by Thomas Hardy
Eustacia remained silent for a minute, and she said, “We are in a strange relationship today. You mince matters to an uncommon nicety. You mean, Damon, that you still love me. Well, that gives me sorrow, for I am not made so entirely happy by my marriage that I am willing to spurn you for the information, as I ought to do. But we have said too much about this. Do you mean to wait until my husband is awake?”
“I thought to speak to him; but it is unnecessary, Eustacia, if I offend you by not forgetting you, you are right to mention it; but do not talk of spurning.”
She did not reply, and they stood looking musingly at Clym as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the result of physical labour carried on in circumstances that wake no nervous fear.
“God, how I envy him that sweet sleep!” said Wildeve. “I have not slept like that since I was a boy — years and years ago.”
While they thus watched him a click at the gate was audible, and a knock came to the door. Eustacia went to a window and looked out.
Her countenance changed. First she became crimson, and then the red subsided till it even partially left her lips.
“Shall I go away?” said Wildeve, standing up.
“I hardly know.”
“Who is it?”
“Mrs. Yeobright. O, what she said to me that day! I cannot understand this visit — what does she mean? And she suspects that past time of ours.”
“I am in your hands. If you think she had better not see me here I’ll go into the next room.”
“Well, yes — go.”
Wildeve at once withdrew; but before he had been half a minute in the adjoining apartment Eustacia came after him.
“No,” she said, “we won’t have any of this. If she comes in she must see you — and think if she likes there’s something wrong! But how can I open the door to her, when she dislikes me — wishes to see not me, but her son? I won’t open the door!”
Mrs. Yeobright knocked again more loudly.
“Her knocking will, in all likelihood, awaken him,” continued Eustacia, “and then he will let her in himself. Ah — listen.”
They could hear Clym moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word “Mother.”
“Yes — he is awake — he will go to the door,” she said, with a breath of relief. “Come this way. I have a bad name with her, and you must not be seen. Thus I am obliged to act by stealth, not because I do ill, but because others are pleased to say so.”
By this time she had taken him to the back door, which was open, disclosing a path leading down the garden. “Now, one word, Damon,” she remarked as he stepped forth. “This is your first visit here; let it be your last. We have been hot lovers in our time, but it won’t do now. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Wildeve. “I have had all I came for, and I am satisfied.”
“What was it?”
“A sight of you. Upon my eternal honour I came for no more.”
Wildeve kissed his hand to the beautiful girl he addressed, and passed into the garden, where she watched him down the path, over the stile at the end, and into the ferns outside, which brushed his hips as he went along till he became lost in their thickets. When he had quite gone she slowly turned, and directed her attention to the interior of the house.
But it was possible that her presence might not be desired by Clym and his mother at this moment of their first meeting, or that it would be superfluous. At all events, she was in no hurry to meet Mrs. Yeobright. She resolved to wait till Clym came to look for her, and glided back into the garden. Here she idly occupied herself for a few minutes, till finding no notice was taken of her she retraced her steps through the house to the front, where she listened for voices in the parlour. But hearing none she opened the door and went in. To her astonishment Clym lay precisely as Wildeve and herself had left him, his sleep apparently unbroken. He had been disturbed and made to dream and murmur by the knocking, but he had not awakened. Eustacia hastened to the door, and in spite of her reluctance to open it to a woman who had spoken of her so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out. Nobody was to be seen. There, by the scraper, lay Clym’s hook and the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home; in front of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing slightly ajar; and, beyond, the great valley of purple heath thrilling silently in the sun. Mrs. Yeobright was gone.
Clym’s mother was at this time following a path which lay hidden from Eustacia by a shoulder of the hill. Her walk thither from the garden gate had been hasty and determined, as of a woman who was now no less anxious to escape from the scene than she had previously been to enter it. Her eyes were fixed on the ground; within her two sights were graven — that of Clym’s hook and brambles at the door, and that of a woman’s face at a window. Her lips trembled, becoming unnaturally thin as she murmured, “‘Tis too much — Clym, how can he bear to do it! He is at home; and yet he lets her shut the door against me!”
In her anxiety to get out of the direct view of the house she had diverged from the straightest path homeward, and while looking about to regain it she came upon a little boy gathering whortleberries in a hollow. The boy was Johnny Nunsuch, who had been Eustacia’s stoker at the bonfire, and, with the tendency of a minute body to gravitate towards a greater, he began hovering round Mrs. Yeobright as soon as she appeared, and trotted on beside her without perceptible consciousness of his act.
Mrs. Yeobright spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep. “‘Tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there till evening.”
“I shall,” said her small companion. “I am going to play marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o’clock, because Father comes home. Does your father come home at six too?”
“No, he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody.”
“What have made you so down? Have you seen a ooser?”
“I have seen what’s worse — a woman’s face looking at me through a windowpane.”
“Is that a bad sight?”
“Yes. It is always a bad sight to see a woman looking out at a weary wayfarer and not letting her in.”
“Once when I went to Throope Great Pond to catch effets I seed myself looking up at myself, and I was frightened and jumped back like anything.”
...”If they had only shown signs of meeting my advances halfway how well it might have been done! But there is no chance. Shut out! She must have set him against me. Can there be beautiful bodies without hearts inside? I think so. I would not have done it against a neighbour’s cat on such a fiery day as this!”
