Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (277 page)

Then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the drizzle that had so greatly transformed the scene. The ferns, among which he had lain in comfort yesterday, were dripping moisture from every frond, wetting his legs through as he brushed past; and the fur of the rabbits leaping before him was clotted into dark locks by the same watery surrounding.

He reached home damp and weary enough after his ten-mile walk. It had hardly been a propitious beginning, but he had chosen his course, and would show no swerving. The evening and the following morning were spent in concluding arrangements for his departure. To stay at home a minute longer than necessary after having once come to his determination would be, he felt, only to give new pain to his mother by some word, look, or deed.

He had hired a conveyance and sent off his goods by two o’clock that day. The next step was to get some furniture, which, after serving for temporary use in the cottage, would be available for the house at Budmouth when increased by goods of a better description. A mart extensive enough for the purpose existed at Anglebury, some miles beyond the spot chosen for his residence, and there he resolved to pass the coming night.

It now only remained to wish his mother good-bye. She was sitting by the window as usual when he came downstairs.

“Mother, I am going to leave you,” he said, holding out his hand.

“I thought you were, by your packing,” replied Mrs. Yeobright in a voice from which every particle of emotion was painfully excluded.

“And you will part friends with me?”

“Certainly, Clym.”

“I am going to be married on the twenty-fifth.”

“I thought you were going to be married.”

“And then — and then you must come and see us. You will understand me better after that, and our situation will not be so wretched as it is now.”

“I do not think it likely I shall come to see you.”

“Then it will not be my fault or Eustacia’s, Mother. Good-bye!”

He kissed her cheek, and departed in great misery, which was several hours in lessening itself to a controllable level. The position had been such that nothing more could be said without, in the first place, breaking down a barrier; and that was not to be done.

No sooner had Yeobright gone from his mother’s house than her face changed its rigid aspect for one of blank despair. After a while she wept, and her tears brought some relief. During the rest of the day she did nothing but walk up and down the garden path in a state bordering on stupefaction. Night came, and with it but little rest. The next day, with an instinct to do something which should reduce prostration to mournfulness, she went to her son’s room, and with her own hands arranged it in order, for an imaginary time when he should return again. She gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed, for they no longer charmed her.

It was a great relief when, early in the afternoon, Thomasin paid her an unexpected visit. This was not the first meeting between the relatives since Thomasin’s marriage; and past blunders having been in a rough way rectified, they could always greet each other with pleasure and ease.

The oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. It illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. In her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered creatures who lived around her home. All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. There was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. When she was musing she was a kestrel, which hangs in the air by an invisible motion of its wings. When she was in a high wind her light body was blown against trees and banks like a heron’s. When she was frightened she darted noiselessly like a kingfisher. When she was serene she skimmed like a swallow, and that is how she was moving now.

“You are looking very blithe, upon my word, Tamsie,” said Mrs. Yeobright, with a sad smile. “How is Damon?”

“He is very well.”

“Is he kind to you, Thomasin?” And Mrs. Yeobright observed her narrowly.

“Pretty fairly.”

“Is that honestly said?”

“Yes, Aunt. I would tell you if he were unkind.” She added, blushing, and with hesitation, “He — I don’t know if I ought to complain to you about this, but I am not quite sure what to do. I want some money, you know, Aunt — some to buy little things for myself — and he doesn’t give me any. I don’t like to ask him; and yet, perhaps, he doesn’t give it me because he doesn’t know. Ought I to mention it to him, Aunt?”

“Of course you ought. Have you never said a word on the matter?”

“You see, I had some of my own,” said Thomasin evasively, “and I have not wanted any of his until lately. I did just say something about it last week; but he seems — not to remember.”

“He must be made to remember. You are aware that I have a little box full of spade-guineas, which your uncle put into my hands to divide between yourself and Clym whenever I chose. Perhaps the time has come when it should be done. They can be turned into sovereigns at any moment.”

“I think I should like to have my share — that is, if you don’t mind.”

“You shall, if necessary. But it is only proper that you should first tell your husband distinctly that you are without any, and see what he will do.”

“Very well, I will....Aunt, I have heard about Clym. I know you are in trouble about him, and that’s why I have come.”

Mrs. Yeobright turned away, and her features worked in her attempt to conceal her feelings. Then she ceased to make any attempt, and said, weeping, “O Thomasin, do you think he hates me? How can he bear to grieve me so, when I have lived only for him through all these years?”

“Hate you — no,” said Thomasin soothingly. “It is only that he loves her too well. Look at it quietly — do. It is not so very bad of him. Do you know, I thought it not the worst match he could have made. Miss Vye’s family is a good one on her mother’s side; and her father was a romantic wanderer — a sort of Greek Ulysses.”

“It is no use, Thomasin; it is no use. Your intention is good; but I will not trouble you to argue. I have gone through the whole that can be said on either side times, and many times. Clym and I have not parted in anger; we have parted in a worse way. It is not a passionate quarrel that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and persistence in going wrong that he has shown. O Thomasin, he was so good as a little boy — so tender and kind!”

“He was, I know.”

“I did not think one whom I called mine would grow up to treat me like this. He spoke to me as if I opposed him to injure him. As though I could wish him ill!”

“There are worse women in the world than Eustacia Vye.”

“There are too many better that’s the agony of it. It was she, Thomasin, and she only, who led your husband to act as he did — I would swear it!”

“No,” said Thomasin eagerly. “It was before he knew me that he thought of her, and it was nothing but a mere flirtation.”

“Very well; we will let it be so. There is little use in unravelling that now. Sons must be blind if they will. Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close? Clym must do as he will — he is nothing more to me. And this is maternity — to give one’s best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised!”

