II
A Lurid Light Breaks In upon a Darkened Understanding
Clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. His strengthreturned, and a month after the visit of Thomasin he might have beenseen walking about the garden. Endurance and despair, equanimity andgloom, the tints of health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdlyin his face. He was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past thatrelated to his mother; and though Eustacia knew that he was thinkingof it none the less, she was only too glad to escape the topic ever tobring it up anew. When his mind had been weaker his heart had led himto speak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sankinto taciturnity.
One evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedlyspudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner ofthe house and came up to him.
"Christian, isn't it?" said Clym. "I am glad you have found me out.I shall soon want you to go to Blooms-End and assist me in puttingthe house in order. I suppose it is all locked up as I left it?"
"Yes, Mister Clym."
"Have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?"
"Yes, without a drop o' rain, thank God. But I was coming to tell 'eeof something else which is quite different from what we have latelyhad in the family. I am sent by the rich gentleman at the Woman, thatwe used to call the landlord, to tell 'ee that Mrs. Wildeve is doingwell of a girl, which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon,or a few minutes more or less; and 'tis said that expecting of thisincrease is what have kept 'em there since they came into theirmoney."
"And she is getting on well, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Only Mr. Wildeve is twanky because 'tisn't a boy--that'swhat they say in the kitchen, but I was not supposed to notice that."
"Christian, now listen to me."
"Yes, sure, Mr. Yeobright."
"Did you see my mother the day before she died?"
"No, I did not."
Yeobright's face expressed disappointment.
"But I zeed her the morning of the same day she died."
Clym's look lighted up. "That's nearer still to my meaning," he said.
"Yes, I know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'I be going to see him,Christian; so I shall not want any vegetables brought in for dinner.'"
"See whom?"
"See you. She was going to your house, you understand."
Yeobright regarded Christian with intense surprise. "Why did younever mention this?" he said. "Are you sure it was my house she wascoming to?"
"O yes. I didn't mention it because I've never zeed you lately. Andas she didn't get there it was all nought, and nothing to tell."
"And I have been wondering why she should have walked in the heathon that hot day! Well, did she say what she was coming for? It is athing, Christian, I am very anxious to know."
"Yes, Mister Clym. She didn't say it to me, though I think she did toone here and there."
"Do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?"
"There is one man, please, sir, but I hope you won't mention my nameto him, as I have seen him in strange places, particular in dreams.One night last summer he glared at me like Famine and Sword, and itmade me feel so low that I didn't comb out my few hairs for two days.He was standing, as it might be, Mister Yeobright, in the middle ofthe path to Mistover, and your mother came up, looking as pale--"
"Yes, when was that?"
"Last summer, in my dream."
"Pooh! Who's the man?"
"Diggory, the reddleman. He called upon her and sat with her theevening before she set out to see you. I hadn't gone home from workwhen he came up to the gate."
"I must see Venn--I wish I had known it before," said Clym anxiously."I wonder why he has not come to tell me?"
"He went out of Egdon Heath the next day, so would not be likely toknow you wanted him."
"Christian," said Clym, "you must go and find Venn. I am otherwiseengaged, or I would go myself. Find him at once, and tell him I wantto speak to him."
"I am a good hand at hunting up folk by day," said Christian, lookingdubiously round at the declining light; "but as to nighttime, neveris such a bad hand as I, Mister Yeobright."
"Search the heath when you will, so that you bring him soon. Bringhim tomorrow, if you can."
Christian then departed. The morrow came, but no Venn. In theevening Christian arrived, looking very weary. He had been searchingall day, and had heard nothing of the reddleman.
"Inquire as much as you can tomorrow without neglecting your work,"said Yeobright. "Don't come again till you have found him."
The next day Yeobright set out for the old house at Blooms-End, which,with the garden, was now his own. His severe illness had hindered allpreparations for his removal thither; but it had become necessarythat he should go and overlook its contents, as administrator to hismother's little property; for which purpose he decided to pass thenext night on the premises.
He journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in the slow walkof one who has been awakened from a stupefying sleep. It was earlyafternoon when he reached the valley. The expression of the place,the tone of the hour, were precisely those of many such occasions indays gone by; and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusionthat she, who was there no longer, would come out to welcome him.The garden gate was locked and the shutters were closed, just as hehimself had left them on the evening after the funeral. He unlockedthe gate, and found that a spider had already constructed a large web,tying the door to the lintel, on the supposition that it was neverto be opened again. When he had entered the house and flung backthe shutters he set about his task of overhauling the cupboards andclosets, burning papers, and considering how best to arrange the placefor Eustacia's reception, until such time as he might be in a positionto carry out his long-delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive.
