speak like that?” she asked, raising her deep shady eyes to his.
“That’s a thing I shall never tell plainly; and perhaps if I try to tell you in riddles you will not care to guess them.”
Eustacia remained silent for a minute, and she said, “We are in a strange relationship today. You mince matters to an uncommon nicety. You mean, Damon, that you still love me. Well, that gives me sorrow, for I am not made so entirely happy by my marriage that I am willing to spurn you for the information, as I ought to do. But we have said too much about this. Do you mean to wait until my husband is awake?”
“I thought to speak to him; but it is unnecessary, Eustacia, if I offend you by not forgetting you, you are right to mention it; but do not talk of spurning.”
She did not reply, and they stood looking musingly at Clym as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the result of physical labour carried on in circumstances that wake no nervous fear.
“God, how I envy him that sweet sleep!” said Wildeve. “I have not slept like that since I was a boy — years and years ago.”
While they thus watched him a click at the gate was audible, and a knock came to the door. Eustacia went to a window and looked out.
Her countenance changed. First she became crimson, and then the red subsided till it even partially left her lips.
“Shall I go away?” said Wildeve, standing up.
“I hardly know.”
“Who is it?”
“Mrs. Yeobright. O, what she said to me that day! I cannot understand this visit — what does she mean? And she suspects that past time of ours.”
“I am in your hands. If you think she had better not see me here I’ll go into the next room.”
“Well, yes — go.”
Wildeve at once withdrew; but before he had been half a minute in the adjoining apartment Eustacia came after him.
“No,” she said, “we won’t have any of this. If she comes in she must see you — and think if she likes there’s something wrong! But how can I open the door to her, when she dislikes me — wishes to see not me, but her son? I won’t open the door!”
Mrs. Yeobright knocked again more loudly.
“Her knocking will, in all likelihood, awaken him,” continued Eustacia, “and then he will let her in himself. Ah — listen.”
They could hear Clym moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word “Mother.”
“Yes — he is awake — he will go to the door,” she said, with a breath of relief. “Come this way. I have a bad name with her, and you must not be seen. Thus I am obliged to act by stealth, not because I do ill, but because others are pleased to say so.”
By this time she had taken him to the back door, which was open, disclosing a path leading down the garden. “Now, one word, Damon,” she remarked as he stepped forth. “This is your first visit here; let it be your last. We have been hot lovers in our time, but it won’t do now. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Wildeve. “I have had all I came for, and I am satisfied.”
“What was it?”
“A sight of you. Upon my eternal honour I came for no more.”
Wildeve kissed his hand to the beautiful girl he addressed, and passed into the garden, where she watched him down the path, over the stile at the end, and into the ferns outside, which brushed his hips as he went along till he became lost in their thickets. When he had quite gone she slowly turned, and directed her attention to the interior of the house.
But it was possible that her presence might not be desired by Clym and his mother at this moment of their first meeting, or that it would be superfluous. At all events, she was in no hurry to meet Mrs. Yeobright. She resolved to wait till Clym came to look for her, and glided back into the garden. Here she idly occupied herself for a few minutes, till finding no notice was taken of her she retraced her steps through the house to the front, where she listened for voices in the parlour. But hearing none she opened the door and went in. To her astonishment Clym lay precisely as Wildeve and herself had left him, his sleep apparently unbroken. He had been disturbed and made to dream and murmur by the knocking, but he had not awakened. Eustacia hastened to the door, and in spite of her reluctance to open it to a woman who had spoken of her so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out. Nobody was to be seen. There, by the scraper, lay Clym’s hook and the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home; in front of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing slightly ajar; and, beyond, the great valley of purple heath thrilling silently in the sun. Mrs. Yeobright was gone.
Clym’s mother was at this time following a path which lay hidden from Eustacia by a shoulder of the hill. Her walk thither from the garden gate had been hasty and determined, as of a woman who was now no less anxious to escape from the scene than she had previously been to enter it. Her eyes were fixed on the ground; within her two sights were graven — that of Clym’s hook and brambles at the door, and that of a woman’s face at a window. Her lips trembled, becoming unnaturally thin as she murmured, “’Tis too much — Clym, how can he bear to do it! He is at home; and yet he lets her shut the door against me!”
In her anxiety to get out of the direct view of the house she had diverged from the straightest path homeward, and while looking about to regain it she came upon a little boy gathering whortleberries in a hollow. The boy was Johnny Nunsuch, who had been Eustacia’s stoker at the bonfire, and, with the tendency of a minute body to gravitate towards a greater, he began hovering round Mrs. Yeobright as soon as she appeared, and trotted on beside her without perceptible consciousness of his act.
Mrs. Yeobright spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep. “’Tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there till evening.”
“I shall,” said her small companion. “I am going to play marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o’clock, because Father comes home. Does your father come home at six too?”
“No, he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody.”
“What have made you so down? Have you seen a ooser?”
“I have seen what’s worse — a woman’s face looking at me through a windowpane.”
“Is that a bad sight?”
“Yes. It is always a bad sight to see a woman looking out at a weary wayfarer and not letting her in.”
“Once when I went to Throope Great Pond to catch effets I seed myself looking up at myself, and I was frightened and jumped back like anything.”
. . . “If they had only shown signs of meeting my advances halfway how well it might have been done! But there is no chance. Shut out! She must have set him against me. Can there be beautiful bodies without hearts inside? I think so. I would not have done it against a neighbour’s cat on such a fiery day as this!”
“What is it you say?”
“Never again — never! Not even if they send for me!”
“You
