas had not conduced to make him a
welcome guest to Clym; but to call upon his wife's relative was natural,
and he was determined to see Eustacia. It was necessary to choose some
less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night. "Since it is unsafe to go
in the evening," he said, "I'll go by day."

Meanwhile Venn had left the heath and gone to call upon Mrs. Yeobright,
with whom he had been on friendly terms since she had learnt what a
providential countermove he had made towards the restitution of the
family guineas. She wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no
objection to see him.

He gave her a full account of Clym's affliction, and of the state in
which he was living; then, referring to Thomasin, touched gently upon
the apparent sadness of her days. "Now, ma'am, depend upon it," he said,
"you couldn't do a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself
at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at
first."

"Both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; therefore I have no
interest in their households. Their troubles are of their own making."
Mrs. Yeobright tried to speak severely; but the account of her son's
state had moved her more than she cared to show.

"Your visits would make Wildeve walk straighter than he is inclined to
do, and might prevent unhappiness down the heath."

"What do you mean?"

"I saw something tonight out there which I didn't like at all. I wish
your son's house and Mr. Wildeve's were a hundred miles apart instead of
four or five."

"Then there WAS an understanding between him and Clym's wife when he
made a fool of Thomasin!"

"We'll hope there's no understanding now."

"And our hope will probably be very vain. O Clym! O Thomasin!"

"There's no harm done yet. In fact, I've persuaded Wildeve to mind his
own business."

"How?"

"O, not by talking--by a plan of mine called the silent system."

"I hope you'll succeed."

"I shall if you help me by calling and making friends with your son.
You'll have a chance then of using your eyes."

"Well, since it has come to this," said Mrs. Yeobright sadly, "I will
own to you, reddleman, that I thought of going. I should be much happier
if we were reconciled. The marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut
short, and I should wish to die in peace. He is my only son; and since
sons are made of such stuff I am not sorry I have no other. As for
Thomasin, I never expected much from her; and she has not disappointed
me. But I forgave her long ago; and I forgive him now. I'll go."

At this very time of the reddleman's conversation with Mrs. Yeobright
at Blooms-End another conversation on the same subject was languidly
proceeding at Alderworth.

All the day Clym had borne himself as if his mind were too full of its
own matter to allow him to care about outward things, and his words now
showed what had occupied his thoughts. It was just after the mysterious
knocking that he began the theme. "Since I have been away today,
Eustacia, I have considered that something must be done to heal up this
ghastly breach between my dear mother and myself. It troubles me."

"What do you propose to do?" said Eustacia abstractedly, for she could
not clear away from her the excitement caused by Wildeve's recent
manoeuvre for an interview.

"You seem to take a very mild interest in what I propose, little or
much," said Clym, with tolerable warmth.

"You mistake me," she answered, reviving at his reproach. "I am only
thinking."

"What of?"

"Partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt up in the wick of
the candle," she said slowly. "But you know I always take an interest in
what you say."

"Very well, dear. Then I think I must go and call upon her." ...He went
on with tender feeling: "It is a thing I am not at all too proud to do,
and only a fear that I might irritate her has kept me away so long. But
I must do something. It is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go
on."

"What have you to blame yourself about?"

"She is getting old, and her life is lonely, and I am her only son."

"She has Thomasin."

"Thomasin is not her daughter; and if she were that would not excuse me.
But this is beside the point. I have made up my mind to go to her, and
all I wish to ask you is whether you will do your best to help me--that
is, forget the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled,
meet her halfway by welcoming her to our house, or by accepting a
welcome to hers?"

At first Eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do anything
on the whole globe than what he suggested. But the lines of her mouth
softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened,
and she said, "I will put nothing in your way; but after what has passed
it is asking too much that I go and make advances."

"You never distinctly told me what did pass between you."

"I could not do it then, nor can I now. Sometimes more bitterness is
sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that
may be the case here." She paused a few moments, and added, "If you had
never returned to your native place, Clym, what a blessing it would have
been for you!... It has altered the destinies of----"

"Three people."

"Five," Eustacia thought; but she kept that in.


</CHAPTER>

 Diggory Venn is a man on a mission. And that mission is to terrorize Damon Wildeve. Diggory stalks him and manages to prevent Damon from heading over to Eustacia's house to see her. Damon gets increasingly frustrated and starts using more covert means to talk to Eustacia. But Diggory shoots at Damon and drives him away from Eustacia's house. Angry, Damon walks over to the local constable's house. But the constable isn't home and Damon eventually cools down and realizes that explaining why Diggory is shooting at him would just be awkward. Meanwhile, Diggory goes to chat with Mrs. Yeobright. The two have bonded and he tells her about Clym going almost-blind. Mrs. Yeobright still refuses to visit her son. Diggory advises her to visit her son since it will deter Wildeve from hanging around, mooning over Eustacia. Mrs. Yeobright praises him for his home-wrecker prevention plans but refuses to go see Clym herself. We cut back to Clym and Eustacia now, who are discussing Clym's strained relationship with his mother. Eustacia isn't very interested in the conversation and Clym gets a bit annoyed. Eustacia then says that she wonders sometimes how many lives Clym has impacted by returning home.