As he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined for thealterations which would have to be made in the time-honouredfurnishing of his parents and grandparents, to suit Eustacia's modernideas. The gaunt oak-cased clock, with the picture of the Ascensionon the door-panel and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes on the base;his grandmother's corner cupboard with the glass door, through whichthe spotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea-trays;the hanging fountain with the brass tap--whither would these venerablearticles have to be banished?
He noticed that the flowers in the window had died for want of water,and he placed them out upon the ledge, that they might be taken away.While thus engaged he heard footsteps on the gravel without, andsomebody knocked at the door.
Yeobright opened it, and Venn was standing before him.
"Good morning," said the reddleman. "Is Mrs. Yeobright at home?"
Yeobright looked upon the ground. "Then you have not seen Christianor any of the Egdon folks?" he said.
"No. I have only just returned after a long stay away. I called herethe day before I left."
"And you have heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"My mother is--dead."
"Dead!" said Venn mechanically.
"Her home now is where I shouldn't mind having mine."
Venn regarded him, and then said, "If I didn't see your face I couldnever believe your words. Have you been ill?"
"I had an illness."
"Well, the change! When I parted from her a month ago everythingseemed to say that she was going to begin a new life."
"And what seemed came true."
"You say right, no doubt. Trouble has taught you a deeper vein oftalk than mine. All I meant was regarding her life here. She hasdied too soon."
"Perhaps through my living too long. I have had a bitter experienceon that score this last month, Diggory. But come in; I have beenwanting to see you."
He conducted the reddleman into the large room where the dancing hadtaken place the previous Christmas; and they sat down in the settletogether. "There's the cold fireplace, you see," said Clym. "Whenthat half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive!Litt
le has been changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creepslike a snail."
"How came she to die?" said Venn.
Yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness and death, andcontinued: "After this no kind of pain will ever seem more thanan indisposition to me.--I began saying that I wanted to ask yousomething, but I stray from subjects like a drunken man. I am anxiousto know what my mother said to you when she last saw you. You talkedwith her a long time, I think?"
"I talked with her more than half an hour."
"About me?"
"Yes. And it must have been on account of what we said that she wason the heath. Without question she was coming to see you."
"But why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly againstme? There's the mystery."
"Yet I know she quite forgave 'ee."
"But, Diggory--would a woman, who had quite forgiven her son, say,when she felt herself ill on the way to his house, that she wasbroken-hearted because of his ill-usage? Never!"
"What I know is that she didn't blame you at all. She blamed herselffor what had happened, only herself. I had it from her own lips."
"You had it from her lips that I had NOT ill-treated her; and at thesame time another had it from her lips that I HAD ill-treated her?My mother was no impulsive woman who changed her opinion every hourwithout reason. How can it be, Venn, that she should have told suchdifferent stories in close succession?"
"I cannot say. It is certainly odd, when she had forgiven you, andhad forgiven your wife, and was going to see ye on purpose to makefriends."
"If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was thisincomprehensible thing!... Diggory, if we, who remain alive, were onlyallowed to hold conversation with the dead--just once, a bare minute,even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison--what wemight learn! How many who now ride smiling would hide their heads! Andthis mystery--I should then be at the bottom of it at once. But thegrave has for ever shut her in; and how shall it be found out now?"
No reply was returned by his companion, since none could be given; andwhen Venn left, a few minutes later, Clym had passed from the dullnessof sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude.
He continued in the same state all the afternoon. A bed was made upfor him in the same house by a neighbour, that he might not have toreturn again the next day; and when he retired to rest in the desertedplace it was only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the samethoughts. How to discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed aquery of more importance than highest problems of the living. Therewas housed in his memory a vivid picture of the face of a little boyas he entered the hovel where Clym's mother lay. The round eyes,eager gaze, the piping voice which enunciated the words, had operatedlike stilettos on his brain.
A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning newparticulars; though it might be quite unproductive. To probe achild's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which thechild had seen and understood, but to get at those which were intheir nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obviouschannel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There wasnothing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to dropinto the abyss of undiscoverable things.
It was about daybreak when he had reached this decision, and heat once arose. He locked up the house and went out into the greenpatch which merged in heather further on. In front of the whitegarden-palings the path branched into three like a broad-arrow. Theroad to the right led to the Quiet Woman and its neighbourhood; themiddle track led to Mistover Knap; the left-hand track led overthe hill to another part of Mistover, where the child lived. Oninclining into the latter path Yeobright felt a creeping chilliness,familiar enough to most people, and probably caused by the unsunnedmorning air. In after days he thought of it as a thing of singularsignificance.
