Even those who yet survive are losing the poetry of existence which characterized them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular camping out from month to month, except in the depth of winter, a peregrination among farms which could be counted by the hundred, and in spite of this Arab existence the preservation of that respectability which is insured by the never-failing production of a well-lined purse.
Reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of Cain, any person who has handled it half an hour.
A child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life.That blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began."The reddleman is coming for you!" had been the formulated threat of Wes*** mothers for many generations.He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence.And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled by modern inventions.
The reddleman lived like a gipsy; but gipsies he scorned.
He was about as thriving as travelling basket and mat makers;but he had nothing to do with them.He was more decently born and brought up than the cattledrovers who passed and repassed him in his wanderings; but they merely nodded to him.His stock was more valuable than that of pedlars;but they did not think so, and passed his cart with eyes straight ahead.He was such an unnatural colour to look at that the men of roundabouts and waxwork shows seemed gentlemen beside him; but he considered them low company, and remained aloof.Among all these squatters and folks of the road the reddleman continually found himself; yet he was not of them.His occupation tended to isolate him, and isolated he was mostly seen to be.
It was sometimes suggested that reddlemen were criminals for whose misdeeds other men wrongfully suffered--that in escaping the law they had not escaped their own consciences, and had taken to the trade as a lifelong penance.
Else why should they have chosen it? In the present case such a question would have been particularly apposite.
The reddleman who had entered Egdon that afternoon was an instance of the pleasing being wasted to form the ground-work of the singular, when an ugly foundation would have done just as well for that purpose.The one point that was forbidding about this reddleman was his colour.
Freed from that he would have been as agreeable a specimen of rustic manhood as one would often see.A keen observer might have been inclined to think--which was, indeed, partly the truth--that he had relinquished his proper station in life for want of interest in it.Moreover, after looking at him one would have hazarded the guess that good nature, and an acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft, formed the framework of his character.
While he darned the stocking his face became rigid with thought.Softer expressions followed this, and then again recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during his drive along the highway that afternoon.
Presently his needle stopped.He laid down the stocking, arose from his seat, and took a leathern pouch from a hook in the corner of the van.This contained among other articles a brown-paper packet, which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed a good many times.
He sat down on a three-legged milking stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and spread it open.The writing had originally been traced on white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge from the accident of its situation;and the black strokes of writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge against a vermilion sunset.
The letter bore a date some two years previous to that time, and was signed "Thomasin Yeobright." It ran as follows:--DEAR DIGGORY VENN,--The question you put when you overtook me coming home from Pond-close gave me such a surprise that I am afraid I did not make you exactly understand what I meant.Of course, if my aunt had not met me I could have explained all then at once, but as it was there was no chance.I have been quite uneasy since, as you know I do not wish to pain you, yet I fear I shall be doing so now in contradicting what I seemed to say then.I cannot, Diggory, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweetheart.
I could not, indeed, Diggory.I hope you will not much mind my saying this, and feel in a great pain.
It makes me very sad when I think it may, for I like you very much, and I always put you next to my cousin Clym in my mind.There are so many reasons why we cannot be married that I can hardly name them all in a letter.
I did not in the least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing when you followed me, because Ihad never thought of you in the sense of a lover at all.
You must not becall me for laughing when you spoke;you mistook when you thought I laughed at you as a foolish man.I laughed because the idea was so odd, and not at you at all.The great reason with my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that Ido not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife.
It is not as you think, that I have another in my mind, for I do not encourage anybody, and never have in my life.