The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

"Well--if we make it so. I wonder if Thomasin has been to
Blooms-End lately. I hope so. But probably not, as she is,
I believe, expecting to be confined in a month or so.
I wish I had thought of that before. Poor Mother must
indeed be very lonely."
"I don't like you going tonight."
"Why not tonight?"
"Something may be said which will terribly injure me."
"My mother is not vindictive," said Clym, his colour
faintly rising.
"But I wish you would not go," Eustacia repeated in a
low tone. "If you agree not to go tonight I promise to go
by myself to her house tomorrow, and make it up with her,
and wait till you fetch me."
"Why do you want to do that at this particular time,
when at every previous time that I have proposed it you
have refused?"
"I cannot explain further than that I should like to see
her alone before you go," she answered, with an impatient
move of her head, and looking at him with an anxiety
more frequently seen upon those of a sanguine temperament
than upon such as herself.
"Well, it is very odd that just when I had decided to go
myself you should want to do what I proposed long ago.
If I wait for you to go tomorrow another day will be lost;
and I know I shall be unable to rest another night without
having been. I want to get this settled, and will.
You must visit her afterwards--it will be all the same."
"I could even go with you now?"
"You could scarcely walk there and back without a longer
rest than I shall take. No, not tonight, Eustacia."
"Let it be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way
of one who, though willing to ward off evil consequences
by a mild effort, would let events fall out as they
might sooner than wrestle hard to direct them.
Clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor
stole over Eustacia for the remainder of the afternoon,
which her husband attributed to the heat of the weather.
In the evening he set out on the journey. Although the heat
of summer was yet intense the days had considerably shortened,
and before he had advanced a mile on his way all the
heath purples, browns, and greens had merged in a uniform
dress without airiness or graduation, and broken only by
touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz sand
showed the entrance to a rabbit burrow, or where the white
flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes.
In almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns
which grew here and there a nighthawk revealed his presence
by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could
hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings,
wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent
interval of listening beginning to whirr again. At each
brushing of Clym's feet white millermoths flew into the air
just high enough to catch upon their dusty wings the mellowed
light from the west, which now shone across the depressions
and levels of the ground without falling thereon to light them up.
Yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that
all would soon be well. Three miles on he came to a spot
where a soft perfume was wafted across his path, and he
stood still for a moment to inhale the familiar scent.
It was the place at which, four hours earlier,
his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered
with shepherd's-thyme. While he stood a sound between
a breathing and a moan suddenly reached his ears.
He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing
appeared there save the verge of the hillock stretching
against the sky in an unbroken line. He moved a few
steps in that direction, and now he perceived a recumbent
figure almost close to his feet.
Among the different possibilities as to the person's
individuality there did not for a moment occur to
Yeobright that it might be one of his own family.
Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep
out of doors at these times, to save a long journey
homeward and back again; but Clym remembered the moan
and looked closer, and saw that the form was feminine;
and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave.
But he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother
till he stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.
His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry
of anguish which would have escaped him died upon his lips.
During the momentary interval that elapsed before he
became conscious that something must be done all sense
of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and his
mother were as when he was a child with her many years
ago on this heath at hours similar to the present.
Then he awoke to activity; and bending yet lower he found
that she still breathed, and that her breath though feeble
was regular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp.
"O, what is it! Mother, are you very ill--you are not dying?"
he cried, pressing his lips to her face. "I am your Clym.
How did you come here? What does it all mean?"
At that moment the chasm in their lives which his love
for Eustacia had caused was not remembered by Yeobright,
and to him the present joined continuously with that friendly
past that had been their experience before the division.
She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak;
and then Clym strove to consider how best to move her,
as it would be necessary to get her away from the spot
before the dews were intense. He was able-bodied,
and his mother was thin. He clasped his arms round her,
lifted her a little, and said, "Does that hurt you?"
She shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace,
went onward with his load. The air was now completely cool;
but whenever he passed over a sandy patch of ground
uncarpeted with vegetation there was reflected from its
surface into his face the heat which it had imbibed
during the day. At the beginning of his undertaking he
had thought but little of the distance which yet would
have to be traversed before Blooms-End could be reached;
but though he had slept that afternoon he soon began
to feel the weight of his burden. Thus he proceeded,
like Aeneas with his father; the bats circling round his head,
nightjars flapping their wings within a yard of his face,
and not a human being within call.
While he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother
exhibited signs of restlessness under the constraint
of being borne along, as if his arms were irksome to her.
He lowered her upon his knees and looked around.
The point they had now reached, though far from any road,
was not more than a mile from the Blooms-End cottages
occupied by Fairway, Sam, Humphrey, and the Cantles.
Moreover, fifty yards off stood a hut, built of clods
and covered with thin turves, but now entirely disused.
The simple outline of the lonely shed was visible,
and thither he determined to direct his steps. As soon
as he arrived he laid her down carefully by the entrance,
and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an armful of the
dryest fern. Spreading this within the shed, which was
entirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon;
then he ran with all his might towards the dwelling
of Fairway.
Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the
broken breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began
to animate the line between heath and sky. In a few moments
Clym arrived with Fairway, Humphrey, and Susan Nunsuch;
Olly Dowden, who had chanced to be at Fairway's, Christian
and Grandfer Cantle following helter-skelter behind.
They had brought a lantern and matches, water, a pillow,
and a few other articles which had occurred to their minds
in the hurry of the moment. Sam had been despatched
back again for brandy, and a boy brought Fairway's pony,
upon which he rode off to the nearest medical man,
with directions to call at Wildeve's on his way, and inform
Thomasin that her aunt was unwell.
Sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered
by the light of the lantern; after which she became
sufficiently conscious to signify by signs that something
was wrong with her foot. Olly Dowden at length
understood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated.
It was swollen and red. Even as they watched the red
began to assume a more livid colour, in the midst
of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller than a pea,
and it was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose
above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere.
"I know what it is," cried Sam. "She has been stung
by an adder!"
"Yes," said Clym instantly. "I remember when I was
a child seeing just such a bite. O, my poor mother!"
"It was my father who was bit," said Sam. "And there's
only one way to cure it. You must rub the place
with the fat of other adders, and the only way to get
that is by frying them. That's what they did for him."
"'Tis an old remedy," said Clym distrustfully, "and I
have doubts about it. But we can do nothing else till
the doctor comes."
"'Tis a sure cure," said Olly Dowden, with emphasis.
"I've used it when I used to go out nursing."
"Then we must pray for daylight, to catch them,"
said Clym gloomily.
"I will see what I can do," said Sam.
He took a green hazel which he had used as a walking stick,
split it at the end, inserted a small pebble, and with
the lantern in his hand went out into the heath.
Clym had by this time lit a small fire, and despatched
Susan Nunsuch for a frying pan. Before she had returned
Sam came in with three adders, one briskly coiling
and uncoiling in the cleft of the stick, and the other
two hanging dead across it.
"I have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he
ought to be," said Sam. "These limp ones are two I
killed today at work; but as they don't die till the sun
goes down they can't be very stale meat."
The live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinister
look in its small black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet
pattern on its back seemed to intensify with indignation.
Mrs. Yeobright saw the creature, and the creature saw
her--she quivered throughout, and averted her eyes.
"Look at that," murmured Christian Cantle. "Neighbours, how
do we know but that something of the old serpent in
God's garden, that gied the apple to the young woman
with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakes still?
Look at his eye--for all the world like a villainous sort
of black currant. 'Tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us!
There's folks in heath who've been overlooked already.
I will never kill another adder as long as I live."
"Well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't
help it," said Grandfer Cantle. "'Twould have saved me
many a brave danger in my time."
"I fancy I heard something outside the shed," said Christian.
"I wish troubles would come in the daytime, for then
a man could show his courage, and hardly beg for mercy
of the most broomstick old woman he should see, if he
was a brave man, and able to run out of her sight!"
"Even such an ignorant fellow as I should know better
than do that," said Sam.
"Well, there's calamities where we least expect it,
whether or no. Neighbours, if Mrs. Yeobright were to die,
d'ye think we should be took up and tried for the
manslaughter of a woman?"
"No, they couldn't bring it in as that," said Sam,
"unless they could prove we had been poachers at some time
of our lives. But she'll fetch round."
"Now, if I had been stung by ten adders I should hardly
have lost a day's work for't," said Grandfer Cantle.
"Such is my spirit when I am on my mettle. But perhaps
'tis natural in a man trained for war. Yes, I've gone
through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me
after I joined the Locals in four." He shook his head
and smiled at a mental picture of himself in uniform.
"I was always first in the most galliantest scrapes in my
younger days!"
"I suppose that was because they always used to put
the biggest fool afore," said Fairway from the fire,
beside which he knelt, blowing it with his breath.
"D'ye think so, Timothy?" said Grandfer Cantle, coming forward
to Fairway's side with sudden depression in his face.
"Then a man may feel for years that he is good solid company,
and be wrong about himself after all?"
"Never mind that question, Grandfer. Stir your stumps
and get some more sticks. 'Tis very nonsense of an old
man to prattle so when life and death's in mangling."
"Yes, yes," said Grandfer Cantle, with melancholy conviction.
"Well, this is a bad night altogether for them that have
done well in their time; and if I were ever such a dab
at the hautboy or tenor viol, I shouldn't have the heart
to play tunes upon 'em now."
Susan now arrived with the frying pan, when the live
adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off.
The remainders, being cut into lengths and split open,
were tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling
over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from
the carcases, whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his
handkerchief into the liquid and anointed the wound.
8 - Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil
In the meantime Eustacia, left alone in her cottage
at Alderworth, had become considerably depressed by the
posture of affairs. The consequences which might result
from Clym's discovery that his mother had been turned
from his door that day were likely to be disagreeable,
and this was a quality in events which she hated as much
as the dreadful.
To be left to pass the evening by herself was irksome
to her at any time, and this evening it was more irksome
than usual by reason of the excitements of the past hours.
The two visits had stirred her into restlessness.
She was not wrought to any great pitch of uneasiness
by the probability of appearing in an ill light in the
discussion between Clym and his mother, but she was wrought
to vexation, and her slumbering activities were quickened
to the extent of wishing that she had opened the door.
She had certainly believed that Clym was awake,
and the excuse would be an honest one as far as it went;
but nothing could save her from censure in refusing
to answer at the first knock. Yet, instead of blaming
herself for the issue she laid the fault upon the shoulders
of some indistinct, colossal Prince of the World, who had
framed her situation and ruled her lot.
At this time of the year it was pleasanter to walk by
night than by day, and when Clym had been absent about
an hour she suddenly resolved to go out in the direction
of Blooms-End, on the chance of meeting him on his return.
When she reached the garden gate she heard wheels approaching,
and looking round beheld her grandfather coming up in his car.
"I can't stay a minute, thank ye," he answered
to her greeting. "I am driving to East Egdon;
but I came round here just to tell you the news.
Perhaps you have heard--about Mr. Wildeve's fortune?"
"No," said Eustacia blankly.
"Well, he has come into a fortune of eleven thousand
pounds--uncle died in Canada, just after hearing
that all his family, whom he was sending home,
had gone to the bottom in the Cassiopeia; so Wildeve
has come into everything, without in the least expecting it."
Eustacia stood motionless awhile. "How long has he known
of this?" she asked.
"Well, it was known to him this morning early, for I knew
it at ten o'clock, when Charley came back. Now, he is
what I call a lucky man. What a fool you were, Eustacia!"
"In what way?" she said, lifting her eyes in apparent calmness.
"Why, in not sticking to him when you had him."
"Had him, indeed!"
"I did not know there had ever been anything between you
till lately; and, faith, I should have been hot and strong
against it if I had known; but since it seems that there
was some sniffing between ye, why the deuce didn't you
stick to him?"
Eustacia made no reply, but she looked as if she could
say as much upon that subject as he if she chose.
"And how is your poor purblind husband?" continued the
old man. "Not a bad fellow either, as far as he goes."
"He is quite well."
"It is a good thing for his cousin what-d'ye-call-her?
By George, you ought to have been in that galley,
my girl! Now I must drive on. Do you want any assistance?
What's mine is yours, you know."
"Thank you, Grandfather, we are not in want at present,"
she said coldly. "Clym cuts furze, but he does it mostly
as a useful pastime, because he can do nothing else."
"He is paid for his pastime, isn't he? Three shillings
a hundred, I heard."
"Clym has money," she said, colouring, "but he likes
to earn a little."
"Very well; good night." And the captain drove on.
When her grandfather was gone Eustacia went on her
way mechanically; but her thoughts were no longer concerning
her mother-in-law and Clym. Wildeve, notwithstanding his
complaints against his fate, had been seized upon by destiny
and placed in the sunshine once more. Eleven thousand
pounds! From every Egdon point of view he was a rich man.
In Eustacia's eyes, too, it was an ample sum--one sufficient
to supply those wants of hers which had been stigmatized
by Clym in his more austere moods as vain and luxurious.
Though she was no lover of money she loved what money
could bring; and the new accessories she imagined around
him clothed Wildeve with a great deal of interest.
She recollected now how quietly well-dressed he had been
that morning--he had probably put on his newest suit,
regardless of damage by briars and thorns. And then she
thought of his manner towards herself.
"O I see it, I see it," she said. "How much he wishes
he had me now, that he might give me all I desire!"
In recalling the details of his glances and words--at
the time scarcely regarded--it became plain to her how
greatly they had been dictated by his knowledge of this
new event. "Had he been a man to bear a jilt ill-will he
would have told me of his good fortune in crowing tones;
instead of doing that he mentioned not a word, in deference
to my misfortunes, and merely implied that he loved
me still, as one superior to him."
Wildeve's silence that day on what had happened to him was
just the kind of behaviour calculated to make an impression
on such a woman. Those delicate touches of good taste were,
in fact, one of the strong points in his demeanour towards
the other sex. The peculiarity of Wildeve was that,
while at one time passionate, upbraiding, and resentful
towards a woman, at another he would treat her with such
unparalleled grace as to make previous neglect appear
as no discourtesy, injury as no insult, interference as a
delicate attention, and the ruin of her honour as excess
of chivalry. This man, whose admiration today Eustacia
had disregarded, whose good wishes she had scarcely
taken the trouble to accept, whom she had shown out of
the house by the back door, was the possessor of eleven
thousand pounds--a man of fair professional education,
and one who had served his articles with a civil engineer.
So intent was Eustacia upon Wildeve's fortunes that she
forgot how much closer to her own course were those of Clym;
and instead of walking on to meet him at once she sat
down upon a stone. She was disturbed in her reverie by a
voice behind, and turning her head beheld the old lover
and fortunate inheritor of wealth immediately beside her.
She remained sitting, though the fluctuation in her look
might have told any man who knew her so well as Wildeve
that she was thinking of him.
"How did you come here?" she said in her clear low tone.
"I thought you were at home."
"I went on to the village after leaving your garden;
and now I have come back again--that's all. Which way
are you walking, may I ask?"
She waved her hand in the direction of Blooms-End. "I
am going to meet my husband. I think I may possibly
have got into trouble whilst you were with me today."
"How could that be?"
"By not letting in Mrs. Yeobright."
"I hope that visit of mine did you no harm."
"None. It was not your fault," she said quietly.
By this time she had risen; and they involuntarily sauntered
on together, without speaking, for two or three minutes;
when Eustacia broke silence by saying, "I assume I must
congratulate you."
"On what? O yes; on my eleven thousand pounds,
you mean. Well, since I didn't get something else,
I must be content with getting that."
"You seem very indifferent about it. Why didn't you
tell me today when you came?" she said in the tone
of a neglected person. "I heard of it quite by accident."
"I did mean to tell you," said Wildeve. "But I--well,
I will speak frankly--I did not like to mention it
when I saw, Eustacia, that your star was not high.
The sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work,
as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own
fortune to you would be greatly out of place. Yet, as you
stood there beside him, I could not help feeling too
that in many respects he was a richer man than I."
At this Eustacia said, with slumbering mischievousness,
"What, would you exchange with him--your fortune for me?"
"I certainly would," said Wildeve.
"As we are imagining what is impossible and absurd,
suppose we change the subject?"
"Very well; and I will tell you of my plans for the future,
if you care to hear them. I shall permanently invest
nine thousand pounds, keep one thousand as ready money,
and with the remaining thousand travel for a year or so."
"Travel? What a bright idea! Where will you go to?"
"From here to Paris, where I shall pass the winter and spring.
Then I shall go to Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine,
before the hot weather comes on. In the summer I shall
go to America; and then, by a plan not yet settled,
I shall go to Australia and round to India. By that time
I shall have begun to have had enough of it. Then I shall
probably come back to Paris again, and there I shall stay
as long as I can afford to."
"Back to Paris again," she murmured in a voice that was
nearly a sigh. She had never once told Wildeve of the
Parisian desires which Clym's description had sown in her;
yet here was he involuntarily in a position to gratify them.
"You think a good deal of Paris?" she added.
"Yes. In my opinion it is the central beauty-spot
of the world."
"And in mine! And Thomasin will go with you?"
"Yes, if she cares to. She may prefer to stay at home."
"So you will be going about, and I shall be staying here!"
"I suppose you will. But we know whose fault that is."
"I am not blaming you," she said quickly.
"Oh, I thought you were. If ever you SHOULD be inclined
to blame me, think of a certain evening by Rainbarrow,
when you promised to meet me and did not. You sent me
a letter; and my heart ached to read that as I hope
yours never will. That was one point of divergence.
I then did something in haste....But she is a good woman,
and I will say no more."
"I know that the blame was on my side that time,"
said Eustacia. "But it had not always been so.
However, it is my misfortune to be too sudden in feeling.
O, Damon, don't reproach me any more--I can't bear that."
They went on silently for a distance of two or three miles,
when Eustacia said suddenly, "Haven't you come out of
your way, Mr. Wildeve?"
"My way is anywhere tonight. I will go with you as far
as the hill on which we can see Blooms-End, as it
is getting late for you to be alone."
"Don't trouble. I am not obliged to be out at all.
I think I would rather you did not accompany me further.
This sort of thing would have an odd look if known."
"Very well, I will leave you." He took her hand unexpectedly,
and kissed it--for the first time since her marriage.
"What light is that on the hill?" he added, as it were to
hide the caress.
She looked, and saw a flickering firelight proceeding
from the open side of a hovel a little way before them.
The hovel, which she had hitherto always found empty,
seemed to be inhabited now.
"Since you have come so far," said Eustacia, "will you
see me safely past that hut? I thought I should have met
Clym somewhere about here, but as he doesn't appear I
will hasten on and get to Blooms-End before he leaves."
They advanced to the turf-shed, and when they got near it
the firelight and the lantern inside showed distinctly enough
the form of a woman reclining on a bed of fern, a group
of heath men and women standing around her. Eustacia did
not recognize Mrs. Yeobright in the reclining figure,
nor Clym as one of the standers-by till she came close.
Then she quickly pressed her hand up on Wildeve's arm
and signified to him to come back from the open side
of the shed into the shadow.
"It is my husband and his mother," she whispered in an
agitated voice. "What can it mean? Will you step forward
and tell me?"
Wildeve left her side and went to the back wall of the hut.
Presently Eustacia perceived that he was beckoning to her,
and she advanced and joined him.
"It is a serious case," said Wildeve.
From their position they could hear what was proceeding inside.
"I cannot think where she could have been going,"
said Clym to someone. "She had evidently walked a long way,
but even when she was able to speak just now she would
not tell me where. What do you really think of her?"
"There is a great deal to fear," was gravely answered,
in a voice which Eustacia recognized as that of the only
surgeon in the district. "She has suffered somewhat from
the bite of the adder; but it is exhaustion which has
overpowered her. My impression is that her walk must
have been exceptionally long."
"I used to tell her not to overwalk herself this weather,"
said Clym, with distress. "Do you think we did well in
using the adder's fat?"
"Well, it is a very ancient remedy--the old remedy
of the viper-catchers, I believe," replied the doctor.
"It is mentioned as an infallible ointment by Hoffman,
Mead, and I think the Abbe Fontana. Undoubtedly it
was as good a thing as you could do; though I question
if some other oils would not have been equally efficacious."
"Come here, come here!" was then rapidly said in anxious
female tones, and Clym and the doctor could be heard
rushing forward from the back part of the shed to where
Mrs. Yeobright lay.
"Oh, what is it?" whispered Eustacia.
"'Twas Thomasin who spoke," said Wildeve. "Then they
have fetched her. I wonder if I had better go in--yet
it might do harm."
For a long time there was utter silence among the
group within; and it was broken at last by Clym saying,
in an agonized voice, "O Doctor, what does it mean?"
The doctor did not reply at once; ultimately he said,
"She is sinking fast. Her heart was previously affected,
and physical exhaustion has dealt the finishing blow."
Then there was a weeping of women, then waiting,
then hushed exclamations, then a strange gasping sound,
then a painful stillness.
"It is all over," said the doctor.
Further back in the hut the cotters whispered,
"Mrs. Yeobright is dead."
Almost at the same moment the two watchers observed the
form of a small old-fashioned child entering at the open
side of the shed. Susan Nunsuch, whose boy it was,
went forward to the opening and silently beckoned to him
to go back.
