The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

  VII

  The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends

  He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and lookedaround. Eustacia was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though sheheld a book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time.

  "Well, indeed!" said Clym, brushing his eyes with his hands. "Howsoundly I have slept! I have had such a tremendous dream, too: one Ishall never forget."

  "I thought you had been dreaming," said she.

  "Yes. It was about my mother. I dreamt that I took you to her houseto 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 havehad something to eat it will be after three."

  "Ann is not come back from the village, and I thought I would let yousleep on till she returned."

  Clym went to the window and looked out. Presently he said, musingly,"Week after week passes, and yet mother does not come. I thought Ishould have heard something from her long before this."

  Misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course ofexpression in Eustacia's dark eyes. She was face to face with amonstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of it bypostponement.

  "I must certainly go to Blooms-End soon," he continued, "and I thinkI had better go alone." He picked up his leggings and gloves, threwthem down again, and added, "As dinner will be so late today I willnot go back to the heath, but work in the garden till the evening, andthen, when it will be cooler, I will walk to Blooms-End. I am quitesure that if I make a little advance mother will be willing to forgetall. It will be rather late before I can get home, as I shall not beable to do the distance either way in less than an hour and a half.But you will not mind for one evening, dear? What are you thinking ofto make you look so abstracted?"

  "I cannot tell you," she said heavily. "I wish we didn't live here,Clym. The world seems all wrong in this place."

  "Well--if we make it so. I wonder if Thomasin has been to Blooms-Endlately. I hope so. But probably not, as she is, I believe, expectingto be confined in a month or so. I wish I had thought of that before.Poor mother must indeed be very lonely."

  "I don't like you going tonight."

  "Why not tonight?"

  "Something may be said which will terribly injure me."

  "My mother is not vindictive," said Clym, his colour faintly rising.

  "But I wish you would not go," Eustacia repeated in a low tone. "Ifyou agree not to go tonight I promise to go by myself to her housetomorrow, and make it up with her, and wait till you fetch me."

  "Why do you want to do that at this particular time, when at everyprevious time that I have proposed it you have refused?"

  "I cannot explain further than that I should like to see her alonebefore you go," she answered, with an impatient move of her head, andlooking at him with an anxiety more frequently seen upon those of asanguine temperament than upon such as herself.

  "Well, it is very odd that just when I had decided to go myself youshould want to do what I proposed long ago. If I wait for you to gotomorrow another day will be lost; and I know I shall be unable torest another night without having been. I want to get this settled,and will. You must visit her afterwards: it will be all the same."

  "I could even go with you now?"

  "You could scarcely walk there and back without a longer rest than Ishall take. No, not tonight, Eustacia."

  "Let it be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way of one who,though willing to ward off evil consequences by a mild effort, wouldlet events fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to directthem.

  Clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor stole overEustacia for the remainder of the afternoon, which her husbandattributed to the heat of the weather.

  In the evening he set out on the journey. Although the heat of summerwas yet intense the days had considerably shortened, and before he hadadvanced a mile on his way all the heath purples, browns, and greenshad merged in a uniform dress without airiness or graduation, andbroken only by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartzsand showed the entrance to a rabbit-burrow, or where the white flintsof a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost everyone of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there anight-hawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a millas long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping hiswings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent intervalof listening beginning to whirr again. At each brushing of Clym'sfeet white miller-moths flew into the air just high enough to catchupon their dusty wings the mellowed light from the west, which nowshone across the depressions and levels of the ground without fallingthereon to light them up.

  Yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all wouldsoon be well. Three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfumewas wafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment toinhale the familiar scent. It was the place at which, four hoursearlier, his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered withshepherd's-thyme. While he stood a sound between a breathing and amoan suddenly reached his ears.

  He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared theresave the verge of the hillock stretching against the sky in anunbroken line. He moved a few steps in that direction, and now heperceived a recumbent figure almost close at his feet.

  Among the different possibilities as to the person's individualitythere did not for a moment occur to Yeobright that it might be one ofhis own family. Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out ofdoors at these times, to save a long journey homeward and back again;but Clym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the formwas feminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave.But he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother tillhe stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.

  His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguishwhich would have escaped him died upon his lips. During the momentaryinterval that elapsed before he became conscious that something mustbe done all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as ifhe and his mother were as when he was a child with her many yearsago on this heath at hours similar to the present. Then he awoke toactivity; and bending yet lower he found that she still breathed, andthat her breath though feeble was regular, except when disturbed by anoccasional gasp.

  "O, what is it! Mother, are you very ill--you are not dying?" hecried, pressing his lips to her face. "I am your Clym. How did youcome here? What does it all mean?"

  At that moment the chasm in their lives which his love for Eustaciahad caused was not remembered by Yeobright, and to him the presentjoined continuously with that friendly past that had been theirexperience before the division.

  She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; andthen Clym strove to consider how best to move her, as it would benecessary to get her away from the spot before the dews were intense.He was able-bodied, and his mother was thin. He clasped his armsround her, lifted her a little, and said, "Does that hurt you?"

  She shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace, wentonward with his load. The air was now completely cool; but wheneverhe passed over a sandy patch of ground uncarpeted with vegetationthere was reflected from its surface into his face the heat which ithad imbibed during the day. At the beginning of his undertaking hehad thought but little of the distance which yet would have to betraversed before Blooms-End could be reached; but though he had sleptthat afternoon he soon began to feel the weight of his burden. Thushe proceeded, like Aeneas with his father; the bats circling round hishead, nightjars flapping their wings within a yard of his face, andnot a human being within call.

