by Thomas Hardy
VIII
A New Force Disturbs the Current
Wildeve stared. Venn looked coolly towards Wildeve, and, without aword being spoken, he deliberately sat himself down where Christianhad been seated, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out asovereign, and laid it on the stone.
"You have been watching us from behind that bush?" said Wildeve.
The reddleman nodded. "Down with your stake," he said. "Or haven'tyou pluck enough to go on?"
Now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much more easilybegun with full pockets than left off with the same; and thoughWildeve in a cooler temper might have prudently declined thisinvitation, the excitement of his recent success carried himcompletely away. He placed one of the guineas on a slab beside thereddleman's sovereign. "Mine is a guinea," he said.
"A guinea that's not your own," said Venn sarcastically.
"It is my own," answered Wildeve haughtily. "It is my wife's, andwhat is hers is mine."
"Very well; let's make a beginning." He shook the box, and threweight, ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to twenty-seven.
This encouraged Wildeve. He took the box; and his three castsamounted to forty-five.
Down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against his first onewhich Wildeve laid. This time Wildeve threw fifty-one points, but nopair. The reddleman looked grim, threw a raffle of aces, and pocketedthe stakes.
"Here you are again," said Wildeve contemptuously. "Double thestakes." He laid two of Thomasin's guineas, and the reddleman his twopounds. Venn won again. New stakes were laid on the stone, and thegamblers proceeded as before.
Wildeve was a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginningto tell upon his temper. He writhed, fumed, shifted his seat; andthe beating of his heart was almost audible. Venn sat with lipsimpassively closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles;he scarcely appeared to breathe. He might have been an Arab, or anautomaton; he would have been like a red sandstone statue but for themotion of his arm with the dice-box.
The game fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in favour of the other,without any great advantage on the side of either. Nearly twentyminutes were passed thus. The light of the candle had by this timeattracted heathflies, moths, and other winged creatures of night,which floated round the lantern, flew into the flame, or beat aboutthe faces of the two players.
But neither of the men paid much attention to these things, their eyesbeing concentrated upon the little flat stone, which to them was anarena vast and important as a battlefield. By this time a change hadcome over the game; the reddleman won continually. At length sixtyguineas--Thomasin's fifty, and ten of Clym's--had passed into hishands. Wildeve was reckless, frantic, exasperated.
"'Won back his coat,'" said Venn slily.
Another throw, and the money went the same way.
"'Won back his hat,'" continued Venn.
"Oh, oh!" said Wildeve.
"'Won back his watch, won back his money, and went out of the doora rich man,'" added Venn sentence by sentence, as stake after stakepassed over to him.
"Five more!" shouted Wildeve, dashing down the money. "And threecasts be hanged--one shall decide."
The red automaton opposite lapsed into silence, nodded, and followedhis example. Wildeve rattled the box, and threw a pair of sixes andfive points. He clapped his hands; "I have done it thistime--hurrah!"
"There are two playing, and only one has thrown," said the reddleman,quietly bringing down the box. The eyes of each were then so intentlyconverged upon the stone that one could fancy their beams werevisible, like rays in a fog.
Venn lifted the box, and behold a triplet of sixes was disclosed.
Wildeve was full of fury. While the reddleman was grasping the stakesWildeve seized the dice and hurled them, box and all, into thedarkness, uttering a fearful imprecation. Then he arose and beganstamping up and down like a madman.
"It is all over, then?" said Venn.
"No, no!" cried Wildeve. "I mean to have another chance yet. Imust!"
"But, my good man, what have you done with the dice?"
"I threw them away--it was a momentary irritation. What a fool I am!Here--come and help me to look for them--we must find them again."
Wildeve snatched up the lantern and began anxiously prowling among thefurze and fern.
"You are not likely to find them there," said Venn, following. "Whatdid you do such a crazy thing as that for? Here's the box. The dicecan't be far off."