"I've got something to tell 'ee, Mother," he cried in a
shrill tone. "That woman asleep there walked along with
me today; and she said I was to say that I had seed her,
and she was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son,
and then I came on home."
A confused sob as from a man was heard within,
upon which Eustacia gasped faintly, "That's Clym--I
must go to him--yet dare I do it? No--come away!"
When they had withdrawn from the neighbourhood of
the shed she said huskily, "I am to blame for this.
There is evil in store for me."
"Was she not admitted to your house after all?"
Wildeve inquired.
"No, and that's where it all lies! Oh, what shall I do! I
shall not intrude upon them--I shall go straight home.
Damon, good-bye! I cannot speak to you any more now."
They parted company; and when Eustacia had reached
the next hill she looked back. A melancholy procession
was wending its way by the light of the lantern from
the hut towards Blooms-End. Wildeve was nowhere to be seen.
book five
THE DISCOVERY
1 - "Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery"
One evening, about three weeks after the funeral of
Mrs. Yeobright, when the silver face of the moon sent
a bundle of beams directly upon the floor of Clym's house
at Alderworth, a woman came forth from within. She reclined
over the garden gate as if to refresh herself awhile.
The pale lunar touches which make beauties of hags lent
divinity to this face, already beautiful.
She had not long been there when a man came up the road
and with some hesitation said to her, "How is he tonight,
ma'am, if you please?"
"He is better, though still very unwell, Humphrey,"
replied Eustacia.
"Is he light-headed, ma'am?"
"No. He is quite sensible now."
"Do he rave about his mother just the same, poor fellow?"
continued Humphrey.
"Just as much, though not quite so wildly," she said
in a low voice.
"It was very unfortunate, ma'am, that the boy Johnny
should ever ha' told him his mother's dying words,
about her being broken-hearted and cast off by her son.
'Twas enough to upset any man alive."
Eustacia made no reply beyond that of a slight catch in
her breath, as of one who fain would speak but could not;
and Humphrey, declining her invitation to come in,
went away.
Eustacia turned, entered the house, and ascended to
the front bedroom, where a shaded light was burning.
In the bed lay Clym, pale, haggard, wide awake, tossing to
one side and to the other, his eyes lit by a hot light,
as if the fire in their pupils were burning up their substance.
"Is it you, Eustacia?" he said as she sat down.
"Yes, Clym. I have been down to the gate. The moon
is shining beautifully, and there is not a leaf stirring."
"Shining, is it? What's the moon to a man like me? Let
it shine--let anything be, so that I never see another
day!...Eustacia, I don't know where to look--my thoughts
go through me like swords. O, if any man wants to make
himself immortal by painting a picture of wretchedness,
let him come here!"
"Why do you say so?"
"I cannot help feeling that I did my best to kill her."
"No, Clym."
"Yes, it was so; it is useless to excuse me! My conduct
to her was too hideous--I made no advances; and she
could not bring herself to forgive me. Now she is dead!
If I had only shown myself willing to make it up with
her sooner, and we had been friends, and then she had died,
it wouldn't be so hard to bear. But I never went near
her house, so she never came near mine, and didn't know
how welcome she would have been--that's what troubles me.
She did not know I was going to her house that very night,
for she was too insensible to understand me. If she
had only come to see me! I longed that she would.
But it was not to be."
There escaped from Eustacia one of those shivering
sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast.
She had not yet told.
But Yeobright was too deeply absorbed in the ramblings
incidental to his remorseful state to notice her.
During his illness he had been continually talking thus.
Despair had been added to his original grief by the
unfortunate disclosure of the boy who had received the
last words of Mrs. Yeobright--words too bitterly uttered
in an hour of misapprehension. Then his distress had
overwhelmed him, and he longed for death as a field labourer
longs for the shade. It was the pitiful sight of a man
standing in the very focus of sorrow. He continually
bewailed his tardy journey to his mother's house,
because it was an error which could never be rectified,
and insisted that he must have been horribly perverted
by some fiend not to have thought before that it was his
duty to go to her, since she did not come to him. He would
ask Eustacia to agree with him in his self-condemnation;
and when she, seared inwardly by a secret she dared not tell,
declared that she could not give an opinion, he would say,
"That's because you didn't know my mother's nature.
She was always ready to forgive if asked to do so;
but I seemed to her to be as an obstinate child, and that
made her unyielding. Yet not unyielding--she was proud
and reserved, no more....Yes, I can understand why she
held out against me so long. She was waiting for me.
I dare say she said a hundred times in her sorrow, 'What a
return he makes for all the sacrifices I have made for him!'
I never went to her! When I set out to visit her it was
too late. To think of that is nearly intolerable!"
Sometimes his condition had been one of utter remorse,
unsoftened by a single tear of pure sorrow: and then
he writhed as he lay, fevered far more by thought than
by physical ills. "If I could only get one assurance
that she did not die in a belief that I was resentful,"
he said one day when in this mood, "it would be better to
think of than a hope of heaven. But that I cannot do."
"You give yourself up too much to this wearying despair,"
said Eustacia. "Other men's mothers have died."
"That doesn't make the loss of mine less. Yet it
is less the loss than the circumstances of the loss.
I sinned against her, and on that account there is no
light for me."
"She sinned against you, I think."
"No, she did not. I committed the guilt; and may
the whole burden be upon my head!"
"I think you might consider twice before you say that,"
Eustacia replied. "Single men have, no doubt, a right
to curse themselves as much as they please; but men with
wives involve two in the doom they pray down."
"I am in too sorry a state to understand what you are
refining on," said the wretched man. "Day and night shout
at me, 'You have helped to kill her.' But in loathing
myself I may, I own, be unjust to you, my poor wife.
Forgive me for it, Eustacia, for I scarcely know what I do."
Eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her
husband in such a state as this, which had become as
dreadful to her as the trial scene was to Judas Iscariot.
It brought before her eyes the spectre of a worn-out
woman knocking at a door which she would not open;
and she shrank from contemplating it. Yet it was better
for Yeobright himself when he spoke openly of his
sharp regret, for in silence he endured infinitely more,
and would sometimes remain so long in a tense, brooding mood,
consuming himself by the gnawing of his thought, that it
was imperatively necessary to make him talk aloud, that his
grief might in some degree expend itself in the effort.
Eustacia had not been long indoors after her look at
the moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house,
and Thomasin was announced by the woman downstairs.
"Ah, Thomasin! Thank you for coming tonight," said Clym
when she entered the room. "Here am I, you see.
Such a wretched spectacle am I, that I shrink from being
seen by a single friend, and almost from you."
"You must not shrink from me, dear Clym," said Thomasin
earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came
to a sufferer like fresh air into a Black Hole.
"Nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away.
I have been here before, but you don't remember it."
"Yes, I do; I am not delirious, Thomasin, nor have I
been so at all. Don't you believe that if they say so.
I am only in great misery at what I have done, and that,
with the weakness, makes me seem mad. But it has not upset
my reason. Do you think I should remember all about my
mother's death if I were out of my mind? No such good luck.
Two months and a half, Thomasin, the last of her life, did my
poor mother live alone, distracted and mourning because of me;
yet she was unvisited by me, though I was living only six
miles off. Two months and a half--seventy-five days did
the sun rise and set upon her in that deserted state
which a dog didn't deserve! Poor people who had nothing
in common with her would have cared for her, and visited
her had they known her sickness and loneliness; but I,
who should have been all to her, stayed away like a cur.
If there is any justice in God let Him kill me now.
He has nearly blinded me, but that is not enough.
If He would only strike me with more pain I would believe in
Him forever!"
"Hush, hush! O, pray, Clym, don't, don't say it!"
implored Thomasin, affrighted into sobs and tears;
while Eustacia, at the other side of the room,
though her pale face remained calm, writhed in her chair.
Clym went on without heeding his cousin.
"But I am not worth receiving further proof even of
Heaven's reprobation. Do you think, Thomasin, that she
knew me--that she did not die in that horrid mistaken
notion about my not forgiving her, which I can't
tell you how she acquired? If you could only assure
me of that! Do you think so, Eustacia? Do speak to me."
"I think I can assure you that she knew better at last,"
said Thomasin. The pallid Eustacia said nothing.
"Why didn't she come to my house? I would have taken
her in and showed her how I loved her in spite of all.
But she never came; and I didn't go to her, and she died
on the heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to help
her till it was too late. If you could have seen her,
Thomasin, as I saw her--a poor dying woman, lying in
the dark upon the bare ground, moaning, nobody near,
believing she was utterly deserted by all the world,
it would have moved you to anguish, it would have moved
a brute. And this poor woman my mother! No wonder she
said to the child, 'You have seen a broken-hearted woman.'
What a state she must have been brought to, to say that! and
who can have done it but I? It is too dreadful to think of,
and I wish I could be punished more heavily than I am.
How long was I what they called out of my senses?"
"A week, I think."
"And then I became calm."
"Yes, for four days."
"And now I have left off being calm."
"But try to be quiet--please do, and you will soon be strong.
If you could remove that impression from your mind--"
"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "But I don't want
to get strong. What's the use of my getting well? It
would be better for me if I die, and it would certainly
be better for Eustacia. Is Eustacia there?"
"Yes."
"It would be better for you, Eustacia, if I were to die?"
"Don't press such a question, dear Clym."
"Well, it really is but a shadowy supposition;
for unfortunately I am going to live. I feel myself
getting better. Thomasin, how long are you going to stay
at the inn, now that all this money has come to your husband?"
"Another month or two, probably; until my illness is over.
We cannot get off till then. I think it will be a month
or more."
"Yes, yes. Of course. Ah, Cousin Tamsie, you will get over
your trouble--one little month will take you through it,
and bring something to console you; but I shall never get
over mine, and no consolation will come!"
"Clym, you are unjust to yourself. Depend upon it,
Aunt thought kindly of you. I know that, if she had lived,
you would have been reconciled with her."
"But she didn't come to see me, though I asked her,
before I married, if she would come. Had she come,
or had I gone there, she would never have died saying,
'I am a broken-hearted woman, cast off by my son.' My door
has always been open to her--a welcome here has always
awaited her. But that she never came to see."
"You had better not talk any more now, Clym," said Eustacia
faintly from the other part of the room, for the scene
was growing intolerable to her.
"Let me talk to you instead for the little time I shall
be here," Thomasin said soothingly. "Consider what a
one-sided way you have of looking at the matter, Clym.
When she said that to the little boy you had not found her
and taken her into your arms; and it might have been uttered
in a moment of bitterness. It was rather like Aunt to say
things in haste. She sometimes used to speak so to me.
Though she did not come I am convinced that she thought
of coming to see you. Do you suppose a man's mother could
live two or three months without one forgiving thought?
She forgave me; and why should she not have forgiven you?"
"You laboured to win her round; I did nothing. I, who was
going to teach people the higher secrets of happiness,
did not know how to keep out of that gross misery which
the most untaught are wise enough to avoid."
"How did you get here tonight, Thomasin?" said Eustacia.
"Damon set me down at the end of the lane. He has driven
into East Egdon on business, and he will come and pick
me up by-and-by."
Accordingly they soon after heard the noise of wheels.
Wildeve had come, and was waiting outside with his horse
and gig.
"Send out and tell him I will be down in two minutes,"
said Thomasin.
"I will run down myself," said Eustacia.
She went down. Wildeve had alighted, and was standing
before the horse's head when Eustacia opened the door.
He did not turn for a moment, thinking the comer Thomasin.
Then he looked, startled ever so little, and said one word:
"Well?"
"I have not yet told him," she replied in a whisper.
"Then don't do so till he is well--it will be fatal.
You are ill yourself."
"I am wretched....O Damon," she said, bursting into tears,
"I--I can't tell you how unhappy I am! I can hardly
bear this. I can tell nobody of my trouble--nobody
knows of it but you."
"Poor girl!" said Wildeve, visibly affected at her distress,
and at last led on so far as to take her hand.
"It is hard, when you have done nothing to deserve it,
that you should have got involved in such a web as this.
You were not made for these sad scenes. I am to blame most.
If I could only have saved you from it all!"
"But, Damon, please pray tell me what I must do? To
sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach
himself as being the cause of her death, and to know
that I am the sinner, if any human being is at all,
drives me into cold despair. I don't know what to do.
Should I tell him or should I not tell him? I always am
asking myself that. O, I want to tell him; and yet I
am afraid. If he find it out he must surely kill me,
for nothing else will be in proportion to his feelings now.
'Beware the fury of a patient man' sounds day by day in my
ears as I watch him."
"Well, wait till he is better, and trust to chance.
And when you tell, you must only tell part--for his
own sake."
"Which part should I keep back?"
Wildeve paused. "That I was in the house at the time,"
he said in a low tone.
"Yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered.
How much easier are hasty actions than speeches that will
excuse them!"
"If he were only to die--" Wildeve murmured.
"Do not think of it! I would not buy hope of immunity
by so cowardly a desire even if I hated him. Now I am
going up to him again. Thomasin bade me tell you she
would be down in a few minutes. Good-bye."
She returned, and Thomasin soon appeared. When she was
seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was turning
to go off, Wildeve lifted his eyes to the bedroom windows.
Looking from one of them he could discern a pale,
tragic face watching him drive away. It was Eustacia's.
2 - A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding
Clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out.
His strength returned, and a month after the visit of
Thomasin he might have been seen walking about the garden.
Endurance and despair, equanimity and gloom, the tints of
health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdly in his face.
He was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past that
related to his mother; and though Eustacia knew that he
was thinking of it none the less, she was only too glad
to escape the topic ever to bring it up anew. When his
mind had been weaker his heart had led him to speak out;
but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank
into taciturnity.
One evening when he was thus standing in the garden,
abstractedly spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony
figure turned the corner of the house and came up to him.
"Christian, isn't it?" said Clym. "I am glad you have
found me out. I shall soon want you to go to Blooms-
End and assist me in putting the house in order.
I suppose it is all locked up as I left it?"
"Yes, Mister Clym."
"Have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?"
"Yes, without a drop o' rain, thank God. But I was
coming to tell 'ee of something else which is quite
different from what we have lately had in the family.
I am sent by the rich gentleman at the Woman, that we
used to call the landlord, to tell 'ee that Mrs. Wildeve
is doing well of a girl, which was born punctually
at one o'clock at noon, or a few minutes more or less;
and 'tis said that expecting of this increase is what have
kept 'em there since they came into their money."
"And she is getting on well, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Only Mr. Wildeve is twanky because 'tisn't
a boy--that's what they say in the kitchen, but I was
not supposed to notice that."
"Christian, now listen to me."
"Yes, sure, Mr. Yeobright."
"Did you see my mother the day before she died?"
"No, I did not."
Yeobright's face expressed disappointment.
"But I zeed her the morning of the same day she died."
Clym's look lighted up. "That's nearer still to my meaning,"
he said.
"Yes, I know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'I be going
to see him, Christian; so I shall not want any vegetables
brought in for dinner.'"
"See whom?"
"See you. She was going to your house, you understand."
Yeobright regarded Christian with intense surprise.
"Why did you never mention this?" he said. "Are you sure
it was my house she was coming to?"
"O yes. I didn't mention it because I've never zeed
you lately. And as she didn't get there it was all nought,
and nothing to tell."
"And I have been wondering why she should have walked in
the heath on that hot day! Well, did she say what she was
coming for? It is a thing, Christian, I am very anxious to know."
"Yes, Mister Clym. She didn't say it to me, though I
think she did to one here and there."
"Do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?"
"There is one man, please, sir, but I hope you won't mention
my name to him, as I have seen him in strange places,
particular in dreams. One night last summer he glared
at me like Famine and Sword, and it made me feel so low
that I didn't comb out my few hairs for two days.
He was standing, as it might be, Mister Yeobright, in the
middle of the path to Mistover, and your mother came up,
looking as pale--"
"Yes, when was that?"
"Last summer, in my dream."
"Pooh! Who's the man?"
"Diggory, the reddleman. He called upon her and sat
with her the evening before she set out to see you.
I hadn't gone home from work when he came up to the gate."
"I must see Venn--I wish I had known it before,"
said Clym anxiously. "I wonder why he has not come
to tell me?"
"He went out of Egdon Heath the next day, so would not
be likely to know you wanted him."
"Christian," said Clym, "you must go and find Venn.
I am otherwise engaged, or I would go myself. Find him
at once, and tell him I want to speak to him."
"I am a good hand at hunting up folk by day," said Christian,
looking dubiously round at the declining light;
"but as to night-time, never is such a bad hand as I,
Mister Yeobright."
"Search the heath when you will, so that you bring him soon.
Bring him tomorrow, if you can."
Christian then departed. The morrow came, but no Venn.
In the evening Christian arrived, looking very weary.
He had been searching all day, and had heard nothing of
the reddleman.
"Inquire as much as you can tomorrow without neglecting
your work," said Yeobright. "Don't come again till you
have found him."
The next day Yeobright set out for the old house at
Blooms-End, which, with the garden, was now his own.
His severe illness had hindered all preparations for his
removal thither; but it had become necessary that he
should go and overlook its contents, as administrator
to his mother's little property; for which purpose he
decided to pass the next night on the premises.
He journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in the slow
walk of one who has been awakened from a stupefying sleep.
It was early afternoon when he reached the valley.
The expression of the place, the tone of the hour,
were precisely those of many such occasions in days gone by;
and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusion that she,
who was there no longer, would come out to welcome him.
The garden gate was locked and the shutters were closed,
just as he himself had left them on the evening after
the funeral. He unlocked the gate, and found that a spider
had already constructed a large web, tying the door
to the lintel, on the supposition that it was never to be
opened again. When he had entered the house and flung
back the shutters he set about his task of overhauling
the cupboards and closets, burning papers, and considering
how best to arrange the place for Eustacia's reception,
until such time as he might be in a position to carry
out his long-delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive.
As he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined
for the alterations which would have to be made in the
time-honoured furnishing of his parents and grandparents,
to suit Eustacia's modern ideas. The gaunt oak-cased clock,
with the picture of the Ascension on the door panel
and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes on the base;
his grandmother's corner cupboard with the glass door,
through which the spotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter;
the wooden tea trays; the hanging fountain with the brass
tap--whither would these venerable articles have to be
banished?
He noticed that the flowers in the window had died for
want of water, and he placed them out upon the ledge,
that they might be taken away. While thus engaged he
heard footsteps on the gravel without, and somebody
knocked at the door.
Yeobright opened it, and Venn was standing before him.
"Good morning," said the reddleman. "Is Mrs. Yeobright
at home?"
Yeobright looked upon the ground. "Then you have not
seen Christian or any of the Egdon folks?" he said.
"No. I have only just returned after a long stay away.
I called here the day before I left."
"And you have heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"My mother is--dead."
"Dead!" said Venn mechanically.
"Her home now is where I shouldn't mind having mine."
Venn regarded him, and then said, "If I didn't see your
face I could never believe your words. Have you been ill?"
"I had an illness."
"Well, the change! When I parted from her a month ago
everything seemed to say that she was going to begin
a new life."
"And what seemed came true."
"You say right, no doubt. Trouble has taught you a deeper
vein of talk than mine. All I meant was regarding
her life here. She has died too soon."
"Perhaps through my living too long. I have had a bitter
experience on that score this last month, Diggory.
But come in; I have been wanting to see you."
He conducted the reddleman into the large room where
the dancing had taken place the previous Christmas,
and they sat down in the settle together. "There's the
cold fireplace, you see," said Clym. "When that halfburnt
log and those cinders were alight she was alive!
Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing.
My life creeps like a snail."
"How came she to die?" said Venn.
Yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness
and death, and continued: "After this no kind of pain
will ever seem more than an indisposition to me.
I began saying that I wanted to ask you something, but I
stray from subjects like a drunken man. I am anxious
to know what my mother said to you when she last saw you.
You talked with her a long time, I think?"
"I talked with her more than half an hour."
"About me?"
"Yes. And it must have been on account of what we said
that she was on the heath. Without question she was
coming to see you."
"But why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly
against me? There's the mystery."
"Yet I know she quite forgave 'ee."
"But, Diggory--would a woman, who had quite forgiven her son,
say, when she felt herself ill on the way to his house,
that she was broken-hearted because of his ill-usage? Never!"
"What I know is that she didn't blame you at all.
She blamed herself for what had happened, and only herself.
I had it from her own lips."
"You had it from her lips that I had NOT ill-treated her;
and at the same time another had it from her lips that I
HAD ill-treated her? My mother was no impulsive woman
who changed her opinion every hour without reason.
How can it be, Venn, that she should have told such
different stories in close succession?"
"I cannot say. It is certainly odd, when she had
forgiven you, and had forgiven your wife, and was going
to see ye on purpose to make friends."
"If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this
incomprehensible thing!...Diggory, if we, who remain alive,
were only allowed to hold conversation with the dead--just
once, a bare minute, even through a screen of iron bars,
as with persons in prison--what we might learn! How many
who now ride smiling would hide their heads! And this
mystery--I should then be at the bottom of it at once.
But the grave has forever shut her in; and how shall it
be found out now?"
