III. The First Act in a Timeworn Drama
The afternoon was fine, and Yeobright walked on the heath for an hour with his mother. When they reached the lofty ridge which divided the valley of Blooms-End from the adjoining valley they stood still and looked round. The Quiet Woman Inn was visible on the low margin of the heath in one direction, and afar on the other hand rose Mistover Knap.
“You mean to call on Thomasin?” he inquired.
“Yes. But you need not come this time,” said his mother.
“In that case I’ll branch off here, Mother. I am going to Mistover.”
Mrs. Yeobright turned to him inquiringly.
“I am going to help them get the bucket out of the captain’s well,” he continued. “As it is so very deep I may be useful. And I should like to see this Miss Vye—not so much for her good looks as for another reason.”
“Must you go?” his mother asked.
“I thought to.”
And they parted. “There is no help for it,” murmured Clym’s mother gloomily as he withdrew. “They are sure to see each other. I wish Sam would carry his news to other houses than mine.”
Clym’s retreating figure got smaller and smaller as it rose and fell over the hillocks on his way. “He is tender-hearted,” said Mrs. Yeobright to herself while she watched him; “otherwise it would matter little. How he’s going on!”
He was, indeed, walking with a will over the furze, as straight as a line, as if his life depended upon it. His mother drew a long breath, and, abandoning the visit to Thomasin, turned back. The evening films began to make nebulous pictures of the valleys, but the high lands still were raked by the declining rays of the winter sun, which glanced on Clym as he walked forward, eyed by every rabbit and field-fare around, a long shadow advancing in front of him.
On drawing near to the furze-covered bank and ditch which fortified the captain’s dwelling he could hear voices within, signifying that operations had been already begun. At the side-entrance gate he stopped and looked over.
Half a dozen able-bodied men were standing in a line from the well-mouth, holding a rope which passed over the well-roller into the depths below. Fairway, with a piece of smaller rope round his body, made fast to one of the standards, to guard against accidents, was leaning over the opening, his right hand clasping the vertical rope that descended into the well.
“Now, silence, folks,” said Fairway.
The talking ceased, and Fairway gave a circular motion to the rope, as if he were stirring batter. At the end of a minute a dull splashing reverberated from the bottom of the well; the helical twist he had imparted to the rope had reached the grapnel below.
“Haul!” said Fairway; and the men who held the rope began to gather it over the wheel.
“I think we’ve got sommat,” said one of the haulers-in.
“Then pull steady,” said Fairway.
They gathered up more and more, till a regular dripping into the well could be heard below. It grew smarter with the increasing height of the bucket, and presently a hundred and fifty feet of rope had been pulled in.
Fairway then lit a lantern, tied it to another cord, and began lowering it into the well beside the first: Clym came forward and looked down. Strange humid leaves, which knew nothing of the seasons of the year, and quaint-natured mosses were revealed on the wellside as the lantern descended; till its rays fell upon a confused mass of rope and bucket dangling in the dank, dark air.
“We’ve only got en by the edge of the hoop—steady, for God’s sake!” said Fairway.
They pulled with the greatest gentleness, till the wet bucket appeared about two yards below them, like a dead friend come to earth again. Three or four hands were stretched out, then jerk went the rope, whizz went the wheel, the two foremost haulers fell backward, the beating of a falling body was heard, receding down the sides of the well, and a thunderous uproar arose at the bottom. The bucket was gone again.
“Damn the bucket!” said Fairway.
“Lower again,” said Sam.
“I’m as stiff as a ram’s horn stooping so long,” said Fairway, standing up and stretching himself till his joints creaked.
“Rest a few minutes, Timothy,” said Yeobright. “I’ll take your place.”
The grapnel was again lowered. Its smart impact upon the distant water reached their ears like a kiss, whereupon Yeobright knelt down, and leaning over the well began dragging the grapnel round and round as Fairway had done.
“Tie a rope round him—it is dangerous!” cried a soft and anxious voice somewhere above them.
Everybody turned. The speaker was a woman, gazing down upon the group from an upper window, whose panes blazed in the ruddy glare from the west. Her lips were parted and she appeared for the moment to forget where she was.
