Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (295 page)

“Tamsin, have you heard that Eustacia is not with me now?” he said when they had sat down again.

“No,” said Thomasin, alarmed.

“And not that I have left Alderworth?”

“No. I never hear tidings from Alderworth unless you bring them. What is the matter?”

Clym in a disturbed voice related to her his visit to Susan Nunsuch’s boy, the revelation he had made, and what had resulted from his charging Eustacia with having wilfully and heartlessly done the deed. He suppressed all mention of Wildeve’s presence with her.

“All this, and I not knowing it!” murmured Thomasin in an awestruck tone, “Terrible! What could have made her — O, Eustacia! And when you found it out you went in hot haste to her? Were you too cruel? — or is she really so wicked as she seems?”

“Can a man be too cruel to his mother’s enemy?”

“I can fancy so.”

“Very well, then — I’ll admit that he can. But now what is to be done?”

“Make it up again — if a quarrel so deadly can ever be made up. I almost wish you had not told me. But do try to be reconciled. There are ways, after all, if you both wish to.”

“I don’t know that we do both wish to make it up,” said Clym. “If she had wished it, would she not have sent to me by this time?”

“You seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her.”

“True; but I have been tossed to and fro in doubt if I ought, after such strong provocation. To see me now, Thomasin, gives you no idea of what I have been; of what depths I have descended to in these few last days. O, it was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that! Can I ever forget it, or even agree to see her again?”

“She might not have known that anything serious would come of it, and perhaps she did not mean to keep Aunt out altogether.”

“She says herself that she did not. But the fact remains that keep her out she did.”

“Believe her sorry, and send for her.”

“How if she will not come?”

“It will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit to nourish enmity. But I do not think that for a moment.”

“I will do this. I will wait for a day or two longer — not longer than two days certainly; and if she does not send to me in that time I will indeed send to her. I thought to have seen Wildeve here tonight. Is he from home?”

Thomasin blushed a little. “No,” she said. “He is merely gone out for a walk.”

“Why didn’t he take you with him? The evening is fine. You want fresh air as well as he.”

“Oh, I don’t care for going anywhere; besides, there is baby.”

“Yes, yes. Well, I have been thinking whether I should not consult your husband about this as well as you,” said Clym steadily.

“I fancy I would not,” she quickly answered. “It can do no good.”

Her cousin looked her in the face. No doubt Thomasin was ignorant that her husband had any share in the events of that tragic afternoon; but her countenance seemed to signify that she concealed some suspicion or thought of the reputed tender relations between Wildeve and Eustacia in days gone by.

Clym, however, could make nothing of it, and he rose to depart, more in doubt than when he came.

“You will write to her in a day or two?” said the young woman earnestly. “I do so hope the wretched separation may come to an end.”

“I will,” said Clym; “I don’t rejoice in my present state at all.”

And he left her and climbed over the hill to Blooms-End. Before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following letter: —

MY DEAR EUSTACIA, — I must obey my heart without consulting my reason too closely. Will you come back to me? Do so, and the past shall never be mentioned. I was too severe; but O, Eustacia, the provocation! You don’t know, you never will know, what those words of anger cost me which you drew down upon yourself. All that an honest man can promise you I promise now, which is that from me you shall never suffer anything on this score again. After all the vows we have made, Eustacia, I think we had better pass the remainder of our lives in trying to keep them. Come to me, then, even if you reproach me. I have thought of your sufferings that morning on which I parted from you; I know they were genuine, and they are as much as you ought to bear. Our love must still continue. Such hearts as ours would never have been given us but to be concerned with each other. I could not ask you back at first, Eustacia, for I was unable to persuade myself that he who was with you was not there as a lover. But if you will come and explain distracting appearances I do not question that you can show your honesty to me. Why have you not come before? Do you think I will not listen to you? Surely not, when you remember the kisses and vows we exchanged under the summer moon. Return then, and you shall be warmly welcomed. I can no longer think of you to your prejudice — I am but too much absorbed in justifying you. — Your husband as ever,

CLYM.

“There,” he said, as he laid it in his desk, “that’s a good thing done. If she does not come before tomorrow night I will send it to her.”

Meanwhile, at the house he had just left Thomasin sat sighing uneasily. Fidelity to her husband had that evening induced her to conceal all suspicion that Wildeve’s interest in Eustacia had not ended with his marriage. But she knew nothing positive; and though Clym was her well-beloved cousin there was one nearer to her still.

When, a little later, Wildeve returned from his walk to Mistover, Thomasin said, “Damon, where have you been? I was getting quite frightened, and thought you had fallen into the river. I dislike being in the house by myself.”

“Frightened?” he said, touching her cheek as if she were some domestic animal. “Why, I thought nothing could frighten you. It is that you are getting proud, I am sure, and don’t like living here since we have risen above our business. Well, it is a tedious matter, this getting a new house; but I couldn’t have set about it sooner, unless our ten thousand pounds had been a hundred thousand, when we could have afforded to despise caution.”

“No — I don’t mind waiting — I would rather stay here twelve months longer than run any risk with baby. But I don’t like your vanishing so in the evenings. There’s something on your mind — I know there is, Damon. You go about so gloomily, and look at the heath as if it were somebody’s gaol instead of a nice wild place to walk in.”

He looked towards her with pitying surprise. “What, do you like Egdon Heath?” he said.

“I like what I was born near to; I admire its grim old face.”

“Pooh, my dear. You don’t know what you like.”

“I am sure I do. There’s only one thing unpleasant about Egdon.”

“What’s that?”

“You never take me with you when you walk there. Why do you wander so much in it yourself if you so dislike it?”

The inquiry, though a simple one, was plainly disconcerting, and he sat down before replying. “I don’t think you often see me there. Give an instance.”