No reply was returned by his companion, since none could
be given; and when Venn left, a few minutes later,
Clym had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the
fluctuation of carking incertitude.
He continued in the same state all the afternoon.
A bed was made up for him in the same house by a neighbour,
that he might not have to return again the next day;
and when he retired to rest in the deserted place it
was only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the
same thoughts. How to discover a solution to this riddle
of death seemed a query of more importance than highest
problems of the living. There was housed in his memory
a vivid picture of the face of a little boy as he entered
the hovel where Clym's mother lay. The round eyes,
eager gaze, the piping voice which enunciated the words,
had operated like stilettos on his brain.
A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning
new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive.
To probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks,
not for facts which the child had seen and understood,
but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him,
did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel
is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure.
There was nothing else left to do; after that he would allow
the enigma to drop into the abyss of undiscoverable things.
It was about daybreak when he had reached this decision,
and he at once arose. He locked up the house and went out
into the green patch which merged in heather further on.
In front of the white garden-palings the path branched
into three like a broad arrow. The road to the right led
to the Quiet Woman and its neighbourhood; the middle track
led to Mistover Knap; the left-hand track led over the hill
to another part of Mistover, where the child lived.
On inclining into the latter path Yeobright felt
a creeping chilliness, familiar enough to most people,
and probably caused by the unsunned morning air. In after
days he thought of it as a thing of singular significance.
When Yeobright reached the cottage of Susan Nunsuch,
the mother of the boy he sought, he found that the inmates
were not yet astir. But in upland hamlets the transition
from a-bed to abroad is surprisingly swift and easy.
There no dense partition of yawns and toilets divides
humanity by night from humanity by day. Yeobright tapped
at the upper windowsill, which he could reach with his
walking stick; and in three or four minutes the woman
came down.
It was not till this moment that Clym recollected her to be
the person who had behaved so barbarously to Eustacia.
It partly explained the insuavity with which the woman
greeted him. Moreover, the boy had been ailing again;
and Susan now, as ever since the night when he had
been pressed into Eustacia's service at the bonfire,
attributed his indispositions to Eustacia's influence
as a witch. It was one of those sentiments which lurk
like moles underneath the visible surface of manners,
and may have been kept alive by Eustacia's entreaty to
the captain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute
Susan for the pricking in church, to let the matter drop;
which he accordingly had done.
Yeobright overcame his repugnance, for Susan had at least
borne his mother no ill-will. He asked kindly for the boy;
but her manner did not improve.
"I wish to see him," continued Yeobright, with some hesitation,
"to ask him if he remembers anything more of his walk
with my mother than what he has previously told."
She regarded him in a peculiar and criticizing manner.
To anybody but a half-blind man it would have said,
"You want another of the knocks which have already laid you
so low."
She called the boy downstairs, asked Clym to sit down on
a stool, and continued, "Now, Johnny, tell Mr. Yeobright
anything you can call to mind."
"You have not forgotten how you walked with the poor lady
on that hot day?" said Clym.
"No," said the boy.
"And what she said to you?"
The boy repeated the exact words he had used on entering the hut.
Yeobright rested his elbow on the table and shaded his face
with his hand; and the mother looked as if she wondered
how a man could want more of what had stung him so deeply.
"She was going to Alderworth when you first met her?"
"No; she was coming away."
"That can't be."
"Yes; she walked along with me. I was coming away, too."
"Then where did you first see her?"
"At your house."
"Attend, and speak the truth!" said Clym sternly.
"Yes, sir; at your house was where I seed her first."
Clym started up, and Susan smiled in an expectant way
which did not embellish her face; it seemed to mean,
"Something sinister is coming!"
"What did she do at my house?"
"She went and sat under the trees at the Devil's Bellows."
"Good God! this is all news to me!"
"You never told me this before?" said Susan.
"No, Mother; because I didn't like to tell 'ee I had been
so far. I was picking blackhearts, and went further
than I meant."
"What did she do then?" said Yeobright.
"Looked at a man who came up and went into your house."
"That was myself--a furze-cutter, with brambles in his hand."
"No; 'twas not you. 'Twas a gentleman. You had gone
in afore."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
"Now tell me what happened next."
"The poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the lady
with black hair looked out of the side window at her."
The boy's mother turned to Clym and said, "This is
something you didn't expect?"
Yeobright took no more notice of her than if he had been
of stone. "Go on, go on," he said hoarsely to the boy.
"And when she saw the young lady look out of the window
the old lady knocked again; and when nobody came she took
up the furze-hook and looked at it, and put it down again,
and then she looked at the faggot-bonds; and then she
went away, and walked across to me, and blowed her breath
very hard, like this. We walked on together, she and I,
and I talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much,
because she couldn't blow her breath."
"O!" murmured Clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head.
"Let's have more," he said.
"She couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her
face was, O so queer!"
"How was her face?"
"Like yours is now."
The woman looked at Yeobright, and beheld him colourless,
in a cold sweat. "Isn't there meaning in it?"
she said stealthily. "What do you think of her now?"
"Silence!" said Clym fiercely. And, turning to the boy,
"And then you left her to die?"
"No," said the woman, quickly and angrily. "He did
not leave her to die! She sent him away. Whoever says
he forsook her says what's not true."
"Trouble no more about that," answered Clym, with a
quivering mouth. "What he did is a trifle in comparison
with what he saw. Door kept shut, did you say? Kept shut,
she looking out of window? Good heart of God!--what
does it mean?"
The child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner.
"He said so," answered the mother, "and Johnny's a Godfearing
boy and tells no lies."
"'Cast off by my son!' No, by my best life, dear mother,
it is not so! But by your son's, your son's--May all
murderesses get the torment they deserve!"
With these words Yeobright went forth from the little dwelling.
The pupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness,
were vaguely lit with an icy shine; his mouth had passed
into the phase more or less imaginatively rendered in studies
of Oedipus. The strangest deeds were possible to his mood.
But they were not possible to his situation. Instead of there
being before him the pale face of Eustacia, and a masculine
shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance
of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets
of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed
and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man.
3 - Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning
A consciousness of a vast impassivity in all which lay
around him took possession even of Yeobright in his wild
walk towards Alderworth. He had once before felt in his own
person this overpowering of the fervid by the inanimate;
but then it had tended to enervate a passion far sweeter
than that which at present pervaded him. It was once
when he stood parting from Eustacia in the moist still
levels beyond the hills.
But dismissing all this he went onward home, and came to
the front of his house. The blinds of Eustacia's bedroom
were still closely drawn, for she was no early riser.
All the life visible was in the shape of a solitary thrush
cracking a small snail upon the door-stone for his breakfast,
and his tapping seemed a loud noise in the general
silence which prevailed; but on going to the door Clym
found it unfastened, the young girl who attended upon
Eustacia being astir in the back part of the premises.
Yeobright entered and went straight to his wife's room.
The noise of his arrival must have aroused her, for when
he opened the door she was standing before the looking
glass in her nightdress, the ends of her hair gathered
into one hand, with which she was coiling the whole mass
round her head, previous to beginning toilette operations.
She was not a woman given to speaking first at a meeting,
and she allowed Clym to walk across in silence,
without turning her head. He came behind her, and she saw
his face in the glass. It was ashy, haggard, and terrible.
Instead of starting towards him in sorrowful surprise,
as even Eustacia, undemonstrative wife as she was, would have
done in days before she burdened herself with a secret,
she remained motionless, looking at him in the glass.
And while she looked the carmine flush with which warmth
and sound sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck dissolved
from view, and the deathlike pallor in his face flew across
into hers. He was close enough to see this, and the sight
instigated his tongue.
"You know what is the matter," he said huskily.
"I see it in your face."
Her hand relinquished the rope of hair and dropped to
her side, and the pile of tresses, no longer supported,
fell from the crown of her head about her shoulders
and over the white nightgown. She made no reply.
"Speak to me," said Yeobright peremptorily.
The blanching process did not cease in her, and her lips
now became as white as her face. She turned to him
and said, "Yes, Clym, I'll speak to you. Why do you
return so early? Can I do anything for you?"
"Yes, you can listen to me. It seems that my wife
is not very well?"
"Why?"
"Your face, my dear; your face. Or perhaps it is
the pale morning light which takes your colour away?
Now I am going to reveal a secret to you. Ha-ha!"
"O, that is ghastly!"
"What?"
"Your laugh."
"There's reason for ghastliness. Eustacia, you have held
my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil
you have dashed it down!"
She started back from the dressing-table, retreated a few
steps from him, and looked him in the face. "Ah! you
think to frighten me," she said, with a slight laugh.
"Is it worth while? I am undefended, and alone."
"How extraordinary!"
"What do you mean?"
"As there is ample time I will tell you, though you know
well enough. I mean that it is extraordinary that you
should be alone in my absence. Tell me, now, where is
he who was with you on the afternoon of the thirtyfirst
of August? Under the bed? Up the chimney?"
A shudder overcame her and shook the light fabric of her
nightdress throughout. "I do not remember dates so exactly,"
she said. "I cannot recollect that anybody was with me
besides yourself."
"The day I mean," said Yeobright, his voice growing louder
and harsher, "was the day you shut the door against my
mother and killed her. O, it is too much--too bad!"
He leant over the footpiece of the bedstead for a few moments,
with his back towards her; then rising again--"Tell me,
tell me! tell me--do you hear?" he cried, rushing up to
her and seizing her by the loose folds of her sleeve.
The superstratum of timidity which often overlies those who
are daring and defiant at heart had been passed through,
and the mettlesome substance of the woman was reached.
The red blood inundated her face, previously so pale.
"What are you going to do?" she said in a low voice,
regarding him with a proud smile. "You will not alarm
me by holding on so; but it would be a pity to tear
my sleeve."
Instead of letting go he drew her closer to him. "Tell me
the particulars of--my mother's death," he said in a hard,
panting whisper; "or--I'll--I'll--"
"Clym," she answered slowly, "do you think you dare
do anything to me that I dare not bear? But before you
strike me listen. You will get nothing from me by a blow,
even though it should kill me, as it probably will.
But perhaps you do not wish me to speak--killing may be all
you mean?"
"Kill you! Do you expect it?"
"I do."
"Why?"
"No less degree of rage against me will match your previous
grief for her."
"Phew--I shall not kill you," he said contemptuously,
as if under a sudden change of purpose. "I did think of it;
but--I shall not. That would be making a martyr of you,
and sending you to where she is; and I would keep
you away from her till the universe come to an end,
if I could."
"I almost wish you would kill me," said she with gloomy
bitterness. "It is with no strong desire, I assure you,
that I play the part I have lately played on earth.
You are no blessing, my husband."
"You shut the door--you looked out of the window upon
her--you had a man in the house with you--you sent her
away to die. The inhumanity--the treachery--I will not
touch you--stand away from me--and confess every word!"
"Never! I'll hold my tongue like the very death that I
don't mind meeting, even though I can clear myself
of half you believe by speaking. Yes. I will! Who
of any dignity would take the trouble to clear cobwebs
from a wild man's mind after such language as this? No;
let him go on, and think his narrow thoughts, and run
his head into the mire. I have other cares."
"'Tis too much--but I must spare you."
"Poor charity."
"By my wretched soul you sting me, Eustacia! I can keep
it up, and hotly too. Now, then, madam, tell me his name!"
"Never, I am resolved."
"How often does he write to you? Where does he put his
letters--when does he meet you? Ah, his letters! Do you
tell me his name?"
"I do not."
"Then I'll find it myself." His eyes had fallen upon
a small desk that stood near, on which she was accustomed
to write her letters. He went to it. It was locked.
"Unlock this!"
"You have no right to say it. That's mine."
Without another word he seized the desk and dashed
it to the floor. The hinge burst open, and a number
of letters tumbled out.
"Stay!" said Eustacia, stepping before him with more
excitement than she had hitherto shown.
"Come, come! stand away! I must see them."
She looked at the letters as they lay, checked her feeling
and moved indifferently aside; when he gathered them up,
and examined them.
By no stretch of meaning could any but a harmless construction
be placed upon a single one of the letters themselves.
The solitary exception was an empty envelope directed to her,
and the handwriting was Wildeve's. Yeobright held it up.
Eustacia was doggedly silent.
"Can you read, madam? Look at this envelope. Doubtless we
shall find more soon, and what was inside them.
I shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time
what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain
trade my lady is."
"Do you say it to me--do you?" she gasped.
He searched further, but found nothing more. "What was
in this letter?" he said.
"Ask the writer. Am I your hound that you should talk
to me in this way?"
"Do you brave me? do you stand me out, mistress? Answer.
Don't look at me with those eyes if you would bewitch me
again! Sooner than that I die. You refuse to answer?"
"I wouldn't tell you after this, if I were as innocent
as the sweetest babe in heaven!"
"Which you are not."
"Certainly I am not absolutely," she replied. "I have not
done what you suppose; but if to have done no harm at all
is the only innocence recognized, I am beyond forgiveness.
But I require no help from your conscience."
"You can resist, and resist again! Instead of hating
you I could, I think, mourn for and pity you, if you
were contrite, and would confess all. Forgive you I
never can. I don't speak of your lover--I will give you
the benefit of the doubt in that matter, for it only affects
me personally. But the other--had you half-killed me,
had it been that you wilfully took the sight away from
these feeble eyes of mine, I could have forgiven you.
But THAT'S too much for nature!"
"Say no more. I will do without your pity. But I would
have saved you from uttering what you will regret."
"I am going away now. I shall leave you."
"You need not go, as I am going myself. You will keep
just as far away from me by staying here."
"Call her to mind--think of her--what goodness there was
in her--it showed in every line of her face! Most women,
even when but slightly annoyed, show a flicker of evil
in some curl of the mouth or some corner of the cheek;
but as for her, never in her angriest moments was there
anything malicious in her look. She was angered quickly,
but she forgave just as readily, and underneath her pride there
was the meekness of a child. What came of it.?--what cared
you? You hated her just as she was learning to love you.
O! couldn't you see what was best for you, but must
bring a curse upon me, and agony and death upon her,
by doing that cruel deed! What was the fellow's name
who was keeping you company and causing you to add cruelty
to her to your wrong to me? Was it Wildeve? Was it poor
Thomasin's husband? Heaven, what wickedness! Lost your voice,
have you? It is natural after detection of that most noble
trick....Eustacia, didn't any tender thought of your own
mother lead you to think of being gentle to mine at such
a time of weariness? Did not one grain of pity enter your
heart as she turned away? Think what a vast opportunity
was then lost of beginning a forgiving and honest course.
Why did not you kick him out, and let her in, and say I'll
be an honest wife and a noble woman from this hour? Had I
told you to go and quench eternally our last flickering
chance of happiness here you could have done no worse.
Well, she's asleep now; and have you a hundred gallants,
neither they nor you can insult her any more."
"You exaggerate fearfully," she said in a faint,
weary voice; "but I cannot enter into my defence--it
is not worth doing. You are nothing to me in future,
and the past side of the story may as well remain untold.
I have lost all through you, but I have not complained.
Your blunders and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you,
but they have been a wrong to me. All persons of refinement
have been scared away from me since I sank into the mire
of marriage. Is this your cherishing--to put me into a hut
like this, and keep me like the wife of a hind? You deceived
me--not by words, but by appearances, which are less seen
through than words. But the place will serve as well
as any other--as somewhere to pass from--into my grave."
Her words were smothered in her throat, and her head
drooped down.
"I don't know what you mean by that. Am I the cause of
your sin?" (Eustacia made a trembling motion towards him.)
"What, you can begin to shed tears and offer me your
hand? Good God! can you? No, not I. I'll not commit
the fault of taking that." (The hand she had offered
dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.)
"Well, yes, I'll take it, if only for the sake of my own
foolish kisses that were wasted there before I knew
what I cherished. How bewitched I was! How could there
be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?"
"O, O, O!" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking
with sobs which choked her, she sank upon her knees.
"O, will you have done! O, you are too relentless--there's
a limit to the cruelty of savages! I have held out long--but
you crush me down. I beg for mercy--I cannot bear this
any longer--it is inhuman to go further with this! If I
had--killed your--mother with my own hand--I should not
deserve such a scourging to the bone as this. O, O! God
have mercy upon a miserable woman!...You have beaten me in
this game--I beg you to stay your hand in pity!...I confess
that I--wilfully did not undo the door the first time she
knocked--but--I should have unfastened it the second--
if I had not thought you had gone to do it yourself.
When I found you had not I opened it, but she was gone.
That's the extent of my crime--towards HER. Best natures
commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?--I think they do.
Now I will leave you--for ever and ever!"
"Tell all, and I WILL pity you. Was the man
in the house with you Wildeve?"
"I cannot tell," she said desperately through her sobbing.
"Don't insist further--I cannot tell. I am going from
this house. We cannot both stay here."
"You need not go--I will go. You can stay here."
"No, I will dress, and then I will go."
"Where?"
"Where I came from, or ELSEWHERE."
She hastily dressed herself, Yeobright moodily
walking up and down the room the whole of the time.
At last all her things were on. Her little hands
quivered so violently as she held them to her chin
to fasten her bonnet that she could not tie the strings,
and after a few moments she relinquished the attempt.
Seeing this he moved forward and said, "Let me tie them."
She assented in silence, and lifted her chin. For once
at least in her life she was totally oblivious of the
charm of her attitude. But he was not, and he turned
his eyes aside, that he might not be tempted to softness.
The strings were tied; she turned from him. "Do you
still prefer going away yourself to my leaving you?"
he inquired again.
"I do."
"Very well--let it be. And when you will confess
to the man I may pity you."
She flung her shawl about her and went downstairs,
leaving him standing in the room.
Eustacia had not long been gone when there came a knock
at the door of the bedroom; and Yeobright said, "Well?"
It was the servant; and she replied, "Somebody from
Mrs. Wildeve's have called to tell 'ee that the mis'ess
and the baby are getting on wonderful well, and the baby's
name is to be Eustacia Clementine." And the girl retired.
"What a mockery!" said Clym. "This unhappy marriage
of mine to be perpetuated in that child's name!"
4 - The Ministrations of a Half-forgotten One
Eustacia's journey was at first as vague in direction as that
of thistledown on the wind. She did not know what to do.
She wished it had been night instead of morning, that she
might at least have borne her misery without the possibility
of being seen. Tracing mile after mile along between
the dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs, she at
length turned her steps towards her grandfather's house.
She found the front door closed and locked. Mechanically she
went round to the end where the stable was, and on looking
in at the stable door she saw Charley standing within.
"Captain Vye is not at home?" she said.
"No, ma'am," said the lad in a flutter of feeling;
"he's gone to Weatherbury, and won't be home till night.
And the servant is gone home for a holiday. So the house
is locked up."
Eustacia's face was not visible to Charley as she stood
at the doorway, her back being to the sky, and the stable
but indifferently lighted; but the wildness of her manner
arrested his attention. She turned and walked away across
the enclosure to the gate, and was hidden by the bank.
When she had disappeared Charley, with misgiving
in his eyes, slowly came from the stable door,
and going to another point in the bank he looked over.
Eustacia was leaning against it on the outside,
her face covered with her hands, and her head pressing
the dewy heather which bearded the bank's outer side.
She appeared to be utterly indifferent to the circumstance
that her bonnet, hair, and garments were becoming wet
and disarranged by the moisture of her cold, harsh pillow.
Clearly something was wrong.
Charley had always regarded Eustacia as Eustacia had
regarded Clym when she first beheld him--as a romantic
and sweet vision, scarcely incarnate. He had been
so shut off from her by the dignity of her look and
the pride of her speech, except at that one blissful
interval when he was allowed to hold her hand, that he
had hardly deemed her a woman, wingless and earthly,
subject to household conditions and domestic jars.
The inner details of her life he had only conjectured.
She had been a lovely wonder, predestined to an orbit
in which the whole of his own was but a point; and this
sight of her leaning like a helpless, despairing creature
against a wild wet bank filled him with an amazed horror.
He could no longer remain where he was. Leaping over,
he came up, touched her with his finger, and said tenderly,
"You are poorly, ma'am. What can I do?"
Eustacia started up, and said, "Ah, Charley--you
have followed me. You did not think when I left
home in the summer that I should come back like this!"
"I did not, dear ma'am. Can I help you now?"
"I am afraid not. I wish I could get into the house.
I feel giddy--that's all."
"Lean on my arm, ma'am, till we get to the porch, and I
will try to open the door."
He supported her to the porch, and there depositing her on
a seat hastened to the back, climbed to a window by the
help of a ladder, and descending inside opened the door.
Next he assisted her into the room, where there was an
old-fashioned horsehair settee as large as a donkey wagon.
She lay down here, and Charley covered her with a cloak he
found in the hall.
"Shall I get you something to eat and drink?" he said.
"If you please, Charley. But I suppose there is no fire?"
"I can light it, ma'am."
He vanished, and she heard a splitting of wood and a blowing
of bellows; and presently he returned, saying, "I have
lighted a fire in the kitchen, and now I'll light one here."
He lit the fire, Eustacia dreamily observing him from
her couch. When it was blazing up he said, "Shall I wheel
you round in front of it, ma'am, as the morning is chilly?"
"Yes, if you like."
"Shall I go and bring the victuals now?"
