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 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
night-hawk 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 miller-moths 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 at 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.