“What is it you say?”
“Never again — never! Not even if they send for me!”
“You must be a very curious woman to talk like that.”
“O no, not at all,” she said, returning to the boy’s prattle. “Most people who grow up and have children talk as I do. When you grow up your mother will talk as I do too.”
“I hope she won’t; because ‘tis very bad to talk nonsense.”
“Yes, child; it is nonsense, I suppose. Are you not nearly spent with the heat?”
“Yes. But not so much as you be.”
“How do you know?”
“Your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-down-like.”
“Ah, I am exhausted from inside.”
“Why do you, every time you take a step, go like this?” The child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp of an invalid.
“Because I have a burden which is more than I can bear.”
The little boy remained silently pondering, and they tottered on side by side until more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when Mrs. Yeobright, whose weakness plainly increased, said to him, “I must sit down here to rest.”
When she had seated herself he looked long in her face and said, “How funny you draw your breath — like a lamb when you drive him till he’s nearly done for. Do you always draw your breath like that?”
“Not always.” Her voice was now so lo
w as to be scarcely above a whisper.
“You will go to sleep there, I suppose, won’t you? You have shut your eyes already.”
“No. I shall not sleep much till — another day, and then I hope to have a long, long one — very long. Now can you tell me if Rimsmoor Pond is dry this summer?”
“Rimsmoor Pond is, but Oker’s Pool isn’t, because he is deep, and is never dry — ’tis just over there.”
“Is the water clear?”
“Yes, middling — except where the heath-croppers walk into it.”
“Then, take this, and go as fast as you can, and dip me up the clearest you can find. I am very faint.”
She drew from the small willow reticule that she carried in her hand an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle; it was one of half a dozen of the same sort lying in the reticule, which she had preserved ever since her childhood, and had brought with her today as a small present for Clym and Eustacia.
The boy started on his errand, and soon came back with the water, such as it was. Mrs. Yeobright attempted to drink, but it was so warm as to give her nausea, and she threw it away. Afterwards she still remained sitting, with her eyes closed.
The boy waited, played near her, caught several of the little brown butterflies which abounded, and then said as he waited again, “I like going on better than biding still. Will you soon start again?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wish I might go on by myself,” he resumed, fearing, apparently, that he was to be pressed into some unpleasant service. “Do you want me any more, please?”
Mrs. Yeobright made no reply.
“What shall I tell Mother?” the boy continued.
“Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son.”
Before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful glance, as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsaking her thus. He gazed into her face in a vague, wondering manner, like that of one examining some strange old manuscript the key to whose characters is undiscoverable. He was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult quarters hither-to deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond him to decide. He lowered his eyes and went on without another word. Before he had gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except that she was a woman who had sat down to rest.
Mrs. Yeobright’s exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with long breaks between. The sun had now got far to the west of south and stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand in hand, waiting to consume her. With the departure of the boy all visible animation disappeared from the landscape, though the intermittent husky notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of furze were enough to show that amid the prostration of the larger animal species an unseen insect world was busy in all the fullness of life.
In two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole distance from Alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of shepherd’s-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the perfumed mat it formed there. In front of her a colony of ants had established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a never-ending and heavy-laden throng. To look down upon them was like observing a city street from the top of a tower. She remembered that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same spot — doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these which walked there now. She leant back to obtain more thorough rest, and the soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her eyes as the thyme was to her head. While she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. He had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs and his breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. Up in the zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned; and she wished that she could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then.
But, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should soon cease to ruminate upon her own condition. Had the track of her next thought been marked by a streak in the air, like the path of a meteor, it would have shown a direction contrary to the heron’s, and have descended to the eastward upon the roof of Clym’s house.
CHAPTER 7
The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends
He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and looked around. Eustacia was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though she held a book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time.
“Well, indeed!” said Clym, brushing his eyes with his hands. “How soundly I have slept! I have had such a tremendous dream, too — one I shall never forget.”
“I thought you had been dreaming,” said she.
“Yes. It was about my mother. I dreamt that I took you to her house to make up differences, and when we got there we couldn’t get in, though she kept on crying to us for help. However, dreams are dreams. What o’clock is it, Eustacia?”
“Half-past two.”
“So late, is it? I didn’t mean to stay so long. By the time I have had something to eat it will be after three.”
“Ann is not come back from the village, and I thought I would let you sleep on till she returned.”
Clym went to the window and looked out. Presently he said, musingly, “Week after week passes, and yet Mother does not come. I thought I should have heard something from her long before this.”
Misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course of expression in Eustacia’s dark eyes. She was face to face with a monstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of it by postponement.
“I must certainly go to Blooms-End soon,” he continued, “and I think I had better go alone.” He picked up his leggings and gloves, threw them down again, and added, “As dinner will be so late today I will not go back to the heath, but work in the garden till the evening, and then, when it will be cooler, I will walk to Blooms-End. I am quite sure that if I make a little advance Mother will be willing to forget all. It will be rather late before I can get home, as I shall not be able to do the distance either way in less than an hour and a half. But you will not mind for one evening, dear? What are you thinking of to make you look so abstracted?”
“I cannot tell you,” she said heavily. “I wish we didn’t live here, Clym. The world seems all wrong in this place.”
“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 ha
ving 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.