When Yeobright was not with Eustacia he was sitting slavishly over
his books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. These meetings
were carried on with the greatest secrecy.
One afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to Thomasin.
He could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that
something had happened.
"I have been told an incomprehensible thing," she said mournfully.
"The captain has let out at the Woman that you and Eustacia Vye are
engaged to be married."
"We are," said Yeobright. "But it may not be yet for a very long
time."
"I should hardly think it WOULD be yet for a very long time! You will
take her to Paris, I suppose?" She spoke with weary hopelessness.
"I am not going back to Paris."
"What will you do with a wife, then?"
"Keep a school in Budmouth, as I have told you."
"That's incredible! The place is overrun with schoolmasters. You have
no special qualifications. What possible chance is there for such as
you?"
"There is no chance of getting rich. But with my system of education,
which is as new as it is true, I shall do a great deal of good to my
fellow-creatures."
"Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to be invented they
would have found it out at the universities long before this time."
"Never, mother. They cannot find it out, because their teachers don't
come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that
is, those who have had no preliminary training. My plan is one for
instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them
with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins."
"I might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from
entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would
have been bad enough; but being--"
"She is a good girl."
"So you think. A Corfu bandmaster's daughter! What has her life been?
Her surname even is not her true one."
"She is Captain Vye's granddaughter, and her father merely took her
mother's name. And she is a lady by instinct."
"They call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain."
"He was in the Royal Navy!"
"No doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. Why doesn't he
look after her? No lady would rove about the heath at all hours of
the day and night as she does. But that's not all of it. There was
something queer between her and Thomasin's husband at one time--I am
as sure of it as that I stand here."
"Eustacia has told me. He did pay her a little attention a year ago;
but there's no harm in that. I like her all the better."
"Clym," said his mother with firmness, "I have no proofs against her,
unfortunately. But if she makes you a good wife, there has never been
a bad one."
"Believe me, you are almost exasperating," said Yeobright vehemently.
"And this very day I had intended to arrange a meeting between you.
But you give me no peace; you try to thwart my wishes in everything."
"I hate the thought of any son of mine marrying badly! I wish I had
never lived to see this; it is too much for me--it is more than I
dreamt!" She turned to the window. Her breath was coming quickly, and
her lips were pale, parted, and trembling.
"Mother," said Clym, "whatever you do, you will always be dear to
me--that you know. But one thing I have a right to say, which is,
that at my age I am old enough to know what is best for me."
Mrs. Yeobright remained for some time silent and shaken, as if she
could say no more. Then she replied, "Best? Is it best for you to
injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that?
Don't you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove
that you do not know what is best for you? You give up your whole
thought--you set your whole soul--to please a woman."
"I do. And that woman is you."
"How can you treat me so flippantly!" said his mother, turning again
to him with a tearful look. "You are unnatural, Clym, and I did not
expect it."
"Very likely," said he cheerlessly. "You did not know the measure you
were going to mete me, and therefore did not know the measure that
would be returned to you again."
"You answer me; you think only of her. You stick to her in all
things."
"That proves her to be worthy. I have never yet supported what is
bad. And I do not care only for her. I care for you and for myself,
and for anything that is good. When a woman once dislikes another she
is merciless!"
"O Clym! please don't go setting down as my fault what is your
obstinate wrong-headedness. If you wished to connect yourself with an
unworthy person why did you come home here to do it? Why didn't you
do it in Paris?--it is more the fashion there. You have come only to
distress me, a lonely woman, and shorten my days! I wish that you
would bestow your presence where you bestow your love!"
Clym said huskily, "You are my mother. I will say no more--beyond
this, that I beg your pardon for having thought this my home. I will
no longer inflict myself upon you; I'll go." And he went out with
tears in his eyes.
It was a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer, and the moist
hollows of the heath had passed from their brown to their green stage.
Yeobright walked to the edge of the basin which extended down from
Mistover and Rainbarrow. By this time he was calm, and he looked
over the landscape. In the minor valleys, between the hillocks which
diversified the contour of the vale, the fresh young ferns were
luxuriantly growing up, ultimately to reach a height of five or six
feet. He descended a little way, flung himself down in a spot where a
path emerged from one of the small hollows, and waited. Hither it was
that he had promised Eustacia to bring his mother this afternoon, that
they might meet and be friends. His attempt had utterly failed.
He was in a nest of vivid green. The ferny vegetation round him,
though so abundant, was quite uniform: it was a grove of machine-made
foliage, a world of green triangles with saw-edges, and not a single
flower. The air was warm with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness
was unbroken. Lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living
things to be beheld. The scene seemed to belong to the ancient world
of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants were few, and of
the fern kind; when there was neither bud nor blossom, nothing but a
monotonous extent of leafage, amid which no bird sang.