When Yeobright reached the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, the mother of theboy he sought, he found that the inmates were not yet astir. But inupland hamlets the transition from a-bed to abroad is surprisinglyswift and easy. There no dense partition of yawns and toilets divideshumanity by night from humanity by day. Yeobright tapped at the upperwindow-sill, which he could reach with his walking-stick; and in threeor four minutes the woman came down.
It was not till this moment that Clym recollected her to be the personwho had behaved so barbarously to Eustacia. It partly explained theinsuavity with which the woman greeted him. Moreover, the boy hadbeen ailing again; and Susan now, as ever since the night when he hadbeen pressed into Eustacia's service at the bonfire, attributed hisindispositions to Eustacia's influence as a witch. It was one ofthose sentiments which lurk like moles underneath the visible surfaceof manners, and may have been kept alive by Eustacia's entreaty to thecaptain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute Susan for thepricking in church, to let the matter drop; which he accordingly haddone.
Yeobright overcame his repugnance, for Susan had at least borne hismother no ill-will. He asked kindly for the boy; but her manner didnot improve.
"I wish to see him," continued Yeobright, with some hesitation; "toask him if he remembers anything more of his walk with my mother thanwhat he has previously told."
She regarded him in a peculiar and criticizing manner. To anybody buta half-blind man it would have said, "You want another of the knockswhich have already laid you so low."
She called the boy downstairs, asked Clym to sit down on a stool, andcontinued, "Now, Johnny, tell Mr. Yeobright anything you can call tomind."
"You have not forgotten how you walked with the poor lady on that hotday?" said Clym.
"No," said the boy.
"And what she said to you?"
The boy repeated the exact words he had used on entering the hut.Yeobright rested his elbow on the table and shaded his face with hishand; and the mother looked as if she wondered how a man could wantmore of what had stung him so deeply.
"She was going to Alderworth when you first met her?"
"No; she was coming away."
"That can't be."
"Yes; she walked along with me. I was coming away too."
"Then where did you first see her?"
"At your house."
"Attend, and speak the truth!" said Clym sternly.
"Yes, sir; at your house was where I seed her first."
Clym started up, and Susan smiled in an expectant way which did notembellish her face; it seemed to mean, "Something sinister is coming!"
"What did she do at my house?"
"She went and sat under the trees at the Devil's Bellows."
"Good God! this is all news to me!"
"You never told me this before?" said Susan.
"No, mother; because I didn't like to tell 'ee I had been so far. Iwas picking black-hearts, and went further than I meant."
"What did she do then?" said Yeobright.
"Looked at a man who came up and went into your house."
"That was myself--a furze-cutter, with brambles in his hand."
"No; 'twas not you. 'Twas a gentleman. You had gone in afore."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
"Now tell me what happened next."
"The poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the lady with blackhair looked out of the side window at her."
The boy's mother turned to Clym and said, "This is something youdidn't expect?"
Yeobright took no more notice of her than if he had been of stone."Go on, go on," he said hoarsely to the boy.
"And when she saw the young lady look out of the window the old ladyknocked again; and when nobody came she took up the furze-hook andlooked at it, and put it down again, and then she looked at thefaggot-bonds; and then she went away, and walked across to me, andblowed her breath very hard, like this. We walked on together, sheand I, and I talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much,because she couldn't blow her breath."
"O!" murmured Clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head. "Let's havemore," he said.
&
nbsp; "She couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her face was, Oso queer!"
"How was her face?"
"Like yours is now."
The woman looked at Yeobright, and beheld him colourless, in a coldsweat. "Isn't there meaning in it?" she said stealthily. "What doyou think of her now?"
"Silence!" said Clym fiercely. And, turning to the boy, "And then youleft her to die?"
"No," said the woman, quickly and angrily. "He did not leave her todie! She sent him away. Whoever says he forsook her says what's nottrue."
"Trouble no more about that," answered Clym, with a quivering mouth."What he did is a trifle in comparison with what he saw. Door keptshut, did you say? Kept shut, she looking out of window? Good heartof God!--what does it mean?"
The child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner.
"He said so," answered the mother, "and Johnny's a God-fearing boyand tells no lies."
"'Cast off by my son!' No, by my best life, dear mother, it is not so!But by your son's, your son's--May all murderesses get the tormentthey deserve!"
With these words Yeobright went forth from the little dwelling. Thepupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness, were vaguelylit with an icy shine; his mouth had passed into the phase more orless imaginatively rendered in studies of Oedipus. The strangestdeeds were possible to his mood. But they were not possible tohis situation. Instead of there being before him the pale faceof Eustacia, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only theimperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied thecataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by itsseamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man.