“When used you to go to these places?”
“On Sundays.”
“Ah, yes. I dislike English Sundays. How I should chime in with their manners over there! Dear Clym, you’ll go back again?”
Clym shook his head, and looked at the eclipse.
“If you’ll go back again I’ll — be something,” she said tenderly, putting her head near his breast. “If you’ll agree I’ll give my promise, without making you wait a minute longer.”
“How extraordinary that you and my mother should be of one mind about this!” said Yeobright. “I have vowed not to go back, Eustacia. It is not the place I dislike; it is the occupation.”
“But you can go in some other capacity.”
“No. Besides, it would interfere with my scheme. Don’t press that, Eustacia. Will you marry me?”
“I cannot tell.”
“Now — never mind Paris; it is no better than other spots. Promise, sweet!”
“You will never adhere to your education plan, I am quite sure; and then it will be all right for me; and so I promise to be yours for ever and ever.”
Clym brought her face towards his by a gentle pressure of the hand, and kissed her.
“Ah! but you don’t know what you have got in me,” she said. “Sometimes I think there is not that in Eustacia Vye which will make a good homespun wife. Well, let it go — see how our time is slipping, slipping, slipping!” She pointed towards the half-eclipsed moon.
“You are too mournful.”
“No. Only I dread to think of anything beyond the present. What is, we know. We are together now, and it is unknown how long we shall be so; the unknown always fills my mind with terrible possibilities, even when I may reasonably expect it to be cheerful. . . . Clym, the eclipsed moonlight shines upon your face with a strange foreign colour, and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold. That means that you should be doing better things than this.”
“You are ambitious, Eustacia — no, not exactly ambitious, luxurious. I ought to be of the same vein, to make you happy, I suppose. And yet, far from that, I could live and die in a hermitage here, with proper work to do.”
There was that in his tone which implied distrust of his position as a solicitous lover, a doubt if he were acting fairly towards one whose tastes touched his own only at rare and infrequent points. She saw his meaning, and whispered, in a low, full accent of eager assurance “Don’t mistake me, Clym — though I should like Paris, I love you for yourself alone. To be your wife and live in Paris would be heaven to me; but I would rather live with you in a hermitage here than not be yours at all. It is gain to me either way, and very great gain. There’s my too candid confession.”
“Spoken like a woman. And now I must soon leave you. I’ll walk with you towards your house.”
“But must you go home yet?” she asked. “Yes, the sand has nearly slipped away, I see, and the eclipse is creeping on more and more. Don’t go yet! Stop till the hour has run itself out; then I will not press you any more. You will go home and sleep well; I keep sighing in my sleep! Do you ever dream of me?”
“I cannot recollect a clear dream of you.”
“I see your face in every scene of my dreams, and hear your voice in every sound. I wish I did not. It is too much what I feel. They say such love never lasts. But it must! And yet once, I remember, I saw an officer of the Hussars ride down the street at Budmouth, and though he was a total stranger and never spoke to me, I loved him till I thought I should really die of love — but I didn’t die, and at last I left off caring for him. How terrible it would be if a time should come when I could not love you, my Clym!”
“Please don’t say such reckless things. When we see such a time at hand we will say, ‘I have outlived my faith and purpose,’ and die. There, the hour has expired — now let us walk on.”
Hand in hand they went along the path towards Mistover. When they were near the house he said, “It is too late for me to see your grandfather tonight. Do you think he will object to it?”
“I will speak to him. I am so accustomed to be my own mistress that it did not occur to me that we should have to ask him.”
Then they lingeringly separated, and Clym descended towards Blooms-End.
And as he walked further and further from the charmed atmosphere of his Olympian girl his face grew sad with a new sort of sadness. A perception of the dilemma in which his love had placed him came back in full force. In spite of Eustacia’s apparent willingness to wait through the period of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established in his new pursuit, he could not but perceive at moments that she loved him rather as a visitant from a gay world to which she rightly belonged than as a man with a purpose opposed to that recent past of his which so interested her. It meant that, though she made no conditions as to his return to the French capital, this was what she secretly longed for in the event of marriage; and it robbed him of many an otherwise pleasant hour. Along with that came the widening breach between himself and his mother. Whenever any little occurrence had brought into more prominence than usual the disappointment that he was causing her it had sent him on lone and moody walks; or he was kept awake a great part of the night by the turmoil of spirit which such a recognition created. If Mrs. Yeobright could only have been led to see what a sound and worthy purpose this purpose of his was and how little it was being affected by his devotions to Eustacia, how differently would she regard him!
Thus as his sight grew accustomed to the first blinding halo kindled about him by love and beauty, Yeobright began to perceive what a strait he was in. Sometimes he wished that he had never known Eustacia, immediately to retract the wish as brutal. Three antagonistic growths had to be kept alive: his mother’s trust in him, his plan for becoming a teacher, and Eustacia’s happiness. His fervid nature could not afford to relinquish one of these, though two of the three were as many as he could hope to preserve. Though his love was as chaste as that of Petrarch for his Laura, it had made fetters of what previously was only a difficulty. A position which was not too simple when he stood whole-hearted had become indescribably complicated by the addition of Eustacia. Just when his mother was beginning to tolerate one scheme he had introduced another still bitterer than the first, and the combination was more than she could bear.
Chapter 5
Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues
When Yeobright was not with Eustacia he was sitting slavishly over his books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. These meetings were carried on with the greatest secrecy.
One afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to Thomasin. He could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had happened.
“I have been told an incomprehensible thing,” she said mournfully. “The captain has let out at the Woman that you and Eustacia Vye are engaged to be married.”
“We are,” said Yeobright. “But it may not be yet for a very long time.”
“I
