The Return of the Native

7--The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends

He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and lookedaround. Eustacia was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though she helda book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time.

”Well, indeed!” said Clym, brushing his eyes with his hands. ”Howsoundly I have slept! I have had such a tremendous dream, too--one Ishall 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 tomake up differences, and when we got there we couldn't get in, thoughshe kept on crying to us for help. However, dreams are dreams. Whato'clock is it, Eustacia?”

”Half-past two.”

”So late, is it? I didn't mean to stay so long. By the time I have hadsomething to eat it will be after three.”

”Ann is not come back from the village, and I thought I would let yousleep 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 Ishould have heard something from her long before this.”

Misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course ofexpression in Eustacia's dark eyes. She was face to face witha monstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of it bypostponement.

”I must certainly go to Blooms-End soon,” he continued, ”and I think Ihad better go alone.” He picked up his leggings and gloves, threw themdown again, and added, ”As dinner will be so late today I will not goback 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 thatif I make a little advance Mother will be willing to forget all. It willbe rather late before I can get home, as I shall not be able to do thedistance either way in less than an hour and a half. But you will notmind for one evening, dear? What are you thinking of to make you look soabstracted?”

”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-Endlately. I hope so. But probably not, as she is, I believe, expecting tobe confined in a month or so. I wish I had thought of that before. PoorMother 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 youagree 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 everyprevious time that I have proposed it you have refused?”

”I cannot explain further than that I should like to see her alonebefore you go,” she answered, with an impatient move of her head, andlooking at him with an anxiety more frequently seen upon those of asanguine temperament than upon such as herself.

”Well, it is very odd that just when I had decided to go myself youshould want to do what I proposed long ago. If I wait for you to gotomorrow another day will be lost; and I know I shall be unable to restanother 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 Ishall 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 letevents fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to direct them.

Clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor stoleover Eustacia for the remainder of the afternoon, which her husbandattributed to the heat of the weather.

In the evening he set out on the journey. Although the heat of summerwas yet intense the days had considerably shortened, and before he hadadvanced a mile on his way all the heath purples, browns, and greenshad merged in a uniform dress without airiness or graduation, and brokenonly by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz sandshowed the entrance to a rabbit burrow, or where the white flints of afootpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost every one ofthe isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a nighthawkrevealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as hecould hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling roundthe bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginningto whirr again. At each brushing of Clym's feet white millermothsflew into the air just high enough to catch upon their dusty wings themellowed light from the west, which now shone across the depressions andlevels of the ground without falling thereon to light them up.

Yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all wouldsoon be well. Three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfume waswafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment to inhale thefamiliar scent. It was the place at which, four hours earlier,his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered withshepherd's-thyme. While he stood a sound between a breathing and a moansuddenly reached his ears.

He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared there savethe 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 recumbentfigure almost close to his feet.

Among the different possibilities as to the person's individuality theredid not for a moment occur to Yeobright that it might be one of his ownfamily. Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out of doors atthese times, to save a long journey homeward and back again; butClym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the form wasfeminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave. But hewas not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother till he stoopedand beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.

His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguishwhich would have escaped him died upon his lips. During the momentaryinterval that elapsed before he became conscious that something must bedone all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he andhis mother were as when he was a child with her many years ago on thisheath at hours similar to the present. Then he awoke to activity; andbending yet lower he found that she still breathed, and that her breaththough 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 hadcaused was not remembered by Yeobright, and to him the present joinedcontinuously with that friendly past that had been their experiencebefore the division.

She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; and thenClym strove to consider how best to move her, as it would be necessaryto get her away from the spot before the dews were intense. He wasable-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, wentonward with his load. The air was now completely cool; but whenever hepassed over a sandy patch of ground uncarpeted with vegetation there wasreflected from its surface into his face the heat which it had imbibedduring the day. At the beginning of his undertaking he had thoughtbut little of the distance which yet would have to be traversed beforeBlooms-End could be reached; but though he had slept that afternoon hesoon began to feel the weight of his burden. Thus he proceeded, likeAeneas with his father; the bats circling round his head, nightjarsflapping their wings within a yard of his face, and not a human beingwithin call.