The rope was accordingly tied round his waist, and the work proceeded. At the next haul the weight was not heavy, and it was discovered that they had only secured a coil of the rope detached from the bucket. The tangled mass was thrown into the background. Humphrey took Yeobright’s place, and the grapnel was lowered again.
Yeobright retired to the heap of recovered rope in a meditative mood. Of the identity between the lady’s voice and that of the melancholy mummer he had not a moment’s doubt. “How thoughtful of her!” he said to himself.
Eustacia, who had reddened when she perceived the effect of her exclamation upon the group below, was no longer to be seen at the window, though Yeobright scanned it wistfully. While he stood there the men at the well succeeded in getting up the bucket without a mishap. One of them went to inquire for the captain, to learn what orders he wished to give for mending the well-tackle. The captain proved to be away from home, and Eustacia appeared at the door and came out. She had lapsed into an easy and dignified calm, far removed from the intensity of life in her words of solicitude for Clym’s safety.
“Will it be possible to draw water here tonight?” she inquired.
“No, miss; the bottom of the bucket is clean knocked out. And as we can do no more now we’ll leave off, and come again tomorrow morning.”
“No water,” she murmured, turning away.
“I can send you up some from Blooms-End,” said Clym, coming forward and raising his hat as the men retired.
Yeobright and Eustacia looked at each other for one instant, as if each had in mind those few moments during which a certain moonlight scene was common to both. With the glance the calm fixity of her features sublimed itself to an expression of refinement and warmth; it was like garish noon rising to the dignity of sunset in a couple of seconds.
“Thank you; it will hardly be necessary,” she replied.
“But if you have no water?”
“Well, it is what I call no water,” she said, blushing, and lifting her long-lashed eyelids as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. “But my grandfather calls it water enough. I’ll show you what I mean.”
She moved away a few yards, and Clym followed. When she reached the corner of the enclosure, where the steps were formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement towards the well. It incidentally showed that her apparent languor did not arise from lack of force.
Clym ascended behind her, and noticed a circular burnt patch at the top of the bank. “Ashes?” he said.
“Yes,” said Eustacia. “We had a little bonfire here last Fifth of November, and those are the marks of it.”
On that spot had stood the fire she had kindled to attract Wildeve.
“That’s the only kind of water we have,” she continued, tossing a stone into the pool, which lay on the outside of the bank like the white of an eye without its pupil. The stone fell with a flounce, but no Wildeve appeared on the other side, as on a previous occasion there. “My grandfather says he lived for more than twenty years at sea on water twice as bad as that,” she went on, “and considers it quite good enough for us here on an emergency.”
“Well, as a matter of fact there are no impurities in the water of these pools at this time of the year. It has only just rained into them.”
She shook her head. “I am managing to exist in a wilderness, but I cannot drink from a pond,” she said.
Clym looked towards the well, which was now deserted, the men having gone home. “It is a long way to send for spring-water,” he said, after a silence. “But since you don’t like this in the pond, I’ll try to get you some myself.” He went back to the well. “Yes, I think I could do it by tying on this pail.”
“But, since I would not trouble the men to get it, I cannot in conscience let you.”
“I don’t mind the trouble at all.”
He made fast the pail to the long coil of rope, put it over the wheel, and allowed it to descend by letting the rope slip through his hands. Before it had gone far, however, he checked it.
“I must make fast the end first, or we may lose the whole,” he said to Eustacia, who had drawn near. “Could you hold this a moment, while I do it—or shall I call your servant?”
“I can hold it,” said Eustacia; and he placed the rope in her hands, going then to search for the end.
“I suppose I may let it slip down?” she inquired.
“I would advise you not to let it go far,” said Clym. “It will get much heavier, you will find.”
However, Eustacia had begun to pay out. While he was tying she cried, “I cannot stop it!”
Clym ran to her side, and found he could only check the rope by twisting the loose part round the upright post, when it stopped with a jerk. “Has it hurt you?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Very much?”
“No; I think not.” She opened her hands. One of them was bleeding; the rope had dragged off the skin. Eustacia wrapped it in her handkerchief.