"Yes, do," she murmured languidly.
When he had gone, and the dull sounds occasionally
reached her ears of his movements in the kitchen,
she forgot where she was, and had for a moment to consider
by an effort what the sounds meant. After an interval
which seemed short to her whose thoughts were elsewhere,
he came in with a tray on which steamed tea and toast,
though it was nearly lunch-time.
"Place it on the table," she said. "I shall be ready soon."
He did so, and retired to the door; when, however,
he perceived that she did not move he came back a few steps.
"Let me hold it to you, if you don't wish to get up,"
said Charley. He brought the tray to the front of the couch,
where he knelt down, adding, "I will hold it for you."
Eustacia sat up and poured out a cup of tea. "You are
very kind to me, Charley," she murmured as she sipped.
"Well, I ought to be," said he diffidently, taking great
trouble not to rest his eyes upon her, though this was
their only natural position, Eustacia being immediately
before him. "You have been kind to me."
"How have I?" said Eustacia.
"You let me hold your hand when you were a maiden at home."
"Ah, so I did. Why did I do that? My mind is lost--it
had to do with the mumming, had it not?"
"Yes, you wanted to go in my place."
"I remember. I do indeed remember--too well!"
She again became utterly downcast; and Charley,
seeing that she was not going to eat or drink any more,
took away the tray.
Afterwards he occasionally came in to see if the fire
was burning, to ask her if she wanted anything, to tell
her that the wind had shifted from south to west, to ask
her if she would like him to gather her some blackberries;
to all which inquiries she replied in the negative or
with indifference.
She remained on the settee some time longer, when she
aroused herself and went upstairs. The room in which she
had formerly slept still remained much as she had left it,
and the recollection that this forced upon her of her
own greatly changed and infinitely worsened situation
again set on her face the undetermined and formless
misery which it had worn on her first arrival.
She peeped into her grandfather's room, through which
the fresh autumn air was blowing from the open window.
Her eye was arrested by what was a familiar sight enough,
though it broke upon her now with a new significance.
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.
For two successive years his mistress had seemed
to take pleasure in lighting a bonfire on the bank
overlooking the valley; but this year she had apparently
quite forgotten the day and the customary deed.
He was careful not to remind her, and went on with his
secret preparations for a cheerful surprise, the more
zealously that he had been absent last time and unable
to assist. At every vacant minute he hastened to gather
furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials
from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view.
The evening came, and Eustacia was still seemingly
unconscious of the anniversary. She had gone indoors
after her survey through the glass, and had not been
visible since. As soon as it was quite dark Charley
began to build the bonfire, choosing precisely that spot
on the bank which Eustacia had chosen at previous times.
When all the surrounding bonfires had burst into
existence Charley kindled his, and arranged its fuel
so that it should not require tending for some time.
He then went back to the house, and lingered round the
door and windows till she should by some means or other
learn of his achievement and come out to witness it.
But the shutters were closed, the door remained shut,
and no heed whatever seemed to be taken of his performance.
Not liking to call her he went back and replenished the fire,
continuing to do this for more than half an hour.
It was not till his stock of fuel had greatly diminished
that he went to the back door and sent in to beg that
Mrs. Yeobright would open the window-shutters and see
the sight outside.
Eustacia, who had been sitting listlessly in the parlour,
started up at the intelligence and flung open the shutters.
Facing her on the bank blazed the fire, which at once sent
a ruddy glare into the room where she was, and overpowered
the candles.
"Well done, Charley!" said Captain Vye from the chimney-corner.
"But I hope it is not my wood that he's burning....Ah, it
was this time last year that I met with that man Venn,
bringing home Thomasin Yeobright--to be sure it was! Well,
who would have thought that girl's troubles would have
ended so well? What a snipe you were in that matter,
Eustacia! Has your husband written to you yet?"
"No," said Eustacia, looking vaguely through the window
at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind
that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion.
She could see Charley's form on the bank, shovelling and
stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination
some other form which that fire might call up.
She left the room, put on her garden bonnet and cloak,
and went out. Reaching the bank, she looked over
with a wild curiosity and misgiving, when Charley said
to her, with a pleased sense of himself, "I made it o'
purpose for you, ma'am."
"Thank you," she said hastily. "But I wish you to put
it out now."
"It will soon burn down," said Charley, rather disappointed.
"Is it not a pity to knock it out?"
"I don't know," she musingly answered.
They stood in silence, broken only by the crackling
of the flames, till Charley, perceiving that she did
not want to talk to him, moved reluctantly away.
Eustacia remained within the bank looking at the fire,
intending to go indoors, yet lingering still. Had she
not by her situation been inclined to hold in indifference
all things honoured of the gods and of men she would
probably have come away. But her state was so hopeless
that she could play with it. To have lost is less
disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won;
and Eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage,
take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself
as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for
Heaven this woman Eustacia was.
While she stood she heard a sound. It was the splash
of a stone in the pond.
Had Eustacia received the stone full in the bosom
her heart could not have given a more decided thump.
She had thought of the possibility of such a signal in
answer to that which had been unwittingly given by Charley;
but she had not expected it yet. How prompt Wildeve
was! Yet how could he think her capable of deliberately
wishing to renew their assignations now? An impulse to
leave the spot, a desire to stay, struggled within her;
and the desire held its own. More than that it did
not do, for she refrained even from ascending the bank
and looking over. She remained motionless, not disturbing
a muscle of her face or raising her eyes; for were she to
turn up her face the fire on the bank would shine upon it,
and Wildeve might be looking down.
There was a second splash into the pond.
Why did he stay so long without advancing and looking
over? Curiosity had its way--she ascended one or two
of the earth-steps in the bank and glanced out.
Wildeve was before her. He had come forward after throwing
the last pebble, and the fire now shone into each of their
faces from the bank stretching breast-high between them.
"I did not light it!" cried Eustacia quickly. "It was
lit without my knowledge. Don't, don't come over to me!"
"Why have you been living here all these days without
telling me? You have left your home. I fear I am something
to blame in this?"
"I did not let in his mother; that's how it is!"
"You do not deserve what you have got, Eustacia; you are
in great misery; I see it in your eyes, your mouth, and all
over you. My poor, poor girl!" He stepped over the bank.
"You are beyond everything unhappy!"
"No, no; not exactly--"
"It has been pushed too far--it is killing you--I do think it!"
Her usually quiet breathing had grown quicker with his words.
"I--I--" she began, and then burst into quivering sobs,
shaken to the very heart by the unexpected voice of pity--a
sentiment whose existence in relation to herself she had
almost forgotten.
This outbreak of weeping took Eustacia herself so much by
surprise that she could not leave off, and she turned aside
from him in some shame, though turning hid nothing from him.
She sobbed on desperately; then the outpour lessened,
and she became quieter. Wildeve had resisted the impulse
to clasp her, and stood without speaking.
"Are you not ashamed of me, who used never to be
a crying animal?" she asked in a weak whisper as she
wiped her eyes. "Why didn't you go away? I wish you
had not seen quite all that; it reveals too much by half."
"You might have wished it, because it makes me
as sad as you," he said with emotion and deference.
"As for revealing--the word is impossible between us two."
"I did not send for you--don't forget it, Damon; I am
in pain, but I did not send for you! As a wife, at least,
I've been straight."
"Never mind--I came. O, Eustacia, forgive me for the harm
I have done you in these two past years! I see more and more
that I have been your ruin."
"Not you. This place I live in."
"Ah, your generosity may naturally make you say that.
But I am the culprit. I should either have done more or
nothing at all."
"In what way?"
"I ought never to have hunted you out, or, having done it,
I ought to have persisted in retaining you.
But of course I have no right to talk of that now.
I will only ask this--can I do anything for you? Is there
anything on the face of the earth that a man can do to
make you happier than you are at present? If there is,
I will do it. You may command me, Eustacia, to the limit
of my influence; and don't forget that I am richer now.
Surely something can be done to save you from this! Such
a rare plant in such a wild place it grieves me to see.
Do you want anything bought? Do you want to go anywhere?
Do you want to escape the place altogether? Only say it,
and I'll do anything to put an end to those tears, which but
for me would never have been at all."
"We are each married to another person," she said faintly;
"and assistance from you would have an evil sound--after--after--"
"Well, there's no preventing slanderers from having
their fill at any time; but you need not be afraid.
Whatever I may feel I promise you on my word of honour never
to speak to you about--or act upon--until you say I may.
I know my duty to Thomasin quite as well as I know my duty
to you as a woman unfairly treated. What shall I assist
you in?"
"In getting away from here."
"Where do you wish to go to?"
"I have a place in my mind. If you could help me as far
as Budmouth I can do all the rest. Steamers sail from
there across the Channel, and so I can get to Paris,
where I want to be. Yes," she pleaded earnestly, "help me
to get to Budmouth harbour without my grandfather's
or my husband's knowledge, and I can do all the rest."
"Will it be safe to leave you there alone?"
"Yes, yes. I know Budmouth well."
"Shall I go with you? I am rich now."
She was silent.
"Say yes, sweet!"
She was silent still.
"Well, let me know when you wish to go. We shall be at
our present house till December; after that we remove
to Casterbridge. Command me in anything till that time."
"I will think of this," she said hurriedly. "Whether I
can honestly make use of you as a friend, or must close
with you as a lover--that is what I must ask myself.
If I wish to go and decide to accept your company I will
signal to you some evening at eight o'clock punctually,
and this will mean that you are to be ready with a horse
and trap at twelve o'clock the same night to drive me to
Budmouth harbour in time for the morning boat."
"I will look out every night at eight, and no signal
shall escape me."
"Now please go away. If I decide on this escape I can
only meet you once more unless--I cannot go without you.
Go--I cannot bear it longer. Go--go!"
Wildeve slowly went up the steps and descended into the
darkness on the other side; and as he walked he glanced back,
till the bank blotted out her form from his further view.
6 - Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter
Yeobright was at this time at Blooms-End, hoping that
Eustacia would return to him. The removal of furniture
had been accomplished only that day, though Clym
had lived in the old house for more than a week.
He had spent the time in working about the premises,
sweeping leaves from the garden paths, cutting dead
stalks from the flower beds, and nailing up creepers
which had been displaced by the autumn winds. He took
no particular pleasure in these deeds, but they formed
a screen between himself and despair. Moreover, it had
become a religion with him to preserve in good condition
all that had lapsed from his mother's hands to his own.
During these operations he was constantly on the watch
for Eustacia. That there should be no mistake about
her knowing where to find him he had ordered a notice
board to be affixed to the garden gate at Alderworth,
signifying in white letters whither he had removed.
When a leaf floated to the earth he turned his head,
thinking it might be her foot-fall. A bird searching
for worms in the mould of the flower-beds sounded like her
hand on the latch of the gate; and at dusk, when soft,
strange ventriloquisms came from holes in the ground,
hollow stalks, curled dead leaves, and other crannies
wherein breezes, worms, and insects can work their will,
he fancied that they were Eustacia, standing without and
breathing wishes of reconciliation.
Up to this hour he had persevered in his resolve not to invite
her back. At the same time the severity with which he
had treated her lulled the sharpness of his regret for
his mother, and awoke some of his old solicitude for his
mother's supplanter. Harsh feelings produce harsh usage,
and this by reaction quenches the sentiments that gave
it birth. The more he reflected the more he softened.
But to look upon his wife as innocence in distress
was impossible, though he could ask himself whether he
had given her quite time enough--if he had not come
a little too suddenly upon her on that sombre morning.
Now that the first flush of his anger had paled he was
disinclined to ascribe to her more than an indiscreet
friendship with Wildeve, for there had not appeared in her
manner the signs of dishonour. And this once admitted,
an absolutely dark interpretation of her act towards
his mother was no longer forced upon him.
On the evening of the fifth November his thoughts
of Eustacia were intense. Echoes from those past times
when they had exchanged tender words all the day long came
like the diffused murmur of a seashore left miles behind.
"Surely," he said, "she might have brought herself
to communicate with me before now, and confess honestly
what Wildeve was to her."
Instead of remaining at home that night he determined to go
and see Thomasin and her husband. If he found opportunity
he would allude to the cause of the separation between
Eustacia and himself, keeping silence, however, on the
fact that there was a third person in his house when his
mother was turned away. If it proved that Wildeve was
innocently there he would doubtless openly mention it.
If he were there with unjust intentions Wildeve,
being a man of quick feeling, might possibly say something
to reveal the extent to which Eustacia was compromised.
But on reaching his cousin's house he found that only
Thomasin was at home, Wildeve being at that time on his way
towards the bonfire innocently lit by Charley at Mistover.
Thomasin then, as always, was glad to see Clym, and took
him to inspect the sleeping baby, carefully screening
the candlelight from the infant's eyes with her hand.
"Tamsin, have you heard that Eustacia is not with me.
now?" he said when they had sat down again.
"No," said Thomasin, alarmed.
"And not that I have left Alderworth?"
"No. I never hear tidings from Alderworth unless you
bring them. What is the matter?"
Clym in a disturbed voice related to her his visit
to Susan Nunsuch's boy, the revelation he had made,
and what had resulted from his charging Eustacia
with having wilfully and heartlessly done the deed.
He suppressed all mention of Wildeve's presence with her.
"All this, and I not knowing it!" murmured Thomasin
in an awestruck tone, "Terrible! What could have made
her--O, Eustacia! And when you found it out you went
in hot haste to her? Were you too cruel?--or is she
really so wicked as she seems?"
"Can a man be too cruel to his mother's enemy?"
"I can fancy so."
"Very well, then--I'll admit that he can. But now
what is to be done?"
"Make it up again--if a quarrel so deadly can ever
be made up. I almost wish you had not told me.
But do try to be reconciled. There are ways, after all,
if you both wish to."
"I don't know that we do both wish to make it up,"
said Clym. "If she had wished it, would she not have sent
to me by this time?"
"You seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her."
"True; but I have been tossed to and fro in doubt
if I ought, after such strong provocation. To see
me now, Thomasin, gives you no idea of what I have been;
of what depths I have descended to in these few last days.
O, it was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that!
Can I ever forget it, or even agree to see her again?"
"She might not have known that anything serious would
come of it, and perhaps she did not mean to keep Aunt
out altogether."
"She says herself that she did not. But the fact remains
that keep her out she did."
"Believe her sorry, and send for her."
"How if she will not come?"
"It will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit
to nourish enmity. But I do not think that for a moment."
"I will do this. I will wait for a day or two longer--
not longer than two days certainly; and if she does
not send to me in that time I will indeed send to her.
I thought to have seen Wildeve here tonight. Is he
from home?"
Thomasin blushed a little. "No," she said. "He is merely
gone out for a walk."
"Why didn't he take you with him? The evening is fine.
You want fresh air as well as he."
"Oh, I don't care for going anywhere; besides, there is baby."
"Yes, yes. Well, I have been thinking whether I should
not consult your husband about this as well as you,"
said Clym steadily.
"I fancy I would not," she quickly answered. "It can
do no good."
Her cousin looked her in the face. No doubt Thomasin was
ignorant that her husband had any share in the events of
that tragic afternoon; but her countenance seemed to signify
that she concealed some suspicion or thought of the reputed
tender relations between Wildeve and Eustacia in days gone by.
Clym, however, could make nothing of it, and he rose
to depart, more in doubt than when he came.
"You will write to her in a day or two?" said the young
woman earnestly. "I do so hope the wretched separation
may come to an end."
"I will," said Clym; "I don't rejoice in my present state
at all."
And he left her and climbed over the hill to Blooms-End.
Before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following
letter:--
MY DEAR EUSTACIA,--I must obey my heart without consulting
my reason too closely. Will you come back to me? Do so,
and the past shall never be mentioned. I was too severe;
but O, Eustacia, the provocation! You don't know,
you never will know, what those words of anger cost me
which you drew down upon yourself. All that an honest
man can promise you I promise now, which is that from me
you shall never suffer anything on this score again.
After all the vows we have made, Eustacia, I think we
had better pass the remainder of our lives in trying
to keep them. Come to me, then, even if you reproach me.
I have thought of your sufferings that morning on which I
parted from you; I know they were genuine, and they are as
much as you ought to bear. Our love must still continue.
Such hearts as ours would never have been given us but
to be concerned with each other. I could not ask you
back at first, Eustacia, for I was unable to persuade
myself that he who was with you was not there as a lover.
But if you will come and explain distracting appearances
I do not question that you can show your honesty to me.
Why have you not come before? Do you think I will
not listen to you? Surely not, when you remember the
kisses and vows we exchanged under the summer moon.
Return then, and you shall be warmly welcomed.
I can no longer think of you to your prejudice--I am
but too much absorbed in justifying you.--Your husband
as ever,
CLYM.
"There," he said, as he laid it in his desk, "that's a
good thing done. If she does not come before tomorrow
night I will send it to her."
Meanwhile, at the house he had just left Thomasin sat
sighing uneasily. Fidelity to her husband had that evening
induced her to conceal all suspicion that Wildeve's
interest in Eustacia had not ended with his marriage.
But she knew nothing positive; and though Clym was her
well-beloved cousin there was one nearer to her still.
When, a little later, Wildeve returned from his walk
to Mistover, Thomasin said, "Damon, where have you been? I
was getting quite frightened, and thought you had fallen
into the river. I dislike being in the house by myself."
"Frightened?" he said, touching her cheek as if she were
some domestic animal. "Why, I thought nothing could
frighten you. It is that you are getting proud, I am sure,
and don't like living here since we have risen above
our business. Well, it is a tedious matter, this getting
a new house; but I couldn't have set about it sooner,
unless our ten thousand pounds had been a hundred thousand,
when we could have afforded to despise caution."
"No--I don't mind waiting--I would rather stay here
twelve months longer than run any risk with baby.
But I don't like your vanishing so in the evenings.
There's something on your mind--I know there is, Damon.
You go about so gloomily, and look at the heath as if it
were somebody's gaol instead of a nice wild place to
walk in."
He looked towards her with pitying surprise. "What, do
you like Egdon Heath?" he said.
"I like what I was born near to; I admire its grim old face."
"Pooh, my dear. You don't know what you like."
"I am sure I do. There's only one thing unpleasant
about Egdon."
"What's that?"
"You never take me with you when you walk there. Why do
you wander so much in it yourself if you so dislike it?"
The inquiry, though a simple one, was plainly disconcerting,
and he sat down before replying. "I don't think you
often see me there. Give an instance."
"I will," she answered triumphantly. "When you went
out this evening I thought that as baby was asleep I
would see where you were going to so mysteriously without
telling me. So I ran out and followed behind you.
You stopped at the place where the road forks,
looked round at the bonfires, and then said, 'Damn it,
I'll go!' And you went quickly up the left-hand road.
Then I stood and watched you."
Wildeve frowned, afterwards saying, with a forced smile,
"Well, what wonderful discovery did you make?"
"There--now you are angry, and we won't talk of this
any more." She went across to him, sat on a footstool,
and looked up in his face.
"Nonsense!" he said, "that's how you always back out.
We will go on with it now we have begun. What did you
next see? I particularly want to know."
"Don't be like that, Damon!" she murmured. "I didn't
see anything. You vanished out of sight, and then I
looked round at the bonfires and came in."
"Perhaps this is not the only time you have dogged my steps.
Are you trying to find out something bad about me?"
"Not at all! I have never done such a thing before,
and I shouldn't have done it now if words had not sometimes
been dropped about you."
"What DO you mean?" he impatiently asked.
"They say--they say you used to go to Alderworth in
the evenings, and it puts into my mind what I have heard about--"
Wildeve turned angrily and stood up in front of her.
"Now," he said, flourishing his hand in the air,
"just out with it, madam! I demand to know what remarks
you have heard."
"Well, I heard that you used to be very fond of
Eustacia--nothing more than that, though dropped
in a bit-by-bit way. You ought not to be angry!"
He observed that her eyes were brimming with tears.
"Well," he said, "there is nothing new in that, and of
course I don't mean to be rough towards you, so you need
not cry. Now, don't let us speak of the subject any more."
And no more was said, Thomasin being glad enough of a reason
for not mentioning Clym's visit to her that evening,
and his story.
7 - The Night of the Sixth of November
Having resolved on flight Eustacia at times seemed
anxious that something should happen to thwart her
own intention. The only event that could really change
her position was the appearance of Clym. The glory
which had encircled him as her lover was departed now;
yet some good simple quality of his would occasionally
return to her memory and stir a momentary throb of hope
that he would again present himself before her. But calmly
considered it was not likely that such a severance as
now existed would ever close up--she would have to live
on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place.
She had used to think of the heath alone as an uncongenial
spot to be in; she felt it now of the whole world.
Towards evening on the sixth her determination to go away
again revived. About four o'clock she packed up anew
the few small articles she had brought in her flight
from Alderworth, and also some belonging to her which had
been left here; the whole formed a bundle not too large
to be carried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two.
The scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied
downwards from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it,
and with the increase of night a stormy wind arose;
but as yet there was no rain.
Eustacia could not rest indoors, having nothing more to do,
and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the
house she was soon to leave. In these desultory ramblings
she passed the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, a little lower
down than her grandfather's. The door was ajar, and a
riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without.
As Eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an
instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria--a
creature of light surrounded by an area of darkness;
the moment passed, and she was absorbed in night again.
A woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and
recognized her in that momentary irradiation. This was
Susan herself, occupied in preparing a posset for her
little boy, who, often ailing, was now seriously unwell.
Susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure,
and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent way.
At eight o'clock, the hour at which Eustacia had promised
to signal Wildeve if ever she signalled at all, she looked
around the premises to learn if the coast was clear,
went to the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed
bough of that fuel. This she carried to the corner of
the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters were
all closed, she struck a light, and kindled the furze.
When it was thoroughly ablaze Eustacia took it by the stem
and waved it in the air above her head till it had burned
itself out.
She was gratified, if gratification were possible
to such a mood, by seeing a similar light in the
vicinity of Wildeve's residence a minute or two later.
Having agreed to keep watch at this hour every night,
in case she should require assistance, this promptness
proved how strictly he had held to his word.
Four hours after the present time, that is, at midnight,
he was to be ready to drive her to Budmouth, as prearranged.
Eustacia returned to the house. Supper having been got
over she retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for
the time to go by. The night being dark and threatening,
Captain Vye had not strolled out to gossip in any cottage or
to call at the inn, as was sometimes his custom on these long
autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone downstairs.
About ten o'clock there was a knock at the door.
When the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell
upon the form of Fairway.
"I was a-forced to go to Lower Mistover tonight,"
he said, "and Mr. Yeobright asked me to leave this here
on my way; but, faith, I put it in the lining of my hat,
and thought no more about it till I got back and was
hasping my gate before going to bed. So I have run back
with it at once."
He handed in a letter and went his way. The girl brought
it to the captain, who found that it was directed
to Eustacia. He turned it over and over, and fancied
that the writing was her husband's, though he could not
be sure. However, he decided to let her have it at once
if possible, and took it upstairs for that purpose;
but on reaching the door of her room and looking
in at the keyhole he found there was no light within,
the fact being that Eustacia, without undressing,
had flung herself upon the bed, to rest and gather a
little strength for her coming journey. Her grandfather
concluded from what he saw that he ought not to disturb her;
and descending again to the parlour he placed the letter
on the mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning.
At eleven o'clock he went to bed himself, smoked for
some time in his bedroom, put out his light at halfpast
eleven, and then, as was his invariable custom,
pulled up the blind before getting into bed, that he
might see which way the wind blew on opening his eyes
in the morning, his bedroom window commanding a view
of the flagstaff and vane. Just as he had lain down he
was surprised to observe the white pole of the staff flash
into existence like a streak of phosphorus drawn downwards
across the shade of night without. Only one explanation
met this--a light had been suddenly thrown upon the pole
from the direction of the house. As everybody had retired
to rest the old man felt it necessary to get out of bed,
open the window softly, and look to the right and left.
Eustacia's bedroom was lighted up, and it was the shine
from her window which had lighted the pole. Wondering what
had aroused her, he remained undecided at the window,
and was thinking of fetching the letter to slip it under
her door, when he heard a slight brushing of garments
on the partition dividing his room from the passage.
The captain concluded that Eustacia, feeling wakeful,
had gone for a book, and would have dismissed the matter
as unimportant if he had not also heard her distinctly
weeping as she passed.
"She is thinking of that husband of hers," he said to himself.
"Ah, the silly goose! she had no business to marry him.
I wonder if that letter is really his?"
He arose, threw his boat-cloak round him, opened the door,
and said, "Eustacia!" There was no answer. "Eustacia!" he
repeated louder, "there is a letter on the mantelpiece
for you."
But no response was made to this statement save an imaginary
one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of
the house, and the stroke of a few drops of rain upon the windows.
He went on to the landing, and stood waiting nearly
five minutes. Still she did not return. He went back
for a light, and prepared to follow her; but first he looked
into her bedroom. There, on the outside of the quilt,
was the impression of her form, showing that the bed
had not been opened; and, what was more significant,
she had not taken her candlestick downstairs.
He was now thoroughly alarmed; and hastily putting on
his clothes he descended to the front door, which he
himself had bolted and locked. It was now unfastened.
There was no longer any doubt that Eustacia had left
the house at this midnight hour; and whither could
she have gone? To follow her was almost impossible.
Had the dwelling stood in an ordinary road, two persons
setting out, one in each direction, might have made sure
of overtaking her; but it was a hopeless task to seek
for anybody on a heath in the dark, the practicable
directions for flight across it from any point being
as numerous as the meridians radiating from the pole.
Perplexed what to do, he looked into the parlour, and was
vexed to find that the letter still lay there untouched.
At half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent,
Eustacia had lighted her candle, put on some warm
outer wrappings, taken her bag in her hand, and,
extinguishing the light again, descended the staircase.
When she got into the outer air she found that it had begun
to rain, and as she stood pausing at the door it increased,
threatening to come on heavily. But having committed
herself to this line of action there was no retreating
for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym's letter
would not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night
was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape.
The spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose
into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey.
Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light
which was still burning in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.
Eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure
by the steps over the bank, after which she was beyond
all danger of being perceived. Skirting the pool,
she followed the path towards Rainbarrow, occasionally
stumbling over twisted furze roots, tufts of rushes,
or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay
scattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs
of some colossal animal. The moon and stars were closed
up by cloud and rain to the degree of extinction.
It was a night which led the traveller's thoughts
instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster
in the chronicles of the world, on all that is terrible
and dark in history and legend--the last plague of Egypt,
the destruction of Sennacherib's host, the agony in Gethsemane.
Eustacia at length reached Rainbarrow, and stood still there
to think. Never was harmony more perfect than that between
the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world without.
A sudden recollection had flashed on her this moment--she
had not money enough for undertaking a long journey.
Amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her
unpractical mind had not dwelt on the necessity of being
well-provided, and now that she thoroughly realized the
conditions she sighed bitterly and ceased to stand erect,
gradually crouching down under the umbrella as if she
were drawn into the Barrow by a hand from beneath.
Could it be that she was to remain a captive still?
Money--she had never felt its value before. Even to
efface herself from the country means were required.
To ask Wildeve for pecuniary aid without allowing him
to accompany her was impossible to a woman with a shadow
of pride left in her; to fly as his mistress--and she
knew that he loved her--was of the nature of humiliation.
Anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her,
not so much on account of her exposure to weather,
and isolation from all of humanity except the mouldered
remains inside the tumulus; but for that other form
of misery which was denoted by the slightly rocking
movement that her feelings imparted to her person.
Extreme unhappiness weighed visibly upon her. Between the
drippings of the rain from her umbrella to her mantle,
from her mantle to the heather, from the heather to the earth,
very similar sounds could be heard coming from her lips;
and the tearfulness of the outer scene was repeated upon
her face. The wings of her soul were broken by the cruel
obstructiveness of all about her; and even had she seen
herself in a promising way of getting to Budmouth,
entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port,
she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully
malignant were other things. She uttered words aloud.
When a woman in such a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed,
nor whimsical, takes upon herself to sob and soliloquize
aloud there is something grievous the matter.
"Can I go, can I go?" she moaned. "He's not GREAT
enough for me to give myself to--he does not suffice
for my desire!...If he had been a Saul or a Bonaparte--
ah! But to break my marriage vow for him--it is too poor
a luxury!...And I have no money to go alone! And if I could,
what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as I have
dragged on this year, and the year after that as before.
How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman,
and how destiny has been against me!...I do not deserve
my lot!" she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt.
"O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived
world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured
and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O,
how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me,
who have done no harm to Heaven at all!"
The distant light which Eustacia had cursorily observed in
leaving the house came, as she had divined, from the cottage
window of Susan Nunsuch. What Eustacia did not divine
was the occupation of the woman within at that moment.
Susan's sight of her passing figure earlier in the evening,
not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation,
"Mother, I do feel so bad!" persuaded the matron that an evil
influence was certainly exercised by Eustacia's propinquity.
On this account Susan did not go to bed as soon as the
evening's work was over, as she would have done at
ordinary times. To counteract the malign spell which she
imagined poor Eustacia to be working, the boy's mother
busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition,
calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation
on any human being against whom it was directed.
It was a practice well known on Egdon at that date,
and one that is not quite extinct at the present day.
She passed with her candle into an inner room, where,
among other utensils, were two large brown pans,
containing together perhaps a hundredweight of liquid honey,
the produce of the bees during the foregoing summer.
On a shelf over the pans was a smooth and solid yellow
mass of a hemispherical form, consisting of beeswax
from the same take of honey. Susan took down the lump,
and cutting off several thin slices, heaped them in an
iron ladle, with which she returned to the living-room,
and placed the vessel in the hot ashes of the fireplace.
As soon as the wax had softened to the plasticity
of dough she kneaded the pieces together. And now her
face became more intent. She began moulding the wax;
and it was evident from her manner of manipulation that
she was endeavouring to give it some preconceived form.
The form was human.
By warming and kneading, cutting and twisting,
dismembering and re-joining the incipient image she had in
about a quarter of an hour produced a shape which tolerably
well resembled a woman, and was about six inches high.
She laid it on the table to get cold and hard. Meanwhile she
took the candle and went upstairs to where the little boy was lying.
"Did you notice, my dear, what Mrs. Eustacia wore this
afternoon besides the dark dress?"
"A red ribbon round her neck."
"Anything else?"
"No--except sandal-shoes."
"A red ribbon and sandal-shoes," she said to herself.
Mrs. Nunsuch went and searched till she found a fragment
of the narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs
and tied round the neck of the image. Then fetching
ink and a quilt from the rickety bureau by the window,
she blackened the feet of the image to the extent presumably
covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot marked
cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandalstrings
of those days. Finally she tied a bit of black thread
round the upper part of the head, in faint resemblance
to a snood worn for confining the hair.
Susan held the object at arm's length and contemplated
it with a satisfaction in which there was no smile.
To anybody acquainted with the inhabitants of Egdon Heath
the image would have suggested Eustacia Yeobright.
From her workbasket in the window-seat the woman took
a paper of pins, of the old long and yellow sort,
whose heads were disposed to come off at their first usage.
These she began to thrust into the image in all directions,
with apparently excruciating energy. Probably as many
as fifty were thus inserted, some into the head of the
wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk,
some upwards through the soles of the feet, till the figure
was completely permeated with pins.
She turned to the fire. It had been of turf; and though
the high heap of ashes which turf fires produce was
somewhat dark and dead on the outside, upon raking it
abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow
of red heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from
the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow,
upon which the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs
the image that she had made of Eustacia, she held it in
the heat, and watched it as it began to waste slowly away.
And while she stood thus engaged there came from between
her lips a murmur of words.
It was a strange jargon--the Lord's Prayer repeated
backwards--the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining
unhallowed assistance against an enemy. Susan uttered
the lugubrious discourse three times slowly, and when it
was completed the image had considerably diminished.
As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from
the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure ate still
further into its substance. A pin occasionally dropped
with the wax, and the embers heated it red as it lay.
8 - Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers
While the effigy of Eustacia was melting to nothing,
and the fair woman herself was standing on Rainbarrow,
her soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one
so young, Yeobright sat lonely at Blooms-End. He had
fulfilled his word to Thomasin by sending off Fairway
with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased
impatience for some sound or signal of her return.
Were Eustacia still at Mistover the very least he expected
was that she would send him back a reply tonight by the
same hand; though, to leave all to her inclination,
he had cautioned Fairway not to ask for an answer.
If one were handed to him he was to bring it immediately;
if not, he was to go straight home without troubling to come
round to Blooms-End again that night.
But secretly Clym had a more pleasing hope. Eustacia might
possibly decline to use her pen--it was rather her way to
work silently--and surprise him by appearing at his door.
How fully her mind was made up to do otherwise he did
not know.
To Clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the
evening advanced. The wind rasped and scraped at the
corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings
like peas against the panes. He walked restlessly about
the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows
and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements
and crevices, and pressing together the leadwork of the
quarries where it had become loosened from the glass.
It was one of those nights when cracks in the walls of
old churches widen, when ancient stains on the ceilings
of decayed manor houses are renewed and enlarged from
the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet.
The little gate in the palings before his dwelling
continually opened and clicked together again, but when he
looked out eagerly nobody was there; it was as if invisible
shapes of the dead were passing in on their way to visit him.
Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither
Fairway nor anybody else came to him, he retired
to rest, and despite his anxieties soon fell asleep.
His sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of
the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily
awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an
hour after. Clym arose and looked out of the window.
Rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse of heath
before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour.
It was too dark to see anything at all.
"Who's there?" he cried.
Light footsteps shifted their position in the porch,
and he could just distinguish in a plaintive female voice
the words, "O Clym, come down and let me in!"
He flushed hot with agitation. "Surely it is Eustacia!"
he murmured. If so, she had indeed come to him unawares.
He hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down.
On his flinging open the door the rays of the candle fell
upon a woman closely wrapped up, who at once came forward.
"Thomasin!" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone
of disappointment. "It is Thomasin, and on such a night
as this! O, where is Eustacia?"
Thomasin it was, wet, frightened, and panting.
"Eustacia? I don't know, Clym; but I can think," she said
with much perturbation. "Let me come in and rest--I
will explain this. There is a great trouble brewing--my
husband and Eustacia!"
"What, what?"
"I think my husband is going to leave me or do something
dreadful--I don't know what--Clym, will you go and see?
I have nobody to help me but you; Eustacia has not yet
come home?"
"No."
She went on breathlessly: "Then they are going to run off
together! He came indoors tonight about eight o'clock and
said in an off-hand way, 'Tamsie, I have just found that I
must go a journey.' 'When?' I said. 'Tonight,' he said.
'Where?' I asked him. 'I cannot tell you at present,'
he said; 'I shall be back again tomorrow.' He then went
and busied himself in looking up his things, and took no
notice of me at all. I expected to see him start, but he
did not, and then it came to be ten o'clock, when he said,
'You had better go to bed.' I didn't know what to do,
and I went to bed. I believe he thought I fell asleep,
for half an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak
chest we keep money in when we have much in the house and
took out a roll of something which I believe was banknotes,
though I was not aware that he had 'em there. These he must
have got from the bank when he went there the other day.
What does he want banknotes for, if he is only going off
for a day? When he had gone down I thought of Eustacia,
and how he had met her the night before--I know he did
meet her, Clym, for I followed him part of the way; but I
did not like to tell you when you called, and so make you
think ill of him, as I did not think it was so serious.
Then I could not stay in bed; I got up and dressed myself,
and when I heard him out in the stable I thought I would come
and tell you. So I came downstairs without any noise and
slipped out."
"Then he was not absolutely gone when you left?"
"No. Will you, dear Cousin Clym, go and try to persuade
him not to go? He takes no notice of what I say, and puts
me off with the story of his going on a journey, and will
be home tomorrow, and all that; but I don't believe it.
I think you could influence him."
"I'll go," said Clym. "O, Eustacia!"
Thomasin carried in her arms a large bundle; and having
by this time seated herself she began to unroll it,
when a baby appeared as the kernel to the husks--dry,
warm, and unconscious of travel or rough weather.
Thomasin briefly kissed the baby, and then found
time to begin crying as she said, "I brought baby,
for I was afraid what might happen to her. I suppose
it will be her death, but I couldn't leave her with Rachel!"
Clym hastily put together the logs on the hearth,
raked abroad the embers, which were scarcely yet extinct,
and blew up a flame with the bellows.
"Dry yourself," he said. "I'll go and get some more wood."
"No, no--don't stay for that. I'll make up the fire.
Will you go at once--please will you?"
Yeobright ran upstairs to finish dressing himself.
While he was gone another rapping came to the door.
This time there was no delusion that it might be Eustacia's--the
footsteps just preceding it had been heavy and slow.
Yeobright thinking it might possibly be Fairway with a note
in answer, descended again and opened the door.
"Captain Vye?" he said to a dripping figure.
"Is my granddaughter here?" said the captain.
"No."
"Then where is she?".
"I don't know."
"But you ought to know--you are her husband."
"Only in name apparently," said Clym with rising excitement.
"I believe she means to elope tonight with Wildeve.
I am just going to look to it."
"Well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour ago.
Who's sitting there?"
"My cousin Thomasin."
The captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her.
"I only hope it is no worse than an elopement," he said.
"Worse? What's worse than the worst a wife can do?"
"Well, I have been told a strange tale. Before starting
in search of her I called up Charley, my stable lad.
I missed my pistols the other day."
"Pistols?"
"He said at the time that he took them down to clean.
He has now owned that he took them because he saw Eustacia
looking curiously at them; and she afterwards owned to him
that she was thinking of taking her life, but bound him
to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thing again.
I hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use
one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind;
and people who think of that sort of thing once think
of it again."
"Where are the pistols?"
"Safely locked up. O no, she won't touch them again.
But there are more ways of letting out life than through
a bullet-hole. What did you quarrel about so bitterly
with her to drive her to all this? You must have treated
her badly indeed. Well, I was always against the marriage,
and I was right."
"Are you going with me?" said Yeobright, paying no
attention to the captain's latter remark. "If so
I can tell you what we quarrelled about as we walk along."
"Where to?"
"To Wildeve's--that was her destination, depend upon it."
Thomasin here broke in, still weeping: "He said he
was only going on a sudden short journey; but if so why
did he want so much money? O, Clym, what do you think
will happen? I am afraid that you, my poor baby,
will soon have no father left to you!"
"I am off now," said Yeobright, stepping into the porch.
"I would fain go with 'ee," said the old man doubtfully.
"But I begin to be afraid that my legs will hardly carry me
there such a night as this. I am not so young as I was.
If they are interrupted in their flight she will be sure to come
back to me, and I ought to be at the house to receive her.
But be it as 'twill I can't walk to the Quiet Woman,
and that's an end on't. I'll go straight home."
"It will perhaps be best," said Clym. "Thomasin, dry
yourself, and be as comfortable as you can."
With this he closed the door upon her, and left the house
in company with Captain Vye, who parted from him outside
the gate, taking the middle path, which led to Mistover.
Clym crossed by the right-hand track towards the inn.
Thomasin, being left alone, took off some of her
wet garments, carried the baby upstairs to Clym's bed,
and then came down to the sitting-room again,
where she made a larger fire, and began drying herself.
The fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room
an appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast
with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped
at the windowpanes and breathed into the chimney strange
low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy.
But the least part of Thomasin was in the house,
for her heart being at ease about the little girl
upstairs she was mentally following Clym on his journey.
Having indulged in this imaginary peregrination for some
considerable interval, she became impressed with a sense
of the intolerable slowness of time. But she sat on.
The moment then came when she could scarcely sit longer,
and it was like a satire on her patience to remember
that Clym could hardly have reached the inn as yet.
At last she went to the baby's bedside. The child was
sleeping soundly; but her imagination of possibly disastrous
events at her home, the predominance within her of the
unseen over the seen, agitated her beyond endurance.
She could not refrain from going down and opening the door.
The rain still continued, the candlelight falling upon the
nearest drops and making glistening darts of them as they
descended across the throng of invisible ones behind.
To plunge into that medium was to plunge into water
slightly diluted with air. But the difficulty of returning
to her house at this moment made her all the more
desirous of doing so--anything was better than suspense.
"I have come here well enough," she said, "and why
shouldn't I go back again? It is a mistake for me to
be away."
She hastily fetched the infant, wrapped it up, cloaked
herself as before, and shoveling the ashes over the fire,
to prevent accidents, went into the open air. Pausing first
to put the door key in its old place behind the shutter,
she resolutely turned her face to the confronting pile
of firmamental darkness beyond the palings, and stepped into
its midst. But Thomasin's imagination being so actively
engaged elsewhere, the night and the weather had for her
no terror beyond that of their actual discomfort and difficulty.
She was soon ascending Blooms-End valley and traversing
the undulations on the side of the hill. The noise
of the wind over the heath was shrill, and as if it
whistled for joy at finding a night so congenial as this.
Sometimes the path led her to hollows between thickets of
tall and dripping bracken, dead, though not yet prostrate,
which enclosed her like a pool. When they were more than
usually tall she lifted the baby to the top of her head,
that it might be out of the reach of their drenching fronds.
On higher ground, where the wind was brisk and sustained,
the rain flew in a level flight without sensible descent,
so that it was beyond all power to imagine the remoteness
of the point at which it left the bosoms of the clouds.
Here self-defence was impossible, and individual drops
stuck into her like the arrows into Saint Sebastian.
She was enabled to avoid puddles by the nebulous paleness
which signified their presence, though beside anything less
dark than the heath they themselves would have appeared
as blackness.
Yet in spite of all this Thomasin was not sorry that she
had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia,
demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough.
The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions,
but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever,
but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place
were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable.
At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which
a person might experience much discomfort, lose the path
without care, and possibly catch cold.
If the path is well known the difficulty at such
times of keeping therein is not altogether great,
from its familiar feel to the feet; but once lost it
is irrecoverable. Owing to her baby, who somewhat impeded
Thomasin's view forward and distracted her mind, she did
at last lose the track. This mishap occurred when she
was descending an open slope about two-thirds home.
