It was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her grandfather's bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a precaution against possible burglars, the house being very lonely.Eustacia regarded them long, as if they were the page of a book in which she read a new and a strange matter.Quickly, like one afraid of herself, she returned downstairs and stood in deep thought.
"If I could only do it!" she said."It would be doing much good to myself and all connected with me, and no harm to a single one."The idea seemed to gather force within her, and she remained in a fixed attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain finality was expressed in her gaze, and no longer the blankness of indecision.
She turned and went up the second time--softly and stealthily now--and entered her grandfather's room, her eyes at once seeking the head of the bed.The pistols were gone.
The instant quashing of her purpose by their absence affected her brain as a sudden vacuum affects the body--she nearly fainted.Who had done this? There was only one person on the premises besides herself.
Eustacia involuntarily turned to the open window which overlooked the garden as far as the bank that bounded it.On the summit of the latter stood Charley, sufficiently elevated by its height to see into the room.
His gaze was directed eagerly and solicitously upon her.
She went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him.
"You have taken them away?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Why did you do it?"
"I saw you looking at them too long."
"What has that to do with it?"
"You have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you did not want to live.""Well?"
"And I could not bear to leave them in your way.
There was meaning in your look at them."
"Where are they now?"
"Locked up."
"Where?"
"In the stable."
"Give them to me."
"No, ma'am."
"You refuse?"
"I do.I care too much for you to give 'em up."She turned aside, her face for the first time softening from the stony immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of her mouth resuming something of that delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments of despair.
At last she confronted him again.
"Why should I not die if I wish?" she said tremulously.
"I have made a bad bargain with life, and I am weary of it--weary.And now you have hindered my escape.
O, why did you, Charley! What makes death painful except the thought of others' grief?--and that is absent in my case, for not a sigh would follow me!""Ah, it is trouble that has done this! I wish in my very soul that he who brought it about might die and rot, even if 'tis transportation to say it!""Charley, no more of that.What do you mean to do about this you have seen?""Keep it close as night, if you promise not to think of it again.""You need not fear.The moment has passed.I promise."She then went away, entered the house, and lay down.
Later in the afternoon her grandfather returned.
He was about to question her categorically, but on looking at her he withheld his words.
"Yes, it is too bad to talk of," she slowly returned in answer to his glance."Can my old room be got ready for me tonight, Grandfather? I shall want to occupy it again."He did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left her husband, but ordered the room to be prepared.
5 - An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated Charley's attentions to his former mistress were unbounded.
The only solace to his own trouble lay in his attempts to relieve hers.Hour after hour he considered her wants;he thought of her presence there with a sort of gratitude, and, while uttering imprecations on the cause of her unhappiness, in some measure blessed the result.
Perhaps she would always remain there, he thought, and then he would be as happy as he had been before.His dread was lest she should think fit to return to Alderworth, and in that dread his eyes, with all the inquisitiveness of affection, frequently sought her face when she was not observing him, as he would have watched the head of a stockdove to learn if it contemplated flight.
Having once really succoured her, and possibly preserved her from the rashest of acts, he mentally assumed in addition a guardian's responsibility for her welfare.
For this reason he busily endeavoured to provide her with pleasant distractions, bringing home curious objects which he found in the heath, such as white trumpet-shaped mosses, redheaded lichens, stone arrowheads used by the old tribes on Egdon, and faceted crystals from the hollows of flints.
These he deposited on the premises in such positions that she should see them as if by accident.
A week passed, Eustacia never going out of the house.
Then she walked into the enclosed plot and looked through her grandfather's spyglass, as she had been in the habit of doing before her marriage.One day she saw, at a place where the highroad crossed the distant valley, a heavily laden wagon passing along.It was piled with household furniture.She looked again and again, and recognized it to be her own.In the evening her grandfather came indoors with a rumour that Yeobright had removed that day from Alderworth to the old house at Blooms-End.
On another occasion when reconnoitring thus she beheld two female figures walking in the vale.The day was fine and clear; and the persons not being more than half a mile off she could see their every detail with the telescope.
The woman walking in front carried a white bundle in her arms, from one end of which hung a long appendage of drapery;and when the walkers turned, so that the sun fell more directly upon them, Eustacia could see that the object was a baby.
She called Charley, and asked him if he knew who they were, though she well guessed.
"Mrs.Wildeve and the nurse-girl," said Charley.
"The nurse is carrying the baby?" said Eustacia.
"No, 'tis Mrs.Wildeve carrying that," he answered, "and the nurse walks behind carrying nothing."The lad was in good spirits that day, for the Fifth of November had again come round, and he was planning yet another scheme to divert her from her too absorbing thoughts.