  While he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother exhibitedsigns of restlessness under the constraint of being borne along, asif his arms were irksome to her. He lowered her u
pon his knees andlooked around. The point they had now reached, though far from anyroad, was not more than a mile from the Blooms-End cottages occupiedby Fairway, Sam, Humphrey, and the Cantles. Moreover, fifty yards offstood a hut, built of clods and covered with thin turves, but nowentirely disused. The simple outline of the lonely shed was visible,and thither he determined to direct his steps. As soon as he arrivedhe laid her down carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut withhis pocketknife an armful of the dryest fern. Spreading this withinthe shed, which was entirely open on one side, he placed his motherthereon; then he ran with all his might towards the dwelling ofFairway.

  Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the brokenbreathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began to animate theline between heath and sky. In a few moments Clym arrived withFairway, Humphrey, and Susan Nunsuch; Olly Dowden, who had chancedto be at Fairway's, Christian and Grandfer Cantle followinghelter-skelter behind. They had brought a lantern and matches, water,a pillow, and a few other articles which had occurred to their mindsin the hurry of the moment. Sam had been despatched back again forbrandy, and a boy brought Fairway's pony, upon which he rode off tothe nearest medical man, with directions to call at Wildeve's on hisway, and inform Thomasin that her aunt was unwell.

  Sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered by the lightof the lantern; after which she became sufficiently conscious tosignify by signs that something was wrong with her foot. Olly Dowdenat length understood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated. Itwas swollen and red. Even as they watched the red began to assume amore livid colour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck,smaller than a pea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood,which rose above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere.

  "I know what it is," cried Sam. "She has been stung by an adder!"

  "Yes," said Clym instantly. "I remember when I was a child seeingjust such a bite. O, my poor mother!"

  "It was my father who was bit," said Sam. "And there's only one wayto cure it. You must rub the place with the fat of other adders, andthe only way to get that is by frying them. That's what they did forhim."

  "'Tis an old remedy," said Clym distrustfully, "and I have doubtsabout it. But we can do nothing else till the doctor comes."

  "'Tis a sure cure," said Olly Dowden, with emphasis. "I've used itwhen I used to go out nursing."

  "Then we must pray for daylight, to catch them," said Clym gloomily.

  "I will see what I can do," said Sam.

  He took a green hazel which he had used as a walking-stick, split itat the end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his handwent out into the heath. Clym had by this time lit a small fire, anddespatched Susan Nunsuch for a frying-pan. Before she had returnedSam came in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling inthe cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging dead across it.

  "I have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be,"said Sam. "These limp ones are two I killed today at work; but asthey don't die till the sun goes down they can't be very stale meat."

  The live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinister look inits small black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet pattern on itsback seemed to intensify with indignation. Mrs. Yeobright saw thecreature, and the creature saw her: she quivered throughout, andaverted her eyes.

  "Look at that," murmured Christian Cantle. "Neighbours, how do weknow but that something of the old serpent in God's garden, that giedthe apple to the young woman with no clothes, lives on in adders andsnakes still? Look at his eye--for all the world like a villainoussort of black currant. 'Tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us! There'sfolks in heath who've been overlooked already. I will never killanother adder as long as I live."

  "Well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't help it,"said Grandfer Cantle. "'Twould have saved me many a brave danger inmy time."

  "I fancy I heard something outside the shed," said Christian. "I wishtroubles would come in the daytime, for then a man could show hiscourage, and hardly beg for mercy of the most broomstick old woman heshould see, if he was a brave man, and able to run out of her sight!"

  "Even such an ignorant fellow as I should know better than do that,"said Sam.

  "Well, there's calamities where we least expect it, whether or no.Neighbours, if Mrs. Yeobright were to die, d'ye think we should betook up and tried for the manslaughter of a woman?"

  "No, they couldn't bring it in as that," said Sam, "unless they couldprove we had been poachers at some time of our lives. But she'llfetch round."

  "Now, if I had been stung by ten adders I should hardly have lost aday's work for't," said Grandfer Cantle. "Such is my spirit when Iam on my mettle. But perhaps 'tis natural in a man trained for war.Yes, I've gone through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to meafter I joined the Locals in four." He shook his head and smiled at amental picture of himself in uniform. "I was always first in the mostgalliantest scrapes in my younger days!"

  "I suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest foolafore," said Fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing itwith his breath.

  "D'ye think so, Timothy?" said Grandfer Cantle, coming forward toFairway's side with sudden depression in his face. "Then a man mayfeel for years that he is good solid company, and be wrong abouthimself after all?"

  "Never mind that question, Grandfer. Stir your stumps and get somemore sticks. 'Tis very nonsense of an old man to prattle so when lifeand death's in mangling."

  "Yes, yes," said Grandfer Cantle, with melancholy conviction. "Well,this is a bad night altogether for them that have done well in theirtime; and if I were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor-viol, Ishouldn't have the heart to play tunes upon 'em now."

  Susan now arrived with the frying-pan, when the live adder was killedand the heads of the three taken off. The remainders, being cut intolengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissingand crackling over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled fromthe carcases, whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his handkerchiefinto the liquid and anointed the wound.