The result of that unpropitious interview was that Eustacia, instead
of passing the afternoon with her grandfather, hastily returned home
to Clym, where she arrived three hours earlier than she had been
expected.
She came indoors with her face flushed, and her eyes still showing
traces of her recent excitement. Yeobright looked up astonished; he
had never seen her in any way approaching to that state before. She
passed him by, and would have gone upstairs unnoticed, but Clym was
so concerned that he immediately followed her.
"What is the matter, Eustacia?" he said. She was standing on the
hearthrug in the bedroom, looking upon the floor, her hands clasped
in front of her, her bonnet yet unremoved. For a moment she did not
answer; and then she replied in a low voice--
"I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again!"
A weight fell like a stone upon Clym. That same morning, when Eustacia
had arranged to go and see her grandfather, Clym had expressed a
wish that she would drive down to Blooms-End and inquire for her
mother-in-law, or adopt any other means she might think fit to bring
about a reconciliation. She had set out gaily; and he had hoped for
much.
"Why is this?" he asked.
"I cannot tell--I cannot remember. I met your mother. And I will
never meet her again."
"Why?"
"What do I know about Mr. Wildeve now? I won't have wicked opinions
passed on me by anybody. O! it was too humiliating to be asked if I
had received any money from him, or encouraged him, or something of
the sort--I don't exactly know what!"
"How could she have asked you that?"
"She did."
"Then there must have been some meaning in it. What did my mother say
besides?"
"I don't know what she said, except in so far as this, that we both
said words which can never be forgiven!"
"Oh, there must be some misapprehension. Whose fault was it that her
meaning was not made clear?"
"I would rather not say. It may have been the fault of the
circumstances, which were awkward at the very least. O Clym--I cannot
help expressing it--this is an unpleasant position that you have
placed me in. But you must improve it--yes, say you will--for I hate
it all now! Yes, take me to Paris, and go on with your old occupation,
Clym! I don't mind how humbly we live there at first, if it can only
be Paris, and not Egdon Heath."
"But I have quite given up that idea," said Yeobright, with surprise.
"Surely I never led you to expect such a thing?"
"I own it. Yet there are thoughts which cannot be kept out of mind,
and that one was mine. Must I not have a voice in the matter, now I
am your wife and the sharer of your doom?"
"Well, there are things which are placed beyond the pale of
discussion; and I thought this was specially so, and by mutual
agreement."
"Clym, I am unhappy at what I hear," she said in a low voice; and her
eyes drooped, and she turned away.
This indication of an unexpected mine of hope in Eustacia's bosom
disconcerted her husband. It was the first time that he had
confronted the fact of the indirectness of a woman's movement towards
her desire. But his intention was unshaken, though he loved Eustacia
well. All the effect that her remark had upon him was a resolve to
chain himself more closely than ever to his books, so as to be the
sooner enabled to appeal to substantial results from another course
in arguing against her whim.
Next day the mystery of the guineas was explained. Thomasin paid them
a hurried visit, and Clym's share was delivered up to him by her own
hands. Eustacia was not present at the time.
"Then this is what my mother meant," exclaimed Clym. "Thomasin, do
you know that they have had a bitter quarrel?"
There was a little more reticence now than formerly in Thomasin's
manner towards her cousin. It is the effect of marriage to engender
in several directions some of the reserve it annihilates in one.
"Your mother told me," she said quietly. "She came back to my house
after seeing Eustacia."
"The worst thing I dreaded has come to pass. Was mother much
disturbed when she came to you, Thomasin?"
"Yes."
"Very much indeed?"
"Yes."
Clym leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate, and covered his
eyes with his hand.
"Don't trouble about it, Clym. They may get to be friends."
He shook his head. "Not two people with inflammable natures like
theirs. Well, what must be will be."
"One thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost."
"I would rather have lost them twice over than have had this happen."
Amid these jarring events Yeobright felt one thing to be
indispensable--that he should speedily make some show of progress in
his scholastic plans. With this view he read far into the small hours
during many nights.