“I will,” she answered triumphantly. “When you went out this evening I thought that as baby was asleep I would see where you were going to so mysteriously without telling me. So I ran out and followed behind you. You stopped at the place where the road forks, looked round at the bonfires, and then said, ‘Damn it, I’ll go!’ And you went quickly up the left-hand road. Then I stood and watched you.”

Wildeve frowned, afterwards saying, with a forced smile, “Well, what wonderful discovery did you make?”

“There — now you are angry, and we won’t talk of this any more.” She went across to him, sat on a footstool, and looked up in his face.

“Nonsense!” he said, “that’s how you always back out. We will go on with it now we have begun. What did you next see? I particularly want to know.”

“Don’t be like that, Damon!” she murmured. “I didn’t see anything. You vanished out of sight, and then I looked round at the bonfires and came in.”

“Perhaps this is not the only time you have dogged my steps. Are you trying to find out something bad about me?”

“Not at all! I have never done such a thing before, and I shouldn’t have done it now if words had not sometimes been dropped about you.”

“What DO you mean?” he impatiently asked.

“They say — they say you used to go to Alderworth in the evenings, and it puts into my mind what I have heard about — ”

Wildeve turned angrily and stood up in front of her. “Now,” he said, flourishing his hand in the air, “just out with it, madam! I demand to know what remarks you have heard.”

“Well, I heard that you used to be very fond of Eustacia — nothing more than that, though dropped in a bit-by-bit way. You ought not to be angry!”

He observed that her eyes were brimming with tears. “Well,” he said, “there is nothing new in that, and of course I don’t mean to be rough towards you, so you need not cry. Now, don’t let us speak of the subject any more.”

And no more was said, Thomasin being glad enough of a reason for not mentioning Clym’s visit to her that evening, and his story.

CHAPTER 7

The Night of the Sixth of November

Having resolved on flight Eustacia at times seemed anxious that something should happen to thwart her own intention. The only event that could really change her position was the appearance of Clym. The glory which had encircled him as her lover was departed now; yet some good simple quality of his would occasionally return to her memory and stir a momentary throb of hope that he would again present himself before her. But calmly considered it was not likely that such a severance as now existed would ever close up — she would have to live on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place. She had used to think of the heath alone as an uncongenial spot to be in; she felt it now of the whole world.

Towards evening on the sixth her determination to go away again revived. About four o’clock she packed up anew the few small articles she had brought in her flight from Alderworth, and also some belonging to her which had been left here; the whole formed a bundle not too large to be carried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two. The scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied downwards from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with the increase of night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there was no rain.

Eustacia could not rest indoors, having nothing more to do, and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the house she was soon to leave. In these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather’s. The door was ajar, and a riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without. As Eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria — a creature of light surrounded by an area of darkness; the moment passed, and she was absorbed in night again.

A woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and recognized her in that momentary irradiation. This was Susan herself, occupied in preparing a posset for her little boy, who, often ailing, was now seriously unwell. Susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure, and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent way.

At eight o’clock, the hour at which Eustacia had promised to signal Wildeve if ever she signalled at all, she looked around the premises to learn if the coast was clear, went to the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed bough of that fuel. This she carried to the corner of the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters were all closed, she struck a light, and kindled the furze. When it was thoroughly ablaze Eustacia took it by the stem and waved it in the air above her head till it had burned itself out.

She was gratified, if gratification were possible to such a mood, by seeing a similar light in the vicinity of Wildeve’s residence a minute or two later. Having agreed to keep watch at this hour every night, in case she should require assistance, this promptness proved how strictly he had held to his word. Four hours after the present time, that is, at midnight, he was to be ready to drive her to Budmouth, as prearranged.

Eustacia returned to the house. Supper having been got over she retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for the time to go by. The night being dark and threatening, Captain Vye had not strolled out to gossip in any cottage or to call at the inn, as was sometimes his custom on these long autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone downstairs. About ten o’clock there was a knock at the door. When the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell upon the form of Fairway.

“I was a-forced to go to Lower Mistover tonight,” he said, “and Mr. Yeobright asked me to leave this here on my way; but, faith, I put it in the lining of my hat, and thought no more about it till I got back and was hasping my gate before going to bed. So I have run back with it at once.”

He handed in a letter and went his way. The girl brought it to the captain, who found that it was directed to Eustacia. He turned it over and over, and fancied that the writing was her husband’s, though he could not be sure. However, he decided to let her have it at once if possible, and took it upstairs for that purpose; but on reaching the door of her room and looking in at the keyhole he found there was no light within, the fact being that Eustacia, without undressing, had flung herself upon the bed, to rest and gather a little strength for her coming journey. Her grandfather concluded from what he saw that he ought not to disturb her; and descending again to the parlour he placed the letter on the mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning.

At eleven o’clock he went to bed himself, smoked for some time in his bedroom, put out his light at half-past eleven, and then, as was his invariable custom, pulled up the blind before getting into bed, that he might see which way the wind blew on opening his eyes in the morning, his bedroom window commanding a view of the flagstaff and vane. Just as he had lain down he was surprised to observe the white pole of the staff flash into existence like a streak of phosphorus drawn downwards across the shade of night without. Only one explanation met this — a light had been suddenly thrown upon the pole from the direction of the house. As everybody had retired to rest the old man felt it necessary to get out of bed, open the window softly, and look to the right and left. Eustacia’s bedroom was lighted up, and it was the shine from her window which had lighted the pole. Wondering what had aroused her, he remained undecided at the window, and was thinking of fetching the letter to slip it under her door, when he heard a slight brushing of garments on the partition dividing his room from the passage.