Wildeve turned the light eagerly upon the spot where Venn had foundthe box, and mauled the herbage right and left. In the course of a fewminutes one of the dice was found. They searched on for some time,but no other was to be seen.
"Never mind," said Wildeve; "let's play with one."
"Agreed," said Venn.
Down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea stakes; andthe play went on smartly. But Fortune had unmistakably fallen in lovewith the reddleman tonight. He won steadily, till he was the owner offourteen more of the gold pieces. Seventy-nine of the hundred guineaswere his, Wildeve possessing only twenty-one. The aspect of the twoopponents was now singular. Apart from motions, a complete dioramaof the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes. A diminutivecandle-flame was mirrored in each pupil, and it would have beenpossible to distinguish therein between the moods of hope and themoods of abandonment, even as regards the reddleman, though his facialmuscles betrayed nothing at all. Wildeve played on with therecklessness of despair.
"What's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle; and they bothlooked up.
They were surrounded by dusky forms between four and five feet high,standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern. A moment'sinspection revealed that the encircling figures were heath-croppers,their heads being all towards the players, at whom they gazedintently.
"Hoosh!" said Wildeve, and the whole forty or fifty animals at onceturned and galloped away. Play was again resumed.
Ten minutes passed away. Then a large death's head moth advanced fromthe obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straightat the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. Wildevehad just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast;and now it was impossible.
"What the infernal!" he shrieked. "Now, what shall we do? Perhaps Ihave thrown six--have you any matches?"
"None," said Venn.
"Christian had some--I wonder where he is. Christian!"
But there was no reply to Wildeve's shout, save a mournful whiningfrom the herons which were nesting lower down the vale. Both menlooked blankly round without rising. As their eyes grew accustomed tothe darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among thegrass and fern. These lights dotted the hillside like stars of a lowmagnitude.
"Ah--glowworms," said Wildeve. "Wait a minute. We can continue thegame."
Venn sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he hadgathered thirteen glowworms--as many as he could find in a space offour or five minutes--upon a foxglove leaf which he pulled for thepurpose. The reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw hisadversary return with these. "Determined to go on, then?" he saiddrily.
"I always am!" said Wildeve angrily. And shaking the glowworms fromthe leaf he ranged them with a trembling hand in a circle on thestone, leaving a space in the middle for the descent of the dice-box,over which the thirteen tiny lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. Thegame was again renewed. It happened to be that season of the year atwhich glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the lightthey yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possibleon such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of twoor three.
The incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment wasgreat. Amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which theysat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chinkof guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the recklessplayers.
Wildeve had lifted the box as soon as the li
ghts were obtained, andthe solitary die proclaimed that the game was still against him.
"I won't play any more--you've been tampering with the dice," heshouted.
"How--when they were your own?" said the reddleman.
"We'll change the game: the lowest point shall win the stake--it maycut off my ill luck. Do you refuse?"
"No--go on," said Venn.
"O, there they are again--damn them!" cried Wildeve, looking up. Theheath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on witherect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, asif they were wondering what mankind and candle-light could have to doin these haunts at this untoward hour.
"What a plague those creatures are--staring at me so!" he said, andflung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued asbefore.
Wildeve had now ten guineas left; and each laid five. Wildeve threwthree points; Venn two, and raked in the coins. The other seized thedie, and clenched his teeth upon it in sheer rage, as if he wouldbite it in pieces. "Never give in--here are my last five!" he cried,throwing them down. "Hang the glowworms--they are going out. Whydon't you burn, you little fools? Stir them up with a thorn."
He probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled them over,till the bright side of their tails was upwards.
"There's light enough. Throw on," said Venn.
Wildeve brought down the box within the shining circle and lookedeagerly. He had thrown ace. "Well done!--I said it would turn, andit has turned." Venn said nothing; but his hand shook slightly.
He threw ace also.
"O!" said Wildeve. "Curse me!"