Instead of attempting, by wandering hither and thither,
the hopeless task of finding such a mere thread,
she went straight on, trusting for guidance to her general
knowledge of the contours, which was scarcely surpassed
by Clym's or by that of the heath-croppers themselves.
At length Thomasin reached a hollow and began to
discern through the rain a faint blotted radiance,
which presently assumed the oblong form of an open door.
She knew that no house stood hereabouts, and was soon aware
of the nature of the door by its height above the ground.
"Why, it is Diggory Venn's van, surely!" she said.
A certain secluded spot near Rainbarrow was, she knew,
often Venn's chosen centre when staying in this neighbourhood;
and she guessed at once that she had stumbled upon this
mysterious retreat. The question arose in her mind whether
or not she should ask him to guide her into the path.
In her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would
appeal to him, notwithstanding the strangeness of appearing
before his eyes at this place and season. But when,
in pursuance of this resolve, Thomasin reached the van
and looked in she found it to be untenanted; though there
was no doubt that it was the reddleman's. The fire was
burning in the stove, the lantern hung from the nail.
Round the doorway the floor was merely sprinkled with rain,
and not saturated, which told her that the door had not long
been opened.
While she stood uncertainly looking in Thomasin heard
a footstep advancing from the darkness behind her,
and turning, beheld the well-known form in corduroy,
lurid from head to foot, the lantern beams falling upon
him through an intervening gauze of raindrops.
"I thought you went down the slope," he said,
without noticing her face. "How do you come back here again?"
"Diggory?" said Thomasin faintly.
"Who are you?" said Venn, still unperceiving. "And why
were you crying so just now?"
"O, Diggory! don't you know me?" said she. "But of course
you don't, wrapped up like this. What do you mean? I
have not been crying here, and I have not been here before."
Venn then came nearer till he could see the illuminated
side of her form.
"Mrs. Wildeve!" he exclaimed, starting. "What a time
for us to meet! And the baby too! What dreadful thing
can have brought you out on such a night as this?"
She could not immediately answer; and without asking her
permission he hopped into his van, took her by the arm,
and drew her up after him.
"What is it?" he continued when they stood within.
"I have lost my way coming from Blooms-End, and I am
in a great hurry to get home. Please show me as quickly
as you can! It is so silly of me not to know Egdon better,
and I cannot think how I came to lose the path.
Show me quickly, Diggory, please."
"Yes, of course. I will go with 'ee. But you came to me
before this, Mrs. Wildeve?"
"I only came this minute."
"That's strange. I was lying down here asleep about five
minutes ago, with the door shut to keep out the weather,
when the brushing of a woman's clothes over the heath-bushes
just outside woke me up, for I don't sleep heavy,
and at the same time I heard a sobbing or crying from
the same woman. I opened my door and held out my lantern,
and just as far as the light would reach I saw a woman;
she turned her head when the light sheened on her,
and then hurried on downhill. I hung up the lantern,
and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her
a few steps, but I could see nothing of her any more.
That was where I had been when you came up; and when I saw you
I thought you were the same one."
"Perhaps it was one of the heathfolk going home?"
"No, it couldn't be. 'Tis too late. The noise of her
gown over the he'th was of a whistling sort that nothing
but silk will make."
"It wasn't I, then. My dress is not silk, you see....Are
we anywhere in a line between Mistover and the inn?"
"Well, yes; not far out."
"Ah, I wonder if it was she! Diggory, I must go at once!"
She jumped down from the van before he was aware,
when Venn unhooked the lantern and leaped down after her.
"I'll take the baby, ma'am," he said. "You must be tired
out by the weight."
Thomasin hesitated a moment, and then delivered the baby
into Venn's hands. "Don't squeeze her, Diggory," she said,
"or hurt her little arm; and keep the cloak close over
her like this, so that the rain may not drop in her face."
"I will," said Venn earnestly. "As if I could hurt
anything belonging to you!"
"I only meant accidentally," said Thomasin.
"The baby is dry enough, but you are pretty wet,"
said the reddleman when, in closing the door of his cart
to padlock it, he noticed on the floor a ring of water
drops where her cloak had hung from her.
Thomasin followed him as he wound right and left to avoid
the larger bushes, stopping occasionally and covering
the lantern, while he looked over his shoulder to gain
some idea of the position of Rainbarrow above them,
which it was necessary to keep directly behind their backs
to preserve a proper course.
"You are sure the rain does not fall upon baby?"
"Quite sure. May I ask how old he is, ma'am?"
"He!" said Thomasin reproachfully. "Anybody can see better
than that in a moment. She is nearly two months old.
How far is it now to the inn?"
"A little over a quarter of a mile."
"Will you walk a little faster?"
"I was afraid you could not keep up."
"I am very anxious to get there. Ah, there is a light
from the window!"
"'Tis not from the window. That's a gig-lamp, to the best
of my belief."
"O!" said Thomasin in despair. "I wish I had been there
sooner--give me the baby, Diggory--you can go back now."
"I must go all the way," said Venn. "There is a quag
between us and that light, and you will walk into it up
to your neck unless I take you round."
"But the light is at the inn, and there is no quag
in front of that."
"No, the light is below the inn some two or three hundred yards."
"Never mind," said Thomasin hurriedly. "Go towards
the light, and not towards the inn."
"Yes," answered Venn, swerving round in obedience; and,
after a pause, "I wish you would tell me what this great
trouble is. I think you have proved that I can be trusted."
"There are some things that cannot be--cannot be told to--"
And then her heart rose into her throat, and she could say
no more.
9 - Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together
Having seen Eustacia's signal from the hill at eight
o'clock, Wildeve immediately prepared to assist her
in her flight, and, as he hoped, accompany her. He was
somewhat perturbed, and his manner of informing Thomasin
that he was going on a journey was in itself sufficient
to rouse her suspicions. When she had gone to bed he
collected the few articles he would require, and went
upstairs to the money-chest, whence he took a tolerably
bountiful sum in notes, which had been advanced to him
on the property he was so soon to have in possession,
to defray expenses incidental to the removal.
He then went to the stable and coach-house to assure
himself that the horse, gig, and harness were in a fit
condition for a long drive. Nearly half an hour
was spent thus, and on returning to the house Wildeve
had no thought of Thomasin being anywhere but in bed.
He had told the stable lad not to stay up, leading the boy
to understand that his departure would be at three or four
in the morning; for this, though an exceptional hour,
was less strange than midnight, the time actually agreed on,
the packet from Budmouth sailing between one and two.
At last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait.
By no effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits
which he had experienced ever since his last meeting
with Eustacia, but he hoped there was that in his
situation which money could cure. He had persuaded
himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle
wife by settling on her the half of his property,
and with chivalrous devotion towards another and greater
woman by sharing her fate, was possible. And though he
meant to adhere to Eustacia's instructions to the letter,
to deposit her where she wished and to leave her,
should that be her will, the spell that she had cast
over him intensified, and his heart was beating fast
in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face
of a mutual wish that they should throw in their lot together.
He would not allow himself to dwell long upon these conjectures,
maxims, and hopes, and at twenty minutes to twelve he
again went softly to the stable, harnessed the horse,
and lit the lamps; whence, taking the horse by the head,
he led him with the covered car out of the yard
to a spot by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the inn.
Here Wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving
rain by a high bank that had been cast up at this place.
Along the surface of the road where lit by the lamps
the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and clicked
together before the wind, which, leaving them in heaps,
plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes
into darkness. Only one sound rose above this din
of weather, and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir
to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed
the boundary of the heath in this direction.
He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy
that the midnight hour must have struck. A very strong
doubt had arisen in his mind if Eustacia would venture
down the hill in such weather; yet knowing her nature he
felt that she might. "Poor thing! 'tis like her ill-luck,"
he murmured.
At length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch.
To his surprise it was nearly a quarter past midnight.
He now wished that he had driven up the circuitous road
to Mistover, a plan not adopted because of the enormous
length of the route in proportion to that of the pedestrian's
path down the open hillside, and the consequent increase
of labour for the horse.
At this moment a footstep approached; but the light
of the lamps being in a different direction the comer
was not visible. The step paused, then came on again.
"Eustacia?" said Wildeve.
The person came forward, and the light fell upon
the form of Clym, glistening with wet, whom Wildeve
immediately recognized; but Wildeve, who stood behind
the lamp, was not at once recognized by Yeobright.
He stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could
have anything to do with the flight of his wife or not.
The sight of Yeobright at once banished Wildeve's
sober feelings, who saw him again as the deadly rival
from whom Eustacia was to be kept at all hazards.
Hence Wildeve did not speak, in the hope that Clym would
pass by without particular inquiry.
While they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound
became audible above the storm and wind. Its origin was
unmistakable--it was the fall of a body into the stream
in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir.
Both started. "Good God! can it be she?" said Clym.
"Why should it be she?" said Wildeve, in his alarm
forgetting that he had hitherto screened himself.
"Ah!--that's you, you traitor, is it?" cried Yeobright.
"Why should it be she? Because last week she would have
put an end to her life if she had been able. She ought
to have been watched! Take one of the lamps and come
with me."
Yeobright seized the one on his side and hastened on;
Wildeve did not wait to unfasten the other, but followed
at once along the meadow track to the weir, a little in
the rear of Clym.
Shadwater Weir had at its foot a large circular pool,
fifty feet in diameter, into which the water flowed
through ten huge hatches, raised and lowered by a winch
and cogs in the ordinary manner. The sides of the pool
were of masonry, to prevent the water from washing away
the bank; but the force of the stream in winter was
sometimes such as to undermine the retaining wall and
precipitate it into the hole. Clym reached the hatches,
the framework of which was shaken to its foundations
by the velocity of the current. Nothing but the froth
of the waves could be discerned in the pool below.
He got upon the plank bridge over the race, and holding
to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off,
crossed to the other side of the river. There he leant
over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the
vortex formed at the curl of the returning current.
Wildeve meanwhile had arrived on the former side, and the
light from Yeobright's lamp shed a flecked and agitated
radiance across the weir pool, revealing to the ex-engineer
the tumbling courses of the currents from the hatches above.
Across this gashed and puckered mirror a dark body
was slowly borne by one of the backward currents.
"O, my darling!" exclaimed Wildeve in an agonized voice;
and, without showing sufficient presence of mind even
to throw off his greatcoat, he leaped into the boiling caldron.
Yeobright could now also discern the floating body,
though but indistinctly; and imagining from Wildeve's
plunge that there was life to be saved he was about
to leap after. Bethinking himself of a wiser plan,
he placed the lamp against a post to make it stand upright,
and running round to the lower part of the pool,
where there was no wall, he sprang in and boldly waded
upwards towards the deeper portion. Here he was taken
off his legs, and in swimming was carried round into the
centre of the basin, where he perceived Wildeve struggling.
While these hasty actions were in progress here,
Venn and Thomasin had been toiling through the lower
corner of the heath in the direction of the light.
They had not been near enough to the river to hear
the plunge, but they saw the removal of the carriage lamp,
and watched its motion into the mead. As soon as they
reached the car and horse Venn guessed that something
new was amiss, and hastened to follow in the course
of the moving light. Venn walked faster than Thomasin,
and came to the weir alone.
The lamp placed against the post by Clym still shone
across the water, and the reddleman observed something
floating motionless. Being encumbered with the infant,
he ran back to meet Thomasin.
"Take the baby, please, Mrs. Wildeve," he said hastily.
"Run home with her, call the stable lad, and make him send
down to me any men who may be living near. Somebody has
fallen into the weir."
Thomasin took the child and ran. When she came to the
covered car the horse, though fresh from the stable,
was standing perfectly still, as if conscious of misfortune.
She saw for the first time whose it was. She nearly fainted,
and would have been unable to proceed another step
but that the necessity of preserving the little girl
from harm nerved her to an amazing self-control. In this
agony of suspense she entered the house, put the baby
in a place of safety, woke the lad and the female domestic,
and ran out to give the alarm at the nearest cottage.
Diggory, having returned to the brink of the pool, observed
that the small upper hatches or floats were withdrawn.
He found one of these lying upon the grass, and taking
it under one arm, and with his lantern in his hand,
entered at the bottom of the pool as Clym had done.
As soon as he began to be in deep water he flung himself
across the hatch; thus supported he was able to keep
afloat as long as he chose, holding the lantern aloft
with his disengaged hand. Propelled by his feet,
he steered round and round the pool, ascending each time
by one of the back streams and descending in the middle
of the current.
At first he could see nothing. Then amidst the
glistening of the whirlpools and the white clots of foam
he distinguished a woman's bonnet floating alone.
His search was now under the left wall, when something
came to the surface almost close beside him. It was not,
as he had expected, a woman, but a man. The reddleman
put the ring of the lantern between his teeth, seized the
floating man by the collar, and, holding on to the hatch
with his remaining arm, struck out into the strongest race,
by which the unconscious man, the hatch, and himself were
carried down the stream. As soon as Venn found his feet
dragging over the pebbles of the shallower part below
he secured his footing and waded towards the brink.
There, where the water stood at about the height of
his waist, he flung away the hatch, and attempted to drag
forth the man. This was a matter of great difficulty,
and he found as the reason that the legs of the unfortunate
stranger were tightly embraced by the arms of another man,
who had hitherto been entirely beneath the surface.
At this moment his heart bounded to hear footsteps
running towards him, and two men, roused by Thomasin,
appeared at the brink above. They ran to where Venn was,
and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned persons,
separating them, and laying them out upon the grass.
Venn turned the light upon their faces. The one who had
been uppermost was Yeobright; he who had been completely
submerged was Wildeve.
"Now we must search the hole again," said Venn.
"A woman is in there somewhere. Get a pole."
One of the men went to the footbridge and tore off the handrail.
The reddleman and the two others then entered the water
together from below as before, and with their united
force probed the pool forwards to where it sloped down
to its central depth. Venn was not mistaken in supposing
that any person who had sunk for the last time would
be washed down to this point, for when they had examined
to about halfway across something impeded their thrust.
"Pull it forward," said Venn, and they raked it in with
the pole till it was close to their feet.
Venn vanished under the stream, and came up with an
armful of wet drapery enclosing a woman's cold form,
which was all that remained of the desperate Eustacia.
When they reached the bank there stood Thomasin, in a
stress of grief, bending over the two unconscious ones
who already lay there. The horse and cart were brought
to the nearest point in the road, and it was the work
of a few minutes only to place the three in the vehicle.
Venn led on the horse, supporting Thomasin upon his arm,
and the two men followed, till they reached the inn.
The woman who had been shaken out of her sleep by Thomasin
had hastily dressed herself and lighted a fire, the other
servant being left to snore on in peace at the back
of the house. The insensible forms of Eustacia, Clym,
and Wildeve were then brought in and laid on the carpet,
with their feet to the fire, when such restorative
processes as could be thought of were adopted at once,
the stableman being in the meantime sent for a doctor.
But there seemed to be not a whiff of life in either
of the bodies. Then Thomasin, whose stupor of grief
had been thrust off awhile by frantic action, applied a
bottle of hartshorn to Clym's nostrils, having tried
it in vain upon the other two. He sighed.
"Clym's alive!" she exclaimed.
He soon breathed distinctly, and again and again did
she attempt to revive her husband by the same means;
but Wildeve gave no sign. There was too much reason
to think that he and Eustacia both were for ever beyond
the reach of stimulating perfumes. Their exertions did
not relax till the doctor arrived, when one by one,
the senseless three were taken upstairs and put into
warm beds.
Venn soon felt himself relieved from further attendance,
and went to the door, scarcely able yet to realize the strange
catastrophe that had befallen the family in which he took
so great an interest. Thomasin surely would be broken
down by the sudden and overwhelming nature of this event.
No firm and sensible Mrs. Yeobright lived now to support
the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an
unimpassioned spectator might think of her loss
of such a husband as Wildeve, there could be no doubt
that for the moment she was distracted and horrified
by the blow. As for himself, not being privileged to go
to her and comfort her, he saw no reason for waiting
longer in a house where he remained only as a stranger.
He returned across the heath to his van. The fire was
not yet out, and everything remained as he had left it.
Venn now bethought himself of his clothes, which were
saturated with water to the weight of lead. He changed them,
spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep.
But it was more than he could do to rest here while excited
by a vivid imagination of the turmoil they were in at the
house he had quitted, and, blaming himself for coming away,
he dressed in another suit, locked up the door, and again
hastened across to the inn. Rain was still falling heavily
when he entered the kitchen. A bright fire was shining
from the hearth, and two women were bustling about,
one of whom was Olly Dowden.
"Well, how is it going on now?" said Venn in a whisper.
"Mr. Yeobright is better; but Mrs. Yeobright
and Mr. Wildeve are dead and cold. The doctor
says they were quite gone before they were out of the water."
"Ah! I thought as much when I hauled 'em up. And Mrs. Wildeve?"
"She is as well as can be expected. The doctor had
her put between blankets, for she was almost as wet
as they that had been in the river, poor young thing.
You don't seem very dry, reddleman."
"Oh, 'tis not much. I have changed my things. This is
only a little dampness I've got coming through the rain again."
"Stand by the fire. Mis'ess says you be to have whatever
you want, and she was sorry when she was told that you'd
gone away."
Venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames
in an absent mood. The steam came from his leggings
and ascended the chimney with the smoke, while he thought
of those who were upstairs. Two were corpses, one had barely
escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow.
The last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace
was when the raffle was in progress; when Wildeve was alive
and well; Thomasin active and smiling in the next room;
Yeobright and Eustacia just made husband and wife,
and Mrs. Yeobright living at Blooms-End. It had seemed at that
time that the then position of affairs was good for at least
twenty years to come. Yet, of all the circle, he himself
was the only one whose situation had not materially changed.
While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs.
It was the nurse, who brought in her hand a rolled mass
of wet paper. The woman was so engrossed with her occupation
that she hardly saw Venn. She took from a cupboard some
pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace,
tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled
forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers,
she began pinning them one by one to the strings in a
manner of clothes on a line.
"What be they?" said Venn.
"Poor master's banknotes," she answered. "They were found
in his pocket when they undressed him."
"Then he was not coming back again for some time?"
said Venn.
"That we shall never know," said she.
Venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested
him lay under this roof. As nobody in the house had any
more sleep that night, except the two who slept for ever,
there was no reason why he should not remain. So he retired
into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit,
and there he continued, watching the steam from the double
row of banknotes as they waved backwards and forwards
in the draught of the chimney till their flaccidity
was changed to dry crispness throughout. Then the woman
came and unpinned them, and, folding them together,
carried the handful upstairs. Presently the doctor
appeared from above with the look of a man who could do
no more, and, pulling on his gloves, went out of the house,
the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon the road.
At four o'clock there was a gentle knock at the door.
It was from Charley, who had been sent by Captain Vye
to inquire if anything had been heard of Eustacia.
The girl who admitted him looked in his face as if she
did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to
where Venn was seated, saying to the reddleman, "Will you
tell him, please?"
Venn told. Charley's only utterance was a feeble,
indistinct sound. He stood quite still; then he burst
out spasmodically, "I shall see her once more?"
"I dare say you may see her," said Diggory gravely.
"But hadn't you better run and tell Captain Vye?"
"Yes, yes. Only I do hope I shall see her just once again."
"You shall," said a low voice behind; and starting
round they beheld by the dim light, a thin, pallid,
almost spectral form, wrapped in a blanket, and looking
like Lazarus coming from the tomb.
It was Yeobright. Neither Venn nor Charley spoke,
and Clym continued, "You shall see her. There will be
time enough to tell the captain when it gets daylight.
You would like to see her too--would you not, Diggory? She
looks very beautiful now."
Venn assented by rising to his feet, and with Charley
he followed Clym to the foot of the staircase,
where he took off his boots; Charley did the same.
They followed Yeobright upstairs to the landing, where there
was a candle burning, which Yeobright took in his hand,
and with it led the way into an adjoining room.
Here he went to the bedside and folded back the sheet.
They stood silently looking upon Eustacia, who, as she lay
there still in death, eclipsed all her living phases.
Pallor did not include all the quality of her complexion,
which seemed more than whiteness; it was almost light.
The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant,
as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave
off speaking. Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a
momentary transition between fervour and resignation.
Her black hair was looser now than either of them had ever
seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest.
The stateliness of look which had been almost too marked
for a dweller in a country domicile had at last found an
artistically happy background.
Nobody spoke, till at length Clym covered
her and turned aside. "Now come here," he said.
They went to a recess in the same room, and there,
on a smaller bed, lay another figure--Wildeve. Less repose
was visible in his face than in Eustacia's, but the same
luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the least
sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him
now that he was born for a higher destiny than this.
The only sign upon him of his recent struggle for life
was in his fingertips, which were worn and sacrificed
in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face
of the weir-wall.
Yeobright's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so
few syllables since his reappearance, that Venn imagined
him resigned. It was only when they had left the room
and stood upon the landing that the true state of his
mind was apparent. Here he said, with a wild smile,
inclining his head towards the chamber in which Eustacia lay,
"She is the second woman I have killed this year.
I was a great cause of my mother's death, and I am
the chief cause of hers."
"How?" said Venn.
"I spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house.
