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Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Return of the Native




"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 upon 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
some one. "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 FIFTH
THE DISCOVERY


I

"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 for ever!"

"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.

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