“You should have let go,” said Yeobright. “Why didn’t you?”
“You said I was to hold on.... This is the second time I have been wounded today.”
“Ah, yes; I have heard of it. I blush for my native Egdon. Was it a serious injury you received in church, Miss Vye?”
There was such an abundance of sympathy in Clym’s tone that Eustacia slowly drew up her sleeve and disclosed her round white arm. A bright red spot appeared on its smooth surface, like a ruby on Parian marble.
“There it is,” she said, putting her finger against the spot.
“It was dastardly of the woman,” said Clym. “Will not Captain Vye get her punished?”
“He is gone from home on that very business. I did not know that I had such a magic reputation.”
“And you fainted?” said Clym, looking at the scarlet little puncture as if he would like to kiss it and make it well.
“Yes, it frightened me. I had not been to church for a long time. And now I shall not go again for ever so long—perhaps never. I cannot face their eyes after this. Don’t you think it dreadfully humiliating? I wished I was dead for hours after, but I don’t mind now.”
“I have come to clean away these cobwebs,” said Yeobright. “Would you like to help me—by high-class teaching? We might benefit them much.”
“I don’t quite feel anxious to. I have not much love for my fellow-creatures. Sometimes I quite hate them.”
“Still I think that if you were to hear my scheme you might take an interest in it. There is no use in hating people—if you hate anything, you should hate what produced them.”
“Do you mean Nature? I hate her already. But I shall be glad to hear your scheme at any time.”
The situation had now worked itself out, and the next natural thing was for them to part. Clym knew this well enough, and Eustacia made a move of conclusion; yet he looked at her as if he had one word more to say. Perhaps if he had not lived in Paris it would never have been uttered.
“We have met before,” he said, regarding her with rather more interest than was necessary.
“I do not own it,” said Eustacia, with a repressed, still look.
“But I may think what I like.”
“Yes.”
“You are lonely here.”
“I cannot endure the heath, except in its purple season. The heath is a cruel taskmaster to me.”
“Can you say so?” he asked. “To my mind it is most exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. I would rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world.”
“It is well enough for artists; but I never would learn to draw.”
“And there is a very curious druidical stone just out there.” He threw a pebble in the direction signified. “Do you often go to see it?”
“I was not even aware there existed any such curious druidical stone. I am aware that there are boulevards in Paris.”
Yeobright looked thoughtfully on the ground. “That means much,” he said.
“It does indeed,” said Eustacia.
“I remember when I had the same longing for town bustle. Five years of a great city would be a perfect cure for that.”
“Heaven send me such a cure! Now, Mr. Yeobright, I will go indoors and plaster my wounded hand.”
They separated, and Eustacia vanished in the increasing shade. She seemed full of many things. Her past was a blank, her life had begun. The effect upon Clym of this meeting he did not fully discover till some time after. During his walk home his most intelligible sensation was that his scheme had somehow become glorified. A beautiful woman had been intertwined with it.
On reaching the house he went up to the room which was to be made his study, and occupied himself during the evening in unpacking his books from the boxes and arranging them on shelves. From another box he drew a lamp and a can of oil. He trimmed the lamp, arranged his table, and said, “Now, I am ready to begin.”
He rose early the next morning, read two hours before breakfast by the light of his lamp—read all the morning, all the afternoon. Just when the sun was going down his eyes felt weary, and he leant back in his chair.
His room overlooked the front of the premises and the valley of the heath beyond. The lowest beams of the winter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings, across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale, where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding tree-tops stretched forth in long dark prongs. Having been seated at work all day, he decided to take a turn upon the hills before it got dark; and, going out forthwith, he struck across the heath towards Mistover.
It was an hour and a half later when he again appeared at the garden gate. The shutters of the house were closed, and Christian Cantle, who had been wheeling manure about the garden all day, had gone home. On entering he found that his mother, after waiting a long time for him, had finished her meal.
“Where have you been, Clym?” she immediately said. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were going away at this time?”
“I have been on the heath.”
“You’ll meet Eustacia Vye if you go up there.”