I did not invite her back till it was too late. It is I who
ought to have drowned myself. It would have been a charity
to the living had the river overwhelmed me and borne her up.
But I cannot die. Those who ought to have lived lie dead;
and here am I alive!"
"But you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way,"
said Venn. "You may as well say that the parents be the
cause of a murder by the child, for without the parents
the child would never have been begot."
"Yes, Venn, that is very true; but you don't know
all the circumstances. If it had pleased God to put
an end to me it would have been a good thing for all.
But I am getting used to the horror of my existence.
They say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through
long acquaintance with it. Surely that time will soon
come to me!"
"Your aim has always been good," said Venn. "Why should
you say such desperate things?"
"No, they are not desperate. They are only hopeless;
and my great regret is that for what I have done no man
or law can punish me!"
book six
AFTERCOURSES
1 - The Inevitable Movement Onward
The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was told
throughout Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months.
All the known incidents of their love were enlarged,
distorted, touched up, and modified, till the original
reality bore but a slight resemblance to the counterfeit
presentation by surrounding tongues. Yet, upon the whole,
neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death.
Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic
histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many,
attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness,
through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay.
On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different.
Strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely
heard of one more; but immediately where a blow falls
no previous imaginings amount to appreciable preparation
for it. The very suddenness of her bereavement dulled,
to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet irrationally enough,
a consciousness that the husband she had lost ought
to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning
at all. On the contrary, this fact seemed at first
to set off the dead husband in his young wife's eyes,
and to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow.
But the horrors of the unknown had passed. Vague misgivings
about her future as a deserted wife were at an end.
The worst had once been matter of trembling conjecture;
it was now matter of reason only, a limited badness.
Her chief interest, the little Eustacia, still remained.
There was humility in her grief, no defiance in her attitude;
and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to
be stilled.
Could Thomasin's mournfulness now and Eustacia's serenity during
life have been reduced to common measure, they would have
touched the same mark nearly. But Thomasin's former brightness
made shadow of that which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself.
The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her;
the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted,
for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size
and knowledge every day. Outward events flattered Thomasin
not a little. Wildeve had died intestate, and she and
the child were his only relatives. When administration
had been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue
of her husband's uncle's property had come into her hands,
it was found that the sum waiting to be invested for her own
and the child's benefit was little less than ten thousand pounds.
Where should she live? The obvious place was Blooms-End.
The old rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the
between-decks of a frigate, necessitating a sinking in the
floor under the new clock-case she brought from the inn,
and the removal of the handsome brass knobs on its head,
before there was height for it to stand; but, such as
the rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place
was endeared to her by every early recollection.
Clym very gladly admitted her as a tenant, confining his own
existence to two rooms at the top of the back staircase,
where he lived on quietly, shut off from Thomasin and
the three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now
that she was a mistress of money, going his own ways,
and thinking his own thoughts.
His sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance;
and yet the alteration was chiefly within. It might have
been said that he had a wrinkled mind. He had no enemies,
and he could get nobody to reproach him, which was why he
so bitterly reproached himself.
He did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune,
so far as to say that to be born is a palpable dilemma,
and that instead of men aiming to advance in life
with glory they should calculate how to retreat out
of it without shame. But that he and his had been
sarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such
irons thrust into their souls he did not maintain long.
It is usually so, except with the sternest of men.
Human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct
a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause,
have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower
moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit
down and weep by the waters of Babylon, invent excuses
for the oppression which prompts their tears.
Thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in
his presence, he found relief in a direction of his own
choosing when left to himself. For a man of his habits
the house and the hundred and twenty pounds a year which he
had inherited from his mother were enough to supply all
worldly needs. Resources do not depend upon gross amounts,
but upon the proportion of spendings to takings.
He frequently walked the heath alone, when the past
seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him
there to listen to its tale. His imagination would then
people the spot with its ancient inhabitants--forgotten
Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could
almost live among them, look in their faces, and see
them standing beside the barrows which swelled around,
untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection.
Those of the dyed barbarians who had chosen the cultivable
tracts were, in comparison with those who had left their
marks here, as writers on paper beside writers on parchment.
Their records had perished long ago by the plough,
while the works of these remained. Yet they all had lived
and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting
their relics. It reminded him that unforeseen factors
operate in the evolution of immortality.
Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins,
and sparkling starlight. The year previous Thomasin had
hardly been conscious of the season's advance; this year she
laid her heart open to external influences of every kind.
The life of this sweet cousin, her baby, and her servants,
came to Clym's senses only in the form of sounds through
a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally
large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed
to these slight noises from the other part of the house
that he almost could witness the scenes they signified.
A faint beat of half-seconds conjured up Thomasin rocking
the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the
baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones
raised the picture of Humphrey's, Fairway's, or Sam's
heavy feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen;
a light boyish step, and a gay tune in a high key,
betokened a visit from Grandfer Cantle; a sudden break-off
in the Grandfer's utterances implied the application to
his lips of a mug of small beer, a bustling and slamming
of doors meant starting to go to market; for Thomasin,
in spite of her added scope of gentility, led a ludicrously
narrow life, to the end that she might save every possible
pound for her little daughter.
One summer day Clym was in the garden, immediately outside
the parlour window, which was as usual open. He was looking
at the pot-flowers on the sill; they had been revived
and restored by Thomasin to the state in which his mother
had left them. He heard a slight scream from Thomasin,
who was sitting inside the room.
"O, how you frightened me!" she said to someone who
had entered. "I thought you were the ghost of yourself."
Clym was curious enough to advance a little further
and look in at the window. To his astonishment
there stood within the room Diggory Venn, no longer
a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues
of an ordinary Christian countenance, white shirt-front,
light flowered waistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief,
and bottle-green coat. Nothing in this appearance was at
all singular but the fact of its great difference from
what he had formerly been. Red, and all approach to red,
was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him;
for what is there that persons just out of harness dread
so much as reminders of the trade which has enriched them?
Yeobright went round to the door and entered.
"I was so alarmed!" said Thomasin, smiling from one to
the other. "I couldn't believe that he had got white
of his own accord! It seemed supernatural."
"I gave up dealing in reddle last Christmas," said Venn.
"It was a profitable trade, and I found that by that
time I had made enough to take the dairy of fifty cows
that my father had in his lifetime. I always thought
of getting to that place again if I changed at all,
and now I am there."
"How did you manage to become white, Diggory?" Thomasin asked.
"I turned so by degrees, ma'am."
"You look much better than ever you did before."
Venn appeared confused; and Thomasin, seeing how
inadvertently she had spoken to a man who might possibly
have tender feelings for her still, blushed a little.
Clym saw nothing of this, and added good-humouredly--
"What shall we have to frighten Thomasin's baby with,
now you have become a human being again?"
"Sit down, Diggory," said Thomasin, "and stay to tea."
Venn moved as if he would retire to the kitchen,
when Thomasin said with pleasant pertness as she went
on with some sewing, "Of course you must sit down here.
And where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, Mr. Venn?"
"At Stickleford--about two miles to the right of Alderworth,
ma'am, where the meads begin. I have thought that if
Mr. Yeobright would like to pay me a visit sometimes he
shouldn't stay away for want of asking. I'll not bide
to tea this afternoon, thank'ee, for I've got something
on hand that must be settled. 'Tis Maypole-day tomorrow,
and the Shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your
neighbours here to have a pole just outside your palings
in the heath, as it is a nice green place." Venn waved
his elbow towards the patch in front of the house.
"I have been talking to Fairway about it," he continued,
"and I said to him that before we put up the pole it would
be as well to ask Mrs. Wildeve."
"I can say nothing against it," she answered. "Our property
does not reach an inch further than the white palings."
"But you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy
round a stick, under your very nose?"
"I shall have no objection at all."
Venn soon after went away, and in the evening Yeobright
strolled as far as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely
May sunset, and the birch trees which grew on this margin
of the vast Egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves,
delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as amber.
Beside Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed
from the road, and here were now collected all the young
people from within a radius of a couple of miles.
The pole lay with one end supported on a trestle, and women
were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwards with
wild-flowers. The instincts of merry England lingered on
here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs
which tradition has attached to each season of the year
were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all
such outlandish hamlets are pagan still--in these spots
homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties,
fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names
are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived
mediaeval doctrine.
Yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went
home again. The next morning, when Thomasin withdrew
the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the Maypole
in the middle of the green, its top cutting into the sky.
It had sprung up in the night, or rather early morning,
like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get
a better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it.
The sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into
the surrounding air, which, being free from every taint,
conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance
received from the spire of blossom in its midst.
At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with
small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone
of Maybloom; then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips,
then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins, daffodils, and so on,
till the lowest stage was reached. Thomasin noticed
all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be
so near.
When afternoon came people began to gather on the green,
and Yeobright was interested enough to look out upon
them from the open window of his room. Soon after this
Thomasin walked out from the door immediately below and
turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. She was dressed
more gaily than Yeobright had ever seen her dressed
since the time of Wildeve's death, eighteen months before;
since the day of her marriage even she had not exhibited
herself to such advantage.
"How pretty you look today, Thomasin!" he said.
"Is it because of the Maypole?"
"Not altogether." And then she blushed and dropped her eyes,
which he did not specially observe, though her manner
seemed to him to be rather peculiar, considering that
she was only addressing himself. Could it be possible
that she had put on her summer clothes to please him?
He recalled her conduct towards him throughout
the last few weeks, when they had often been working
together in the garden, just as they had formerly done
when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye.
What if her interest in him were not so entirely that
of a relative as it had formerly been? To Yeobright any
possibility of this sort was a serious matter; and he
almost felt troubled at the thought of it. Every pulse
of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during
Eustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave with her.
His passion for her had occurred too far on in his
manhood to leave fuel enough on hand for another fire
of that sort, as may happen with more boyish loves.
Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love
would be a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in
the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.
He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the
enthusiastic brass band arrived and struck up, which it
did about five o'clock, with apparently wind enough
among its members to blow down his house, he withdrew
from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden,
through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight.
He could not bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today,
though he had tried hard.
Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came back
by the same path it was dusk, and the dews were coating
every green thing. The boisterous music had ceased;
but, entering the premises as he did from behind, he could
not see if the May party had all gone till he had passed
through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door.
Thomasin was standing within the porch alone.
She looked at him reproachfully. "You went away just
when it began, Clym," she said.
"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with them,
of course?"
"No, I did not."
"You appeared to be dressed on purpose."
"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people
were there. One is there now."
Yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch
beyond the paling, and near the black form of the Maypole he
discerned a shadowy figure, sauntering idly up and down.
"Who is it?" he said.
"Mr. Venn," said Thomasin.
"You might have asked him to come in, I think, Tamsie.
He has been very kind to you first and last."
"I will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse,
went through the wicket to where Venn stood under the Maypole.
"It is Mr. Venn, I think?" she inquired.
Venn started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he
was--and said, "Yes."
"Will you come in?"
"I am afraid that I--"
"I have seen you dancing this evening, and you had
the very best of the girls for your partners. Is it
that you won't come in because you wish to stand here,
and think over the past hours of enjoyment?"
"Well, that's partly it," said Mr. Venn,
with ostentatious sentiment. "But the main reason
why I am biding here like this is that I want to wait till the
moon rises."
"To see how pretty the Maypole looks in the moonlight?"
"No. To look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens."
Thomasin was speechless with surprise. That a man who had
to walk some four or five miles to his home should wait
here for such a reason pointed to only one conclusion--the
man must be amazingly interested in that glove's owner.
"Were you dancing with her, Diggory?" she asked,
in a voice which revealed that he had made himself
considerably more interesting to her by this disclosure.
"No," he sighed.
"And you will not come in, then?"
"Not tonight, thank you, ma'am."
"Shall I lend you a lantern to look for the young
person's glove, Mr. Venn?"
"O no; it is not necessary, Mrs. Wildeve, thank you.
The moon will rise in a few minutes."
Thomasin went back to the porch. "Is he coming in?"
said Clym, who had been waiting where she had left him.
"He would rather not tonight," she said, and then passed
by him into the house; whereupon Clym too retired to his
own rooms.
When Clym was gone Thomasin crept upstairs in the dark, and,
just listening by the cot, to assure herself that the child
was asleep, she went to the window, gently lifted the corner
of the white curtain, and looked out. Venn was still there.
She watched the growth of the faint radiance appearing
in the sky by the eastern hill, till presently the edge
of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley with light.
Diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he was moving
about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning the grass
for the precious missing article, walking in zigzags right
and left till he should have passed over every foot of the ground.
"How very ridiculous!" Thomasin murmured to herself,
in a tone which was intended to be satirical. "To think
that a man should be so silly as to go mooning about
like that for a girl's glove! A respectable dairyman,
too, and a man of money as he is now. What a pity!"
At last Venn appeared to find it; whereupon he stood
up and raised it to his lips. Then placing it in his
breastpocket--the nearest receptacle to a man's heart
permitted by modern raiment--he ascended the valley
in a mathematically direct line towards his distant
home in the meadows.
2 - Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road
Clym saw little of Thomasin for several days after this;
and when they met she was more silent than usual. At length
he asked her what she was thinking of so intently.
"I am thoroughly perplexed," she said candidly.
"I cannot for my life think who it is that Diggory Venn
is so much in love with. None of the girls at the Maypole
were good enough for him, and yet she must have been there."
Clym tried to imagine Venn's choice for a moment;
but ceasing to be interested in the question he went
on again with his gardening.
No clearing up of the mystery was granted her for some time.
But one afternoon Thomasin was upstairs getting ready
for a walk, when she had occasion to come to the landing
and call "Rachel." Rachel was a girl about thirteen,
who carried the baby out for airings; and she came upstairs
at the call.
"Have you seen one of my last new gloves about the house,
Rachel?" inquired Thomasin. "It is the fellow to this one."
Rachel did not reply.
"Why don't you answer?" said her mistress.
"I think it is lost, ma'am."
"Lost? Who lost it? I have never worn them but once."
Rachel appeared as one dreadfully troubled, and at last
began to cry. "Please, ma'am, on the day of the Maypole
I had none to wear, and I seed yours on the table,
and I thought I would borrow 'em. I did not mean
to hurt 'em at all, but one of them got lost.
Somebody gave me some money to buy another pair for you,
but I have not been able to go anywhere to get 'em."
"Who's somebody?"
"Mr. Venn."
"Did he know it was my glove?"
"Yes. I told him."
Thomasin was so surprised by the explanation that she quite
forgot to lecture the girl, who glided silently away.
Thomasin did not move further than to turn her eyes
upon the grass-plat where the Maypole had stood.
She remained thinking, then said to herself that she
would not go out that afternoon, but would work hard at
the baby's unfinished lovely plaid frock, cut on the cross
in the newest fashion. How she managed to work hard,
and yet do no more than she had done at the end of
two hours, would have been a mystery to anyone not aware
that the recent incident was of a kind likely to divert
her industry from a manual to a mental channel.
Next day she went her ways as usual, and continued her
custom of walking in the heath with no other companion
than little Eustacia, now of the age when it is a matter
of doubt with such characters whether they are intended
to walk through the world on their hands or on their feet;
so that they get into painful complications by trying both.
It was very pleasant to Thomasin, when she had carried
the child to some lonely place, to give her a little
private practice on the green turf and shepherd's-thyme,
which formed a soft mat to fall headlong upon them when
equilibrium was lost.
Once, when engaged in this system of training, and stooping
to remove bits of stick, fern-stalks, and other such
fragments from the child's path, that the journey might not
be brought to an untimely end by some insuperable barrier
a quarter of an inch high, she was alarmed by discovering
that a man on horseback was almost close beside her,
the soft natural carpet having muffled the horse's tread.
The rider, who was Venn, waved his hat in the air
and bowed gallantly.
"Diggory, give me my glove," said Thomasin, whose manner
it was under any circumstances to plunge into the midst
of a subject which engrossed her.
Venn immediately dismounted, put his hand in his breastpocket,
and handed the glove.
"Thank you. It was very good of you to take care of it."
"It is very good of you to say so."
"O no. I was quite glad to find you had it. Everybody gets
so indifferent that I was surprised to know you thought
of me."
"If you had remembered what I was once you wouldn't
have been surprised."
"Ah, no," she said quickly. "But men of your character
are mostly so independent."
"What is my character?" he asked.
"I don't exactly know," said Thomasin simply, "except it
is to cover up your feelings under a practical manner,
and only to show them when you are alone."
"Ah, how do you know that?" said Venn strategically.
"Because," said she, stopping to put the little girl,
who had managed to get herself upside down, right end
up again, "because I do."
"You mustn't judge by folks in general," said Venn.
"Still I don't know much what feelings are nowadays.
I have got so mixed up with business of one sort and t'other
that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour like.
Yes, I am given up body and soul to the making of money.
Money is all my dream."
"O Diggory, how wicked!" said Thomasin reproachfully,
and looking at him in exact balance between taking his
words seriously and judging them as said to tease her.
"Yes, 'tis rather a rum course," said Venn, in the bland
tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could
no longer overcome.
"You, who used to be so nice!"
"Well, that's an argument I rather like, because what a
man has once been he may be again." Thomasin blushed.
"Except that it is rather harder now," Venn continued.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because you be richer than you were at that time."
"O no--not much. I have made it nearly all over to the baby,
as it was my duty to do, except just enough to live on."
"I am rather glad of that," said Venn softly, and regarding
her from the corner of his eye, "for it makes it easier
for us to be friendly."
Thomasin blushed again, and, when a few more words
had been said of a not unpleasing kind, Venn mounted
his horse and rode on.
This conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath near
the old Roman road, a place much frequented by Thomasin.
And it might have been observed that she did not in future
walk that way less often from having met Venn there now.
Whether or not Venn abstained from riding thither because
he had met Thomasin in the same place might easily have
been guessed from her proceedings about two months later
in the same year.
3 - The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin
Throughout this period Yeobright had more or less pondered
on his duty to his cousin Thomasin. He could not help
feeling that it would be a pitiful waste of sweet
material if the tender-natured thing should be doomed
from this early stage of her life onwards to dribble
away her winsome qualities on lonely gorse and fern.
But he felt this as an economist merely, and not as a lover.
His passion for Eustacia had been a sort of conserve
of his whole life, and he had nothing more of that supreme
quality left to bestow. So far the obvious thing was
not to entertain any idea of marriage with Thomasin,
even to oblige her.
But this was not all. Years ago there had been in his
mother's mind a great fancy about Thomasin and himself.
It had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had
always been a favourite dream. That they should be man
and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither
were endangered thereby, was the fancy in question.
So that what course save one was there now left for any son
who reverenced his mother's memory as Yeobright did? It
is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents,
which might have been dispersed by half an hour's
conversation during their lives, becomes sublimated
by their deaths into a fiat the most absolute, with such
results to conscientious children as those parents,
had they lived, would have been the first to decry.
Had only Yeobright's own future been involved he would
have proposed to Thomasin with a ready heart. He had
nothing to lose by carrying out a dead mother's hope.
But he dreaded to contemplate Thomasin wedded to the mere
corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be.
He had but three activities alive in him. One was his
almost daily walk to the little graveyard wherein his
mother lay, another, his just as frequent visits by night
to the more distant enclosure which numbered his Eustacia
among its dead; the third was self-preparation for a vocation
which alone seemed likely to satisfy his cravings--that
of an itinerant preacher of the eleventh commandment.
It was difficult to believe that Thomasin would be cheered
by a husband with such tendencies as these.
Yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for herself.
It was even with a pleasant sense of doing his duty that
he went downstairs to her one evening for this purpose,
when the sun was printing on the valley the same long
shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times
out of number while his mother lived.
Thomasin was not in her room, and he found her in the
front garden. "I have long been wanting, Thomasin,"
he began, "to say something about a matter that concerns
both our futures."
"And you are going to say it now?" she remarked quickly,
colouring as she met his gaze. "Do stop a minute, Clym,
and let me speak first, for oddly enough, I have been
wanting to say something to you."
"By all means say on, Tamsie."
"I suppose nobody can overhear us?" she went on, casting her
eyes around and lowering her voice. "Well, first you
will promise me this--that you won't be angry and call
me anything harsh if you disagree with what I propose?"
Yeobright promised, and she continued: "What I want
is your advice, for you are my relation--I mean, a sort
of guardian to me--aren't you, Clym?"
"Well, yes, I suppose I am; a sort of guardian. In fact,
I am, of course," he said, altogether perplexed as to
her drift.
"I am thinking of marrying," she then observed blandly.
"But I shall not marry unless you assure me that you approve
of such a step. Why don't you speak?"
"I was taken rather by surprise. But, nevertheless, I am
very glad to hear such news. I shall approve, of course,
dear Tamsie. Who can it be? I am quite at a loss to guess.
No I am not--'tis the old doctor!--not that I mean to call
him old, for he is not very old after all. Ah--I noticed
when he attended you last time!"
"No, no," she said hastily. "'Tis Mr. Venn."
Clym's face suddenly became grave.
"There, now, you don't like him, and I wish I hadn't
mentioned him!" she exclaimed almost petulantly.