“You are too unyielding. Think how many mothers there are whose sons have brought them to public shame by real crimes before you feel so deeply a case like this.”

“Thomasin, don’t lecture me — I can’t have it. It is the excess above what we expect that makes the force of the blow, and that may not be greater in their case than in mine — they may have foreseen the worst....I am wrongly made, Thomasin,” she added, with a mournful smile. “Some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. But I always was a poor, weak, one-idea’d creature — I had not the compass of heart nor the enterprise for that. Just as forlorn and stupefied as I was when my husband’s spirit flew away I have sat ever since — never attempting to mend matters at all. I was comparatively a young woman then, and I might have had another family by this time, and have been comforted by them for the failure of this one son.”

“It is more noble in you that you did not.”

“The more noble, the less wise.”

“Forget it, and be soothed, dear Aunt. And I shall not leave you alone for long. I shall come and see you every day.”

And for one week Thomasin literally fulfilled her word. She endeavoured to make light of the wedding; and brought news of the preparations, and that she was invited to be present. The next week she was rather unwell, and did not appear. Nothing had as yet been done about the guineas, for Thomasin feared to address her husband again on the subject, and Mrs. Yeobright had insisted upon this.

One day just before this time Wildeve was standing at the door of the Quiet Woman. In addition to the upward path through the heath to Rainbarrow and Mistover, there was a road which branched from the highway a short distance below the inn, and ascended to Mistover by a circuitous and easy incline. This was the only route on that side for vehicles to the captain’s retreat. A light cart from the nearest town descended the road, and the lad who was driving pulled up in front of the inn for something to drink.

“You come from Mistover?” said Wildeve.

“Yes. They are taking in good things up there. Going to be a wedding.” And the driver buried his face in his mug.

Wildeve had not received an inkling of the fact before, and a sudden expression of pain overspread his face. He turned for a moment into the passage to hide it. Then he came back again.

“Do you mean Miss Vye?” he said. “How is it — that she can be married so soon?”

“By the will of God and a ready young man, I suppose.”

“You don’t mean Mr. Yeobright?”

“Yes. He has been creeping about with her all the spring.”

“I suppose — she was immensely taken with him?”

“She is crazy about him, so their general servant of all work tells me. And that lad Charley that looks after the horse is all in a daze about it. The stun-poll has got fond-like of her.”

“Is she lively — is she glad? Going to be married so soon — well!”

“It isn’t so very soon.”

“No; not so very soon.”

Wildeve went indoors to the empty room, a curious heartache within him. He rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece and his face upon his hand. When Thomasin entered the room he did not tell her of what he had heard. The old longing for Eustacia had reappeared in his soul — and it was mainly because he had discovered that it was another man’s intention to possess her.

To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was Wildeve’s nature always. This is the true mark of the man of sentiment. Though Wildeve’s fevered feeling had not been elabourated to real poetical compass, it was of the standard sort. His might have been called the Rousseau of Egdon.

CHAPTER 7

The Morning and the Evening of a Day

The wedding morning came. Nobody would have imagined from appearances that Blooms-End had any interest in Mistover that day. A solemn stillness prevailed around the house of Clym’s mother, and there was no more animation indoors. Mrs. Yeobright, who had declined to attend the ceremony, sat by the breakfast table in the old room which communicated immediately with the porch, her eyes listlessly directed towards the open door. It was the room in which, six months earlier, the merry Christmas party had met, to which Eustacia came secretly and as a stranger. The only living thing that entered now was a sparrow; and seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly round the room, endeavoured to go out by the window, and fluttered among the pot-flowers. This roused the lonely sitter, who got up, released the bird, and went to the door. She was expecting Thomasin, who had written the night before to state that the time had come when she would wish to have the money and that she would if possible call this day.

Yet Thomasin occupied Mrs. Yeobright’s thoughts but slightly as she looked up the valley of the heath, alive with butterflies, and with grasshoppers whose husky noises on every side formed a whispered chorus. A domestic drama, for which the preparations were now being made a mile or two off, was but little less vividly present to her eyes than if enacted before her. She tried to dismiss the vision, and walked about the garden plot; but her eyes ever and anon sought out the direction of the parish church to which Mistover belonged, and her excited fancy clove the hills which divided the building from her eyes. The morning wore away. Eleven o’clock struck — could it be that the wedding was then in progress? It must be so. She went on imagining the scene at the church, which he had by this time approached with his bride. She pictured the little group of children by the gate as the pony carriage drove up in which, as Thomasin had learnt, they were going to perform the short journey. Then she saw them enter and proceed to the chancel and kneel; and the service seemed to go on.

She covered her face with her hands. “O, it is a mistake!” she groaned. “And he will rue it some day, and think of me!”

While she remained thus, overcome by her forebodings, the old clock indoors whizzed forth twelve strokes. Soon after, faint sounds floated to her ear from afar over the hills. The breeze came from that quarter, and it had brought with it the notes of distant bells, gaily starting off in a peal: one, two, three, four, five. The ringers at East Egdon were announcing the nuptials of Eustacia and her son.

“Then it is over,” she murmured. “Well, well! and life too will be over soon. And why should I go on scalding my face like this? Cry about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the whole piece. And yet we say, ‘a time to laugh!’“

Towards evening Wildeve came. Since Thomasin’s marriage Mrs. Yeobright had shown him that grim friendliness which at last arises in all such cases of undesired affinity. The vision of what ought to have been is thrown aside in sheer weariness, and browbeaten human endeavour listlessly makes the best of the fact that is. Wildeve, to do him justice, had behaved very courteously to his wife’s aunt; and it was with no surprise that she saw him enter now.