LITMIR.BIZ

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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      When they had withdrawn from the neighbourhood of the shed she said huskily, “I am to blame for this.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 Five

      The Discovery

       Table of Contents

      Chapter 1

      “Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery”

       Table of Contents

      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

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