When he had reclined for some considerable time, gloomily pondering,
he discerned above the ferns a drawn bonnet of white silk approaching
from the left, and Yeobright knew directly that it covered the head of
her he loved. His heart awoke from its apathy to a warm excitement,
and, jumping to his feet, he said aloud, "I knew she was sure to
come."
She vanished in a hollow for a few moments, and then her whole form
unfolded itself from the brake.
"Only you here?" she exclaimed, with a disappointed air, whose
hollowness was proved by her rising redness and her half-guilty low
laugh. "Where is Mrs. Yeobright?"
"She has not come," he replied in a subdued tone.
"I wish I had known that you would be here alone," she said seriously,
"and that we were going to have such an idle, pleasant time as this.
Pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to
double it. I have not thought once today of having you all to myself
this afternoon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone."
"It is indeed."
"Poor Clym!" she continued, looking tenderly into his face. "You are
sad. Something has happened at your home. Never mind what is--let us
only look at what seems."
"But, darling, what shall we do?" said he.
"Still go on as we do now--just live on from meeting to meeting,
never minding about another day. You, I know, are always thinking of
that--I can see you are. But you must not--will you, dear Clym?"
"You are just like all women. They are ever content to build their
lives on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would
fain make a globe to suit them. Listen to this, Eustacia. There is a
subject I have determined to put off no longer. Your sentiment on the
wisdom of _Carpe diem_ does not impress me today. Our present mode of
life must shortly be brought to an end."
"It is your mother!"
"It is. I love you none the less in telling you; it is only right you
should know."
"I have feared my bliss," she said, with the merest motion of her
lips. "It has been too intense and consuming."
"There is hope yet. There are forty years of work in me yet, and why
should you despair? I am only at an awkward turning. I wish people
wouldn't be so ready to think that there is no progress without
uniformity."
"Ah--your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it. Well, these
sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable
us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves
to indulge in. I have heard of people, who, upon coming suddenly into
happiness, have died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy
it. I felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but I
shall be spared it now. Let us walk on."
Clym took the hand which was already bared for him--it was a favourite
way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand--and led her through the
ferns. They formed a very comely picture of love at full flush, as
they walked along the valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down
on their right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as
poplar trees, far out across the furze and fern. Eustacia went with
her head thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and voluptuous air of
triumph pervading her eyes at having won by her own unaided self a man
who was her perfect complement in attainment, appearance, and age. On
the young man's part, the paleness of face which he had brought with
him from Paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were
less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic
sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its
original proportions. They wandered onward till they reached the
nether margin of the heath, where it became marshy and merged in
moorland.
"I must part from you here, Clym," said Eustacia.
They stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell. Everything
before them was on a perfect level. The sun, resting on the horizon
line, streamed across the ground from between copper-coloured and
lilac clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft green.
All dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread
by a purple haze, against which groups of wailing gnats shone out,
rising upwards and dancing about like sparks of fire.
"O! this leaving you is too hard to bear!" exclaimed Eustacia in a
sudden whisper of anguish. "Your mother will influence you too much;
I shall not be judged fairly, it will get afloat that I am not a good
girl, and the witch story will be added to make me blacker!"
"They cannot. Nobody dares to speak disrespectfully of you or of me."
"Oh how I wish I was sure of never losing you--that you could not be
able to desert me anyhow!"
Clym stood silent a moment. His feelings were high, the moment was
passionate, and he cut the knot.
"You shall be sure of me, darling," he said, folding her in his arms.
"We will be married at once."
"O Clym!"
"Do you agree to it?"
"If--if we can."
"We certainly can, both being of full age. And I have not followed my
occupation all these years without having accumulated money; and if
you will agree to live in a tiny cottage somewhere on the heath, until
I take a house in Budmouth for the school, we can do it at a very
little expense."
"How long shall we have to live in the tiny cottage, Clym?"
"About six months. At the end of that time I shall have finished my
reading--yes, we will do it, and this heartaching will be over. We
shall, of course, live in absolute seclusion, and our married life
will only begin to outward view when we take the house in Budmouth,
where I have already addressed a letter on the matter. Would your
grandfather allow you?"
"I think he would--on the understanding that it should not last longer
than six months."
"I will guarantee that, if no misfortune happens."
"If no misfortune happens," she repeated slowly.
"Which is not likely. Dearest, fix the exact day."
And then they consulted on the question, and the day was chosen. It
was to be a fortnight from that time.
This was the end of their talk, and Eustacia left him. Clym watched
her as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up
with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the
sprouting sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat
of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the
beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the
nonce by the poorest blade. There was something in its oppressive
horizontality which too much reminded him of the arena of life; it
gave him a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a
single living thing under the sun.
Eustacia was now no longer the goddess but the woman to him, a being
to fight for, support, help, be maligned for. Now that he had reached
a cooler moment he would have preferred a less hasty marriage; but
the card was laid, and he determined to abide by the game. Whether
Eustacia was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly
to love long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly a ready way
of proving.