One morning, after a severer strain than usual, he awoke with a
strange sensation in his eyes. The sun was shining directly upon the
window-blind, and at his first glance thitherward a sharp pain obliged
him to close his eyelids quickly. At every new attempt to look
about him the same morbid sensibility to light was manifested, and
excoriating tears ran down his cheeks. He was obliged to tie a
bandage over his brow while dressing; and during the day it could not
be abandoned. Eustacia was thoroughly alarmed. On finding that the
case was no better the next morning they decided to send to Anglebury
for a surgeon.
Towards evening he arrived, and pronounced the disease to be acute
inflammation induced by Clym's night studies, continued in spite of a
cold previously caught, which had weakened his eyes for the time.
Fretting with impatience at this interruption to a task he was so
anxious to hasten, Clym was transformed into an invalid. He was shut
up in a room from which all light was excluded, and his condition
would have been one of absolute misery had not Eustacia read to him by
the glimmer of a shaded lamp. He hoped that the worst would soon be
over; but at the surgeon's third visit he learnt to his dismay that
although he might venture out of doors with shaded eyes in the course
of a month, all thought of pursuing his work, or of reading print of
any description, would have to be given up for a long time to come.
One week and another week wore on, and nothing seemed to lighten the
gloom of the young couple. Dreadful imaginings occurred to Eustacia,
but she carefully refrained from uttering them to her husband. Suppose
he should become blind, or, at all events, never recover sufficient
strength of sight to engage in an occupation which would be congenial
to her feelings, and conduce to her removal from this lonely dwelling
among the hills? That dream of beautiful Paris was not likely to
cohere into substance in the presence of this misfortune. As day after
day passed by, and he got no better, her mind ran more and more in
this mournful groove, and she would go away from him into the garden
and weep despairing tears.
Yeobright thought he would send for his mother; and then he thought
he would not. Knowledge of his state could only make her the more
unhappy; and the seclusion of their life was such that she would
hardly be likely to learn the news except through a special messenger.
Endeavouring to take the trouble as philosophically as possible, he
waited on till the third week had arrived, when he went into the open
air for the first time since the attack. The surgeon visited him
again at this stage, and Clym urged him to express a distinct opinion.
The young man learnt with added surprise that the date at which he
might expect to resume his labours was as uncertain as ever, his eyes
being in that peculiar state which, though affording him sight enough
for walking about, would not admit of their being strained upon any
definite object without incurring the risk of reproducing ophthalmia
in its acute form.
Clym was very grave at the intelligence, but not despairing. A quiet
firmness, and even cheerfulness, took possession of him. He was
not to be blind; that was enough. To be doomed to behold the world
through smoked glass for an indefinite period was bad enough, and
fatal to any kind of advance; but Yeobright was an absolute stoic in
the face of mishaps which only affected his social standing; and,
apart from Eustacia, the humblest walk of life would satisfy him if
it could be made to work in with some form of his culture scheme. To
keep a cottage night-school was one such form; and his affliction did
not master his spirit as it might otherwise have done.
He walked through the warm sun westward into those tracts of Egdon
with which he was best acquainted, being those lying nearer to his old
home. He saw before him in one of the valleys the gleaming of whetted
iron, and advancing, dimly perceived that the shine came from the
tool of a man who was cutting furze. The worker recognized Clym, and
Yeobright learnt from the voice that the speaker was Humphrey.
Humphrey expressed his sorrow at Clym's condition, and added; "Now, if
yours was low-class work like mine, you could go on with it just the
same."
"Yes, I could," said Yeobright musingly. "How much do you get for
cutting these faggots?"
"Half-a-crown a hundred, and in these long days I can live very well
on the wages."
During the whole of Yeobright's walk home to Alderworth he was lost
in reflections which were not of an unpleasant kind. On his coming up
to the house Eustacia spoke to him from the open window, and he went
across to her.
"Darling," he said, "I am much happier. And if my mother were
reconciled to me and to you I should, I think, be happy quite."
