“Certainly,” said the vicar, mechanically taking the card that Dick offered him.
“I turn in here by Grey’s Bridge,” said Dick. “I suppose you go straight on and up town?”
“Yes.”
“Good-morning, sir.”
“Good-morning, Dewy.”
Maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been put into his hand, and Dick’s footsteps died away towards Durnover Mill. The vicar’s first voluntary action was to read the card:—
DEWY AND SON,
TRANTERS AND HAULIERS,
MELLSTOCK.
NB.—Furniture, Coals, Potatoes, Live and Dead Stock, removed to any distance on the shortest notice.
Mr. Maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the river. He saw—without heeding—how the water came rapidly from beneath the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread itself over a pool in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among the long green locks of weed that lay heaving and sinking with their roots towards the current. At the end of ten minutes spent leaning thus, he drew from his pocket the letter to his friend, tore it deliberately into such minute fragments that scarcely two syllables remained in juxtaposition, and sent the whole handful of shreds fluttering into the water. Here he watched them eddy, dart, and turn, as they were carried downwards towards the ocean and gradually disappeared from his view. Finally he moved off, and pursued his way at a rapid pace back again to Mellstock Vicarage.
Nerving himself by a long and intense effort, he sat down in his study and wrote as follows:
“Dear Miss Day,—The meaning of your words, ‘the temptation is too strong,’ of your sadness and your tears, has been brought home to me by an accident. I know to-day what I did not know yesterday—that you are not a free woman.