prattle. “Most people who grow up and have children talk as I do. When you grow up your mother will talk as I do too.”
“I hope she won’t; because ’tis very bad to talk nonsense.”
“Yes, child; it is nonsense, I suppose. Are you not nearly spent with the heat?”
“Yes. But not so much as you be.”
“How do you know?”
“Your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-down-like.”
“Ah, I am exhausted from inside.”
“Why do you, every time you take a step, go like this?” The child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp of an invalid.
“Because I have a burden which is more than I can bear.”
The little boy remained silently pondering, and they tottered on side by side until more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when Mrs. Yeobright, whose weakness plainly increased, said to him, “I must sit down here to rest.”
When she had seated herself he looked long in her face and said, “How funny you draw your breath — like a lamb when you drive him till he’s nearly done for. Do you always draw your breath like that?”
“Not always.” Her voice was now so low as to be scarcely above a whisper.
“You will go to sleep there, I suppose, won’t you? You have shut your eyes already.”
“No. I shall not sleep much till — another day, and then I hope to have a long, long one — very long. Now can you tell me if Rimsmoor Pond is dry this summer?”
“Rimsmoor Pond is, but Oker’s Pool isn’t, because he is deep, and is never dry —’tis just over there.”
“Is the water clear?”
“Yes, middling — except where the heath-croppers walk into it.”
“Then, take this, and go as fast as you can, and dip me up the clearest you can find. I am very faint.”
She drew from the small willow reticule that she carried in her hand an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle; it was one of half a dozen of the same sort lying in the reticule, which she had preserved ever since her childhood, and had brought with her today as a small present for Clym and Eustacia.
The boy started on his errand, and soon came back with the water, such as it was. Mrs. Yeobright attempted to drink, but it was so warm as to give her nausea, and she threw it away. Afterwards she still remained sitting, with her eyes closed.
The boy waited, played near her, caught several of the little brown butterflies which abounded, and then said as he waited again, “I like going on better than biding still. Will you soon start again?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wish I might go on by myself,” he resumed, fearing, apparently, that he was to be pressed into some unpleasant service. “Do you want me any more, please?”
Mrs. Yeobright made no reply.
“What shall I tell Mother?” the boy continued.
“Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son.”
Before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful glance, as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsaking her thus. He gazed into her face in a vague, wondering manner, like that of one examining some strange old manuscript the key to whose characters is undiscoverable. He was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult quarters hither-to deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond him to decide. He lowered his eyes and went on without another word. Before he had gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except that she was a woman who had sat down to rest.
Mrs. Yeobright’s exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with long breaks between. The sun had now got far to the west of south and stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand in hand, waiting to consume her. With the departure of the boy all visible animation disappeared from the landscape, though the intermittent husky notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of furze were enough to show that amid the prostration of the larger animal species an unseen insect world was busy in all the fullness of life.
In two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole distance from Alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of shepherd’s-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the perfumed mat it formed there. In front of her a colony of ants had established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a never-ending and heavy-laden throng. To look down upon them was like observing a city street from the top of a tower. She remembered that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same spot — doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these which walked there now. She leant back to obtain more thorough rest, and the soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her eyes as the thyme was to her head. While she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. He had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs and his breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. Up in the zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned; and she wished that she could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then.
But, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should soon cease to ruminate upon her own condition. Had the track of her next thought been marked by a streak in the air, like the path of a meteor, it would have shown a direction contrary to the heron’s, and have descended to the eastward upon the roof of Clym’s house.
Chapter 7
The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends
He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and looked around. Eustacia was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though she held a book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time.
“Well, indeed!” said Clym, brushing his eyes with his hands. “How soundly I have slept! I have had such a tremendous dream, too — one I shall never forget.”
“I thought you had been dreaming,” said she.
“Yes. It was about my mother. I dreamt that I took you to her house to make up differences, and when we got there we couldn’t get in, though she kept on crying to us for help. However, dreams are dreams. What o’clock is it, Eustacia?”
“Half-past two.”
“So late, is it? I didn’t mean to stay so long. By the time I have had something to eat it will be after three.”
“Ann is not come back from the village, and I thought I would let you sleep on till she returned.”