"I fear that will never be," she said, looking afar with her beautiful
stormy eyes. "How CAN you say 'I am happier,' and nothing changed?"
"It arises from my having at last discovered something I can do, and
get a living at, in this time of misfortune."
"Yes?"
"I am going to be a furze and turf-cutter."
"No, Clym!" she said, the slight hopefulness previously apparent in
her face going off again, and leaving her worse than before.
"Surely I shall. Is it not very unwise in us to go on spending the
little money we've got when I can keep down expenditure by an honest
occupation? The outdoor exercise will do me good, and who knows but
that in a few months I shall be able to go on with my reading again?"
"But my grandfather offers to assist us, if we require assistance."
"We don't require it. If I go furze-cutting we shall be fairly well
off."
"In comparison with slaves, and the Israelites in Egypt, and such
people!" A bitter tear rolled down Eustacia's face, which he did not
see. There had been _nonchalance_ in his tone, showing her that he
felt no absolute grief at a consummation which to her was a positive
horror.
The very next day Yeobright went to Humphrey's cottage, and borrowed
of him leggings, gloves, a whet-stone, and a hook, to use till he
should be able to purchase some for himself. Then he sallied forth
with his new fellow-labourer and old acquaintance, and selecting a
spot where the furze grew thickest he struck the first blow in his
adopted calling. His sight, like the wings in "Rasselas," though
useless to him for his grand purpose, sufficed for this strait, and
he found that when a little practice should have hardened his palms
against blistering he would be able to work with ease.
Day after day he rose with the sun, buckled on his leggings, and went
off to the rendezvous with Humphrey. His custom was to work from four
o'clock in the morning till noon; then, when the heat of the day was
at its highest, to go home and sleep for an hour or two; afterwards
coming out again and working till dusk at nine.
This man from Paris was now so disguised by his leather accoutrements,
and by the goggles he was obliged to wear over his eyes, that his
closest friend might have passed by without recognizing him. He was
a brown spot in the midst of an expanse of olive-green gorse, and
nothing more. Though frequently depressed in spirit when not actually
at work, owing to thoughts of Eustacia's position and his mother's
estrangement, when in the full swing of labour he was cheerfully
disposed and calm.
His daily life was of a curious microscopic sort, his whole world
being limited to a circuit of a few feet from his person. His
familiars were creeping and winged things, and they seemed to enroll
him in their band. Bees hummed around his ears with an intimate
air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such
numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. The strange amber-coloured
butterflies which Egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere,
quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and
sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up
and down. Tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet,
falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskilful
acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy
flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. Huge
flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage
state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. In and
out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and
yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding
of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. Litters of young
rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the
hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed
ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins
could be seen. None of them feared him.
The monotony of his occupation soothed him, and was in itself a
pleasure. A forced limitation of effort offered a justification of
homely courses to an unambitious man, whose conscience would hardly
have allowed him to remain in such obscurity while his powers were
unimpeded. Hence Yeobright sometimes sang to himself, and when obliged
to accompany Humphrey in search of brambles for faggot-bonds he would
amuse his companion with sketches of Parisian life and character, and
so while away the time.
On one of these warm afternoons Eustacia walked out alone in the
direction of Yeobright's place of work. He was busily chopping away
at the furze, a long row of faggots which stretched downward from his
position representing the labour of the day. He did not observe her
approach, and she stood close to him, and heard his undercurrent of
song. It shocked her. To see him there, a poor afflicted man, earning
money by the sweat of his brow, had at first moved her to tears; but
to hear him sing and not at all rebel against an occupation which,
however satisfactory to himself, was degrading to her, as an educated
lady-wife, wounded her through. Unconscious of her presence, he still
went on singing:--
"Le point du jour
À nos bosquets rend toute leur parure;
Flore est plus belle à son retour;
L'oiseau reprend doux chant d'amour;
Tout célèbre dans la nature
Le point du jour.