Clym paused a minute. “Yes, I met her this evening,” he said, as though it were spoken under the sheer necessity of preserving honesty.
“I wondered if you had.”
“It was no appointment.”
“No; such meetings never are.”
“But you are not angry, Mother?”
“I can hardly say that I am not. Angry? No. But when I consider the usual nature of the drag which causes men of promise to disappoint the world I feel uneasy.”
“You deserve credit for the feeling, Mother. But I can assure you that you need not be disturbed by it on my account.”
“When I think of you and your new crotchets,” said Mrs. Yeobright, with some emphasis, “I naturally don’t feel so comfortable as I did a twelvemonth ago. It is incredible to me that a man accustomed to the attractive women of Paris and elsewhere should be so easily worked upon by a girl in a heath. You could just as well have walked another way.”
“I had been studying all day.”
“Well, yes,” she added more hopefully, “I have been thinking that you might get on as a schoolmaster, and rise that way, since you really are determined to hate the course you were pursuing.”
Yeobright was unwilling to disturb this idea, though his scheme was far enough removed from one wherein the education of youth should be made a mere channel of social ascent. He had no desires of that sort. He had reached the stage in a young man’s life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in England we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be.
The love between the young man and his mother was strangely invisible now. Of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful. It was so with these. Had conversations between them been overheard, people would have said, “How cold they are to each other!”
His theory and his wishes about devoting his future to teaching had made an impression on Mrs. Yeobright. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when he was a part of her—when their discourses were as if carried on between the right and the left hands of the same body? He had despaired of reaching her by argument; and it was almost as a discovery to him that he could reach her by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to yells.
Strangely enough he began to feel now that it would not be so hard to persuade her who was his best friend that comparative poverty was essentially the higher course for him, as to reconcile to his feelings the act of persuading her. From every provident point of view his mother was so undoubtedly right, that he was not without a sickness of heart in finding he could shake her.
She had a singular insight into life, considering that she had never mixed with it. There are instances of persons who, without clear ideas of the things they criticize have yet had clear ideas of the relations of those things. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.
What was the great world to Mrs. Yeobright? A multitude whose tendencies could be perceived, though not its essences. Communities were seen by her as from a distance; she saw them as we see the throngs which cover the canvases of Sallaert, Van Alsloot, and others of that school—vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in definite directions, but whose features are indistinguishable by the very comprehensiveness of the view.
One could see that, as far as it had gone, her life was very complete on its reflective side. The philosophy of her nature, and its limitation by circumstances, was almost written in her movements. They had a majestic foundation, though they were far from being majestic; and they had a ground-work of assurance, but they were not assured. As her once elastic walk had become deadened by time, so had her natural pride of life been hindered in its blooming by her necessities.
The next slight touch in the shaping of Clym’s destiny occurred a few days after. A barrow was opened on the heath, and Yeobright attended the operation, remaining away from his study during several hours. In the afternoon Christian returned from a journey in the same direction, and Mrs. Yeobright questioned him.
“They have dug a hole, and they have found things like flowerpots upside down, Mis’ess Yeobright; and inside these be real charnel bones. They have carried ’em off to men’s houses; but I shouldn’t like to sleep where they will bide. Dead folks have been known to come and claim their own. Mr. Yeobright had got one pot of the bones, and was going to bring ’em home—real skellington bones—but ’twas ordered otherwise. You’ll be relieved to hear that he gave away his pot and all, on second thoughts; and a blessed thing for ye, Mis’ess Yeobright, considering the wind o’ nights.”
“Gave it away?”
“Yes. To Miss Vye. She has a cannibal taste for such churchyard furniture seemingly.”
“Miss Vye was there too?”
“Ay, ’a b’lieve she was.”
When Clym came home, which was shortly after, his mother said, in a curious tone, “The urn you had meant for me you gave away.”
Yeobright made no reply; the current of her feeling was too pronounced to admit it.
The early weeks of the year passed on. Yeobright certainly studied at home, but he also walked much abroad, and the direction of his walk was always towards some point of a line between Mistover and Rainbarrow.