While he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother exhibited signsof restlessness under the constraint of being borne along, as if hisarms were irksome to her. He lowered her upon his knees and lookedaround. The point they had now reached, though far from any road, wasnot 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 hedetermined to direct his steps. As soon as he arrived he laid her downcarefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his pocketknifean armful of the dryest fern. Spreading this within the shed, which wasentirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon then he ranwith all his might towards the dwelling of Fairway.

Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the brokenbreathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began to animate theline between heath and sky. In a few moments Clym arrived with Fairway,Humphrey, and Susan Nunsuch; Olly Dowden, who had chanced to be atFairway's, Christian and Grandfer Cantle following helter-skelterbehind. They had brought a lantern and matches, water, a pillow, and afew other articles which had occurred to their minds in the hurry of themoment. Sam had been despatched back again for brandy, and a boy broughtFairway's pony, upon which he rode off to the nearest medical man, withdirections to call at Wildeve's on his way, and inform Thomasin that heraunt was unwell.

Sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered by the light ofthe lantern; after which she became sufficiently conscious to signifyby signs that something was wrong with her foot. Olly Dowden at lengthunderstood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated. It was swollenand red. Even as they watched the red began to assume a more lividcolour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller than apea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose abovethe 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 justsuch a bite. O, my poor mother!”

”It was my father who was bit,” said Sam. ”And there's only one way tocure it. You must rub the place with the fat of other adders, and theonly 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 aboutit. But we can do nothing else till the doctor comes.”

”'Tis a sure cure,” said Olly Dowden, with emphasis. ”I've used it whenI 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 atthe end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his handwent out into the heath. Clym had by this time lit a small fire, anddespatched Susan Nunsuch for a frying pan. Before she had returned Samcame in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in thecleft 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 theydon'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 itssmall black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet pattern on its backseemed 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 knowbut that something of the old serpent in God's garden, that gied theapple to the young woman with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakesstill? Look at his eye--for all the world like a villainous sort ofblack currant. 'Tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us! There's folks inheath who've been overlooked already. I will never kill another adder aslong as I live.”

”Well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't help it,” saidGrandfer Cantle. ”'Twould have saved me many a brave danger in my time.”

”I fancy I heard something outside the shed,” said Christian. ”I wishtroubles would come in the daytime, for then a man could show hiscourage, and hardly beg for mercy of the most broomstick old woman heshould 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 tookup and tried for the manslaughter of a woman?”

”No, they couldn't bring it in as that,” said Sam, ”unless they couldprove we had been poachers at some time of our lives. But she'll fetchround.”

”Now, if I had been stung by ten adders I should hardly have lost aday's work for't,” said Grandfer Cantle. ”Such is my spirit when I am onmy mettle. But perhaps 'tis natural in a man trained for war. Yes, I'vegone through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me after Ijoined the Locals in four.” He shook his head and smiled at a mentalpicture of himself in uniform. ”I was always first in the mostgalliantest scrapes in my younger days!”

”I suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest foolafore,” said Fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing itwith his breath.

”D'ye think so, Timothy?” said Grandfer Cantle, coming forward toFairway's side with sudden depression in his face. ”Then a man may feelfor years that he is good solid company, and be wrong about himselfafter all?”

”Never mind that question, Grandfer. Stir your stumps and get some moresticks. 'Tis very nonsense of an old man to prattle so when life anddeath'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 theirtime; and if I were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor viol, Ishouldn't have the heart to play tunes upon 'em now.”

Susan now arrived with the frying pan, when the live adder was killedand the heads of the three taken off. The remainders, being cut intolengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissingand crackling over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from thecarcases, whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into theliquid and anointed the wound.