"And I shouldn't have done it, either, only he keeps
on bothering me so till I don't know what to do!"
Clym looked at the heath. "I like Venn well enough,"
he answered at last. "He is a very honest and at the same
time astute man. He is clever too, as is proved by his
having got you to favour him. But really, Thomasin, he is
not quite--"
"Gentleman enough for me? That is just what I feel.
I am sorry now that I asked you, and I won't think any
more of him. At the same time I must marry him if I marry
anybody--that I WILL say!"
"I don't see that," said Clym, carefully concealing every
clue to his own interrupted intention, which she plainly
had not guessed. "You might marry a professional man,
or somebody of that sort, by going into the town to live
and forming acquaintances there."
"I am not fit for town life--so very rural and silly
as I always have been. Do not you yourself notice
my countrified ways?"
"Well, when I came home from Paris I did, a little;
but I don't now."
"That's because you have got countrified too. O, I couldn't
live in a street for the world! Egdon is a ridiculous
old place; but I have got used to it, and I couldn't
be happy anywhere else at all."
"Neither could I," said Clym.
"Then how could you say that I should marry some town man?
I am sure, say what you will, that I must marry Diggory,
if I marry at all. He has been kinder to me than anybody else,
and has helped me in many ways that I don't know of!"
Thomasin almost pouted now.
"Yes, he has," said Clym in a neutral tone. "Well, I
wish with all my heart that I could say, marry him.
But I cannot forget what my mother thought on that matter,
and it goes rather against me not to respect her opinion.
There is too much reason why we should do the little we can
to respect it now."
"Very well, then," sighed Thomasin. "I will say no more."
"But you are not bound to obey my wishes. I merely say
what I think."
"O no--I don't want to be rebellious in that way,"
she said sadly. "I had no business to think of him--I
ought to have thought of my family. What dreadfully bad
impulses there are in me!" Her lips trembled, and she
turned away to hide a tear.
Clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste,
was in a measure relieved to find that at any rate the
marriage question in relation to himself was shelved.
Through several succeeding days he saw her at different
times from the window of his room moping disconsolately
about the garden. He was half angry with her for
choosing Venn; then he was grieved at having put himself
in the way of Venn's happiness, who was, after all,
as honest and persevering a young fellow as any on Egdon,
since he had turned over a new leaf. In short, Clym did
not know what to do.
When next they met she said abruptly, "He is much more
respectable now than he was then!"
"Who? O yes--Diggory Venn."
"Aunt only objected because he was a reddleman."
"Well, Thomasin, perhaps I don't know all the particulars
of my mother's wish. So you had better use your own discretion."
"You will always feel that I slighted your mother's memory."
"No, I will not. I shall think you are convinced that,
had she seen Diggory in his present position, she would
have considered him a fitting husband for you.
Now, that's my real feeling. Don't consult me any more,
but do as you like, Thomasin. I shall be content."
It is to be supposed that Thomasin was convinced;
for a few days after this, when Clym strayed into a part
of the heath that he had not lately visited, Humphrey,
who was at work there, said to him, "I am glad to see
that Mrs. Wildeve and Venn have made it up again, seemingly."
"Have they?" said Clym abstractedly.
"Yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she
walks out on fine days with the chiel. But, Mr. Yeobright,
I can't help feeling that your cousin ought to have
married you. 'Tis a pity to make two chimleycorners
where there need be only one. You could get her away from
him now, 'tis my belief, if you were only to set about it."
"How can I have the conscience to marry after having
driven two women to their deaths? Don't think such
a thing, Humphrey. After my experience I should consider it
too much of a burlesque to go to church and take a wife.
In the words of Job, 'I have made a covenant with mine eyes;
when then should I think upon a maid?'"
"No, Mr. Clym, don't fancy that about driving two women
to their deaths. You shouldn't say it."
"Well, we'll leave that out," said Yeobright. "But anyhow
God has set a mark upon me which wouldn't look well
in a love-making scene. I have two ideas in my head,
and no others. I am going to keep a night-school;
and I am going to turn preacher. What have you got to say
to that, Humphrey?"
"I'll come and hear 'ee with all my heart."
"Thanks. 'Tis all I wish."
As Clym descended into the valley Thomasin came
down by the other path, and met him at the gate.
"What do you think I have to tell you, Clym?" she said,
looking archly over her shoulder at him.
"I can guess," he replied.
She scrutinized his face. "Yes, you guess right.
It is going to be after all. He thinks I may as well
make up my mind, and I have got to think so too.
It is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you
don't object."
"Do what you think right, dear. I am only too glad that you
see your way clear to happiness again. My sex owes you
every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by."*
* The writer may state here that the original conception
of the story did not design a marriage between Thomasin
and Venn. He was to have retained his isolated and weird
character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously
from the heath, nobody knowing whither--Thomasin remaining
a widow. But certain circumstances of serial publication
led to a change of intent.
Readers can therefore choose between the endings,
and those with an austere artistic code can assume
the more consistent conclusion to be the true one.
4 - Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End,
and Clym Finds His Vocation
Anybody who had passed through Blooms-End about eleven
o'clock on the morning fixed for the wedding would have
found that, while Yeobright's house was comparatively quiet,
sounds denoting great activity came from the dwelling
of his nearest neighbour, Timothy Fairway. It was chiefly
a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither over
the sanded floor within. One man only was visible outside,
and he seemed to be later at an appointment than he
had intended to be, for he hastened up to the door,
lifted the latch, and walked in without ceremony.
The scene within was not quite the customary one.
Standing about the room was the little knot of men who formed
the chief part of the Egdon coterie, there being present
Fairway himself, Grandfer Cantle, Humphrey, Christian, and one
or two turf-cutters. It was a warm day, and the men were as
a matter of course in their shirtsleeves, except Christian,
who had always a nervous fear of parting with a scrap
of his clothing when in anybody's house but his own.
Across the stout oak table in the middle of the room
was thrown a mass of striped linen, which Grandfer
Cantle held down on one side, and Humphrey on the other,
while Fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump,
his face being damp and creased with the effort of the labour.
"Waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the newcomer.
"Yes, Sam," said Grandfer Cantle, as a man too busy to
waste words. "Shall I stretch this corner a shade tighter, Timothy?"
Fairway replied, and the waxing went on with unabated vigour.
"'Tis going to be a good bed, by the look o't," continued Sam,
after an interval of silence. "Who may it be for?"
"'Tis a present for the new folks that's going to set
up housekeeping," said Christian, who stood helpless
and overcome by the majesty of the proceedings.
"Ah, to be sure; and a valuable one, 'a b'lieve."
"Beds be dear to fokes that don't keep geese, bain't they,
Mister Fairway?" said Christian, as to an omniscient being.
"Yes," said the furze-dealer, standing up, giving his
forehead a thorough mopping, and handing the beeswax
to Humphrey, who succeeded at the rubbing forthwith.
"Not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well
to show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing
vagary of their lives. I set up both my own daughters
in one when they was married, and there have been feathers
enough for another in the house the last twelve months.
Now then, neighbours, I think we have laid on enough wax.
Grandfer Cantle, you turn the tick the right way outwards,
and then I'll begin to shake in the feathers."
When the bed was in proper trim Fairway and Christian
brought forward vast paper bags, stuffed to the full,
but light as balloons, and began to turn the contents
of each into the receptacle just prepared. As bag
after bag was emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers
floated about the room in increasing quantity till,
through a mishap of Christian's, who shook the contents
of one bag outside the tick, the atmosphere of the room
became dense with gigantic flakes, which descended upon
the workers like a windless snowstorm.
"I never saw such a clumsy chap as you, Christian,"
said Grandfer Cantle severely. "You might have been
the son of a man that's never been outside Blooms-End
in his life for all the wit you have. Really all the
soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems
to count for nothing in forming the nater of the son.
As far as that chief Christian is concerned I might as well
have stayed at home and seed nothing, like all the rest
of ye here. Though, as far as myself is concerned,
a dashing spirit has counted for sommat, to be sure!"
"Don't ye let me down so, Father; I feel no bigger
than a ninepin after it. I've made but a bruckle hit,
I'm afeard."
"Come, come. Never pitch yerself in such a low key
as that, Christian; you should try more," said Fairway.
"Yes, you should try more," echoed the Grandfer
with insistence, as if he had been the first to make
the suggestion. "In common conscience every man ought
either to marry or go for a soldier. 'Tis a scandal
to the nation to do neither one nor t'other. I did both,
thank God! Neither to raise men nor to lay 'em low--
that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed."
"I never had the nerve to stand fire," faltered Christian.
"But as to marrying, I own I've asked here and there,
though without much fruit from it. Yes, there's some house
or other that might have had a man for a master--such
as he is--that's now ruled by a woman alone. Still it
might have been awkward if I had found her; for, d'ye see,
neighbours, there'd have been nobody left at home to keep
down Father's spirits to the decent pitch that becomes
a old man."
"And you've your work cut out to do that, my son,"
said Grandfer Cantle smartly. "I wish that the dread
of infirmities was not so strong in me!--I'd start the
very first thing tomorrow to see the world over again!
But seventy-one, though nothing at home, is a high figure
for a rover....Ay, seventy-one, last Candlemasday.
Gad, I'd sooner have it in guineas than in years!"
And the old man sighed.
"Don't you be mournful, Grandfer," said Fairway. "Empt some
more feathers into the bed-tick, and keep up yer heart.
Though rather lean in the stalks you be a green-leaved old
man still. There's time enough left to ye yet to fill
whole chronicles."
"Begad, I'll go to 'em, Timothy--to the married pair!"
said Granfer Cantle in an encouraged voice, and starting
round briskly. "I'll go to 'em tonight and sing
a wedding song, hey? 'Tis like me to do so, you know;
and they'd see it as such. My 'Down in Cupid's Gardens'
was well liked in four; still, I've got others as good,
and even better. What do you say to my
She cal'-led to' her love'
From the lat'-tice a-bove,
'O come in' from the fog-gy fog'-gy dew'.'
'Twould please 'em well at such a time! Really,
now I come to think of it, I haven't turned my tongue
in my head to the shape of a real good song since Old
Midsummer night, when we had the 'Barley Mow' at the Woman;
and 'tis a pity to neglect your strong point where there's
few that have the compass for such things!"
"So 'tis, so 'tis," said Fairway. "Now gie the bed a
shake down. We've put in seventy pounds of best feathers,
and I think that's as many as the tick will fairly hold.
A bit and a drap wouldn't be amiss now, I reckon.
Christian, maul down the victuals from corner-cupboard
if canst reach, man, and I'll draw a drap o' sommat to wet
it with."
They sat down to a lunch in the midst of their work,
feathers around, above, and below them; the original
owners of which occasionally came to the open door
and cackled begrudgingly at sight of such a quantity
of their old clothes.
"Upon my soul I shall be chokt," said Fairway when,
having extracted a feather from his mouth, he found several
others floating on the mug as it was handed round.
"I've swallered several; and one had a tolerable quill,"
said Sam placidly from the corner.
"Hullo--what's that--wheels I hear coming?" Grandfer Cantle
exclaimed, jumping up and hastening to the door. "Why, 'tis
they back again--I didn't expect 'em yet this half-hour.
To be sure, how quick marrying can be done when you are in the
mind for't!"
"O yes, it can soon be DONE," said Fairway, as if
something should be added to make the statement complete.
He arose and followed the Grandfer, and the rest also went
to the door. In a moment an open fly was driven past,
in which sat Venn and Mrs. Venn, Yeobright, and a grand
relative of Venn's who had come from Budmouth for
the occasion. The fly had been hired at the nearest town,
regardless of distance and cost, there being nothing on
Egdon Heath, in Venn's opinion, dignified enough for such
an event when such a woman as Thomasin was the bride;
and the church was too remote for a walking bridal-party.
As the fly passed the group which had run out from the
homestead they shouted "Hurrah!" and waved their hands;
feathers and down floating from their hair, their sleeves,
and the folds of their garments at every motion,
and Grandfer Cantle's seals dancing merrily in the sunlight
as he twirled himself about. The driver of the fly turned
a supercilious gaze upon them; he even treated the wedded
pair themselves with something like condescension;
for in what other state than heathen could people,
rich or poor, exist who were doomed to abide in such a
world's end as Egdon? Thomasin showed no such superiority
to the group at the door, fluttering her hand as quickly
as a bird's wing towards them, and asking Diggory,
with tears in her eyes, if they ought not to alight and speak
to these kind neighbours. Venn, however, suggested that,
as they were all coming to the house in the evening,
this was hardly necessary.
After this excitement the saluting party returned to
their occupation, and the stuffing and sewing were soon
afterwards finished, when Fairway harnessed a horse,
wrapped up the cumbrous present, and drove off with it
in the cart to Venn's house at Stickleford.
Yeobright, having filled the office at the wedding
service which naturally fell to his hands, and afterwards
returned to the house with the husband and wife,
was indisposed to take part in the feasting and dancing
that wound up the evening. Thomasin was disappointed.
"I wish I could be there without dashing your spirits,"
he said. "But I might be too much like the skull at
the banquet."
"No, no."
"Well, dear, apart from that, if you would excuse me,
I should be glad. I know it seems unkind; but, dear Thomasin,
I fear I should not be happy in the company--there,
that's the truth of it. I shall always be coming to see
you at your new home, you know, so that my absence now
will not matter."
"Then I give in. Do whatever will be most comfortable
to yourself."
Clym retired to his lodging at the housetop much relieved,
and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting
down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to
initiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme
that had originally brought him hither, and that he
had so long kept in view under various modifications,
and through evil and good report. He had tested and weighed
his convictions again and again, and saw no reason to
alter them, though he had considerably lessened his plan.
His eyesight, by long humouring in his native air,
had grown stronger, but not sufficiently strong to warrant
his attempting his extensive educational project.
Yet he did not repine--there was still more than enough
of an unambitious sort to tax all his energies and occupy
all his hours.
Evening drew on, and sounds of life and movement in
the lower part of the domicile became more pronounced,
the gate in the palings clicking incessantly. The party was
to be an early one, and all the guests were assembled long
before it was dark. Yeobright went down the back staircase
and into the heath by another path than that in front,
intending to walk in the open air till the party was over,
when he would return to wish Thomasin and her husband good-bye
as they departed. His steps were insensibly bent towards
Mistover by the path that he had followed on that terrible
morning when he learnt the strange news from Susan's boy.
He did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to an eminence,
whence he could see over the whole quarter that had once been
Eustacia's home. While he stood observing the darkening
scene somebody came up. Clym, seeing him but dimly,
would have let him pass silently, had not the pedestrian,
who was Charley, recognized the young man and spoken to him.
"Charley, I have not seen you for a length of time,"
said Yeobright. "Do you often walk this way?"
"No," the lad replied. "I don't often come outside
the bank."
"You were not at the Maypole."
"No," said Charley, in the same listless tone. "I don't
care for that sort of thing now."
"You rather liked Miss Eustacia, didn't you?"
Yeobright gently asked. Eustacia had frequently
told him of Charley's romantic attachment.
"Yes, very much. Ah, I wish--"
"Yes?"
"I wish, Mr. Yeobright, you could give me something
to keep that once belonged to her--if you don't mind."
"I shall be very happy to. It will give me very
great pleasure, Charley. Let me think what I have of hers
that you would like. But come with me to the house,
and I'll see."
They walked towards Blooms-End together. When they reached
the front it was dark, and the shutters were closed,
so that nothing of the interior could be seen.
"Come round this way," said Clym. "My entrance is at
the back for the present."
The two went round and ascended the crooked stair in darkness
till Clym's sitting-room on the upper floor was reached,
where he lit a candle, Charley entering gently behind.
Yeobright searched his desk, and taking out a sheet
of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three undulating
locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like
black streams. From these he selected one, wrapped it up,
and gave it to the lad, whose eyes had filled with tears.
He kissed the packet, put it in his pocket, and said
in a voice of emotion, "O, Mr. Clym, how good you are
to me!"
"I will go a little way with you," said Clym. And amid
the noise of merriment from below they descended.
Their path to the front led them close to a little side window,
whence the rays of candles streamed across the shrubs.
The window, being screened from general observation
by the bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person
in this private nook could see all that was going on
within the room which contained the wedding guests,
except in so far as vision was hindered by the green
antiquity of the panes.
"Charley, what are they doing?" said Clym. "My sight
is weaker again tonight, and the glass of this window
is not good."
Charley wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred
with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement.
"Mr. Venn is asking Christian Cantle to sing," he replied,
"and Christian is moving about in his chair as if he were
much frightened at the question, and his father has struck
up a stave instead of him."
"Yes, I can hear the old man's voice," said Clym.
"So there's to be no dancing, I suppose. And is Thomasin
in the room? I see something moving in front of the candles
that resembles her shape, I think."
"Yes. She do seem happy. She is red in the face,
and laughing at something Fairway has said to her.
O my!"
"What noise was that?" said Clym.
"Mr. Venn is so tall that he knocked his head against
the beam in gieing a skip as he passed under. Mrs. Venn
has run up quite frightened and now she's put her hand
to his head to feel if there's a lump. And now they
be all laughing again as if nothing had happened."
"Do any of them seem to care about my not being there?"
Clym asked.
"No, not a bit in the world. Now they are all holding
up their glasses and drinking somebody's health."
"I wonder if it is mine?"
"No, 'tis Mr. and Mrs. Venn's, because he is making a
hearty sort of speech. There--now Mrs. Venn has got up,
and is going away to put on her things, I think."
"Well, they haven't concerned themselves about me, and it
is quite right they should not. It is all as it should be,
and Thomasin at least is happy. We will not stay any
longer now, as they will soon be coming out to go home."
He accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home,
and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an
hour later, found Venn and Thomasin ready to start,
all the guests having departed in his absence.
The wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled
dogcart which Venn's head milker and handy man had driven
from Stickleford to fetch them in; little Eustacia and
the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap behind;
and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes
clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear,
in the manner of a body-servant of the last century.
"Now we leave you in absolute possession of your own
house again," said Thomasin as she bent down to wish
her cousin good night. "It will be rather lonely
for you, Clym, after the hubbub we have been making."
"O, that's no inconvenience," said Clym, smiling rather sadly.
And then the party drove off and vanished in the night
shades, and Yeobright entered the house. The ticking
of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for not
a soul remained; Christian, who acted as cook, valet,
and gardener to Clym, sleeping at his father's house.
Yeobright sat down in one of the vacant chairs,
and remained in thought a long time. His mother's old
chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by
those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers.
But to Clym she was almost a presence there, now as always.
Whatever she was in other people's memories, in his she
was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness
for Eustacia could not obscure. But his heart was heavy,
that Mother had NOT crowned him in the day of his
espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart.
And events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment,
and proved the devotedness of her care. He should have
heeded her for Eustacia's sake even more than for his own.
"It was all my fault," he whispered. "O, my mother,
my mother! would to God that I could live my life again,
and endure for you what you endured for me!"
On the Sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was
to be seen on Rainbarrow. From a distance there simply
appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top
of the tumulus, just as Eustacia had stood on that lonely
summit some two years and a half before. But now it
was fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing,
and early afternoon instead of dull twilight.
Those who ascended to the immediate neighbourhood of
the Barrow perceived that the erect form in the centre,
piercing the sky, was not really alone. Round him upon
the slopes of the Barrow a number of heathmen and women
were reclining or sitting at their ease. They listened
to the words of the man in their midst, who was preaching,
while they abstractedly pulled heather, stripped ferns,
or tossed pebbles down the slope. This was the first
of a series of moral lectures or Sermons on the Mount,
which were to be delivered from the same place every Sunday
afternoon as long as the fine weather lasted.
The commanding elevation of Rainbarrow had been chosen
for two reasons: first, that it occupied a central position
among the remote cottages around; secondly, that the
preacher thereon could be seen from all adjacent points
as soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him
being thus a convenient signal to those stragglers
who wished to draw near. The speaker was bareheaded,
and the breeze at each waft gently lifted and lowered
his hair, somewhat too thin for a man of his years,
these still numbering less than thirty-three.
He wore a shade over his eyes, and his face was pensive
and lined; but, though these bodily features were marked
with decay there was no defect in the tones of his voice,
which were rich, musical, and stirring. He stated that
his discourses to people were to be sometimes secular,
and sometimes religious, but never dogmatic; and that
his texts would be taken from all kinds of books.
This afternoon the words were as follows:--
"'And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her,
and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set
for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand.
Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee;
I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said unto her,
Ask, on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay.'"
Yeobright had, in fact, found his vocation in the career
of an itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally
unimpeachable subjects; and from this day he laboured
incessantly in that office, speaking not only in simple
language on Rainbarrow and in the hamlets round, but in
a more cultivated strain elsewhere--from the steps and
porticoes of town halls, from market-crosses, from conduits,
on esplanades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges,
in barns and outhouses, and all other such places in the
neighbouring Wessex towns and villages. He left alone
creeds and systems of philosophy, finding enough and more
than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions
common to all good men. Some believed him, and some
believed not; some said that his words were commonplace,
others complained of his want of theological doctrine;
while others again remarked that it was well enough
for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do
anything else. But everywhere he was kindly received,
for the story of his life had become generally known.