The month of March arrived, and the heath showed its first signs of awakening from winter trance. The awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness. The pool outside the bank by Eustacia’s dwelling, which seemed as dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and made noises in his observation, would gradually disclose a state of great animation when silently watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumblebees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of a gong.
On an evening such as this Yeobright descended into the Blooms-End valley from beside that very pool, where he had been standing with another person quite silently and quite long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in nature; yet he had not heard it. His walk was rapid as he came down, and he went with a springy trend. Before entering upon his mother’s premises he stopped and breathed. The light which shone forth on him from the window revealed that his face was flushed and his eye bright. What it did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there. The abiding presence of this impress was so real that he hardly dared to enter the house, for it seemed as if his mother might say, “What red spot is that glowing upon your mouth so vividly?”
But he entered soon after. The tea was ready, and he sat down opposite his mother. She did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat. His mother’s taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care. He knew why she said so little, but he could not remove the cause of her bearing towards him. These half-silent sittings were far from uncommon with them now. At last Yeobright made a beginning of what was intended to strike at the whole root of the matter.
“Five days have we sat like this at meals with scarcely a word. What’s the use of it, Mother?”
“None,” said she, in a heart-swollen tone. “But there is only too good a reason.”
“Not when you know all. I have been wanting to speak about this, and I am glad the subject is begun. The reason, of course, is Eustacia Vye. Well, I confess I have seen her lately, and have seen her a good many times.”
“Yes, yes; and I know what that amounts to. It troubles me, Clym. You are wasting your life here; and it is solely on account of her. If it had not been for that woman you would never have entertained this teaching scheme at all.”
Clym looked hard at his mother. “You know that is not it,” he said.
“Well, I know you had decided to attempt it before you saw her; but that would have ended in intentions. It was very well to talk of, but ridiculous to put in practice. I fully expected that in the course of a month or two you would have seen the folly of such self-sacrifice, and would have been by this time back again to Paris in some business or other. I can understand objections to the diamond trade—I really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life of a man like you even though it might have made you a millionaire. But now I see how mistaken you are about this girl I doubt if you could be correct about other things.”
“How am I mistaken in her?”
“She is lazy and dissatisfied. But that is not all of it. Supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?”
“Well, there are practical reasons,” Clym began, and then almost broke off under an overpowering sense of the weight of argument which could be brought against his statement. “If I take a school an educated woman would be invaluable as a help to me.”
“What! you really mean to marry her?”
“It would be premature to state that plainly. But consider what obvious advantages there would be in doing it. She——”
“Don’t suppose she has any money. She hasn’t a farthing.”
“She is excellently educated, and would make a good matron in a boarding-school. I candidly own that I have modified my views a little, in deference to you; and it should satisfy you. I no longer adhere to my intention of giving with my own mouth rudimentary education to the lowest class. I can do better. I can establish a good private school for farmers’ sons, and without stopping the school I can manage to pass examinations. By this means, and by the assistance of a wife like her——”
“Oh, Clym!”
“I shall ultimately, I hope, be at the head of one of the best schools in the county.”
Yeobright had enunciated the word “her” with a fervour which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indiscreet. Hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that ill-timed betrayal of feeling for a new woman.
“You are blinded, Clym,” she said warmly. “It was a bad day for you when you first set eyes on her. And your scheme is merely a castle in the air built on purpose to justify this folly which has seized you, and to salve your conscience on the irrational situation you are in.”
“Mother, that’s not true,” he firmly answered.
“Can you maintain that I sit and tell untruths, when all I wish to do is to save you from sorrow? For shame, Clym! But it is all through that woman—a hussy!”
Clym reddened like fire and rose. He placed his hand upon his mother’s shoulder and said, in a tone which hung strangely between entreaty and command, “I won’t hear it. I may be led to answer you in a way which we shall both regret.”
His mother parted her lips to begin some other vehement truth, but on looking at him she saw that in his face which led her to leave the words unsaid. Yeobright walked once or twice across the room, and then suddenly went out of the house. It was eleven o’clock when he came in, though he had not been further than the precincts of the garden. His mother was gone to bed. A light was left burning on the table, and supper was spread. Without stopping for any food he secured the doors and went upstairs.