The die smacked the stone a second time. It was ace again. Vennlooked gloomy, threw: the die was seen to be lying in two pieces,the cleft sides uppermost.
"I've thrown nothing at all," he said.
"Serves me right--I split the die with my teeth. Here--take yourmoney. Blank is less than one."
"I don't wish it."
"Take it, I say--you've won it!" And Wildeve threw the stakes againstthe reddleman's chest. Venn gathered them up, arose, and withdrewfrom the hollow, Wildeve sitting stupefied.
When he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the extinguishedlantern in his hand, went towards the high-road. On reaching it hestood still. The silence of night pervaded the whole heath except inone direction; and that was towards Mistover. There he could hear thenoise of light wheels, and presently saw two carriage-lamps descendingthe hill. Wildeve screened himself under a bush and waited.
The vehicle came on and passed before him. It was a hired carriage,and behind the coachman were two persons whom he knew well. There satEustacia and Yeobright, the arm of the latter being round her waist.They turned the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary homewhich Clym had hired and furnished, about five miles to the eastward.
Wildeve forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his lostlove, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in geometricalprogression with each new incident that reminded him of their hopelessdivision. Brimming with the subtilized misery that he was capable offeeling, he followed the opposite way towards the inn.
About the same moment that Wildeve stepped into the highway Venn alsohad reached it at a point a hundred yards further on; and he, hearingthe same wheels, likewise waited till the carriage should come up.When he saw who sat therein he seemed to be disappointed. Reflectinga minute or two, during which interval the carriage rolled on, hecrossed the road, and took a short cut through the furze and heath toa point where the turnpike-road bent round in ascending a hill. Hewas now again in front of the carriage, which presently came up at awalking pace. Venn stepped forward and showed himself.
Eustacia started when the lamp shone upon him, and Clym's arm wasinvoluntarily withdrawn from her waist. He said, "What, Diggory? Youare having a lonely walk."
"Yes--I beg your pardon for stopping you," said Venn. "But I amwaiting about for Mrs. Wildeve: I have something to give her from Mrs.Yeobright. Can you tell me if she's gone home from the party yet?"
"No. But she will be leaving soon. You may possibly meet her at thecorner."
Venn made a farewell obeisance, and walked back to his formerposition, where the by-road from Mistover joined the highway. Herehe remained fixed for nearly half an hour, and then another pairof lights came down the hill. It was the old-fashioned wheelednondescript belonging to the captain, and Thomasin sat in it alone,driven by Charley.
The reddleman came up as they slowly turned the corner. "I beg pardonfor stopping you, Mrs. Wildeve," he said. "But I have something togive you privately from Mrs. Yeobright." He handed a small parcel; itconsisted of the hundred guineas he had just won, roughly twisted upin a piece of paper.
Thomasin recovered from her surprise, and took the packet. "That'sall, ma'am--I wish you good night," he said, and vanished from herview.
Thus Venn, in his anxiety to rectify matters, had placed in Thomasin'shands not only the fifty guineas which rightly belonged to her, butalso the fifty intended for her cousin Clym. His mistake had beenbased upon Wildeve's words at the opening of the game, when heindignantly denied that the guinea was not his own. It had not beencomprehended by the reddleman that at half-way through the performancethe game was continued with the money of another person; and it was anerror which afterwards helped to cause more misfortune than treble theloss in money value could have done.
The night was now somewhat advanced; and Venn plunged deeper into theheath, till he came to a ravine where his van was standing--a spot notmore than two hundred yards from the site of the gambling bout. Heentered this movable home of his, lit his lantern, and, before closinghis door for the night, stood reflecting on the circumstances ofthe preceding hours. While he stood the dawn grew visible in thenorth-east quarter of the heavens, which, the clouds having clearedoff, was bright with a soft sheen at this midsummer time, though itwas only between one and two o'clock. Venn, thoroughly weary, thenshut his door and flung himself down to sleep.