"Le point du jour
Cause parfois, cause douleur extrême;
Que l'espace des nuits est court
Pour le berger brûlant d'amour,
Forcé de quitter ce qu'il aime
Au point du jour!"
It was bitterly plain to Eustacia that he did not care much about
social failure; and the proud fair woman bowed her head and wept in
sick despair at thought of the blasting effect upon her own life of
that mood and condition in him. Then she came forward.
"I would starve rather than do it!" she exclaimed vehemently. "And
you can sing! I will go and live with my grandfather again!"
"Eustacia! I did not see you, though I noticed something moving," he
said gently. He came forward, pulled off his huge leather glove, and
took her hand. "Why do you speak in such a strange way? It is only a
little old song which struck my fancy when I was in Paris, and now
just applies to my life with you. Has your love for me all died,
then, because my appearance is no longer that of a fine gentleman?"
"Dearest, you must not question me unpleasantly, or it may make me
not love you."
"Do you believe it possible that I would run the risk of doing that?"
"Well, you follow out your own ideas, and won't give in to mine when
I wish you to leave off this shameful labour. Is there anything you
dislike in me that you act so contrarily to my wishes? I am your
wife, and why will you not listen? Yes, I am your wife indeed!"
"I know what that tone means."
"What tone?"
"The tone in which you said, 'Your wife indeed.' It meant, 'Your wife,
worse luck.'"
"It is hard in you to probe me with that remark. A woman may have
reason, though she is not without heart, and if I felt 'worse luck,'
it was no ignoble feeling--it was only too natural. There, you see
that at any rate I do not attempt untruths. Do you remember how,
before we were married, I warned you that I had not good wifely
qualities?"
"You mock me to say that now. On that point at least the only noble
course would be to hold your tongue, for you are still queen of me,
Eustacia, though I may no longer be king of you."
"You are my husband. Does not that content you?"
"Not unless you are my wife without regret."
"I cannot answer you. I remember saying that I should be a serious
matter on your hands."
"Yes, I saw that."
"Then you were too quick to see! No true lover would have seen any
such thing; you are too severe upon me, Clym--I don't like your
speaking so at all."
"Well, I married you in spite of it, and don't regret doing so. How
cold you seem this afternoon! and yet I used to think there never was
a warmer heart than yours."
"Yes, I fear we are cooling--I see it as well as you," she sighed
mournfully. "And how madly we loved two months ago! You were never
tired of contemplating me, nor I of contemplating you. Who could have
thought then that by this time my eyes would not seem so very bright
to yours, nor your lips so very sweet to mine? Two months--is it
possible? Yes, 'tis too true!"
"You sigh, dear, as if you were sorry for it; and that's a hopeful
sign."
"No. I don't sigh for that. There are other things for me to sigh
for, or any other woman in my place."
"That your chances in life are ruined by marrying in haste an
unfortunate man?"
"Why will you force me, Clym, to say bitter things? I deserve pity as
much as you. As much?--I think I deserve it more. For you can sing!
It would be a strange hour which should catch me singing under such a
cloud as this! Believe me, sweet, I could weep to a degree that would
astonish and confound such an elastic mind as yours. Even had you
felt careless about your own affliction, you might have refrained from
singing out of sheer pity for mine. God! if I were a man in such a
position I would curse rather than sing."
Yeobright placed his hand upon her arm. "Now, don't you suppose, my
inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in high Promethean fashion,
against the gods and fate as well as you. I have felt more steam and
smoke of that sort than you have ever heard of. But the more I see of
life the more do I perceive that there is nothing particularly great
in its greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small
in mine of furze-cutting. If I feel that the greatest blessings
vouchsafed to us are not very valuable, how can I feel it to be any
great hardship when they are taken away? So I sing to pass the time.
Have you indeed lost all tenderness for me, that you begrudge me a
few cheerful moments?"
"I have still some tenderness left for you."
"Your words have no longer their old flavour. And so love dies with
good fortune!"
"I cannot listen to this, Clym--it will end bitterly," she said in a
broken voice. "I will go home."