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Chapter: <CHAPTER>
3--She Goes Out to Battle against Depression

A few days later, before the month of August has expired, Eustacia and
Yeobright sat together at their early dinner.

Eustacia's manner had become of late almost apathetic. There was a
forlorn look about her beautiful eyes which, whether she deserved it or
not, would have excited pity in the breast of anyone who had known her
during the full flush of her love for Clym. The feelings of husband and
wife varied, in some measure, inversely with their positions. Clym, the
afflicted man, was cheerful; and he even tried to comfort her, who had
never felt a moment of physical suffering in her whole life.

"Come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again. Some day
perhaps I shall see as well as ever. And I solemnly promise that I'll
leave off cutting furze as soon as I have the power to do anything
better. You cannot seriously wish me to stay idling at home all day?"

"But it is so dreadful--a furze-cutter! and you a man who have lived
about the world, and speak French, and German, and who are fit for what
is so much better than this."

"I suppose when you first saw me and heard about me I was wrapped in a
sort of golden halo to your eyes--a man who knew glorious things,
and had mixed in brilliant scenes--in short, an adorable, delightful,
distracting hero?"

"Yes," she said, sobbing.

"And now I am a poor fellow in brown leather."

"Don't taunt me. But enough of this. I will not be depressed any more.
I am going from home this afternoon, unless you greatly object. There is
to be a village picnic--a gipsying, they call it--at East Egdon, and I
shall go."

"To dance?"

"Why not? You can sing."

"Well, well, as you will. Must I come to fetch you?"

"If you return soon enough from your work. But do not inconvenience
yourself about it. I know the way home, and the heath has no terror for
me."

"And can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all the way to a
village festival in search of it?"

"Now, you don't like my going alone! Clym, you are not jealous?"

"No. But I would come with you if it could give you any pleasure;
though, as things stand, perhaps you have too much of me already. Still,
I somehow wish that you did not want to go. Yes, perhaps I am jealous;
and who could be jealous with more reason than I, a half-blind man, over
such a woman as you?"

"Don't think like it. Let me go, and don't take all my spirits away!"

"I would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. Go and do whatever you
like. Who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? You have all my heart
yet, I believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag
upon you, I owe you thanks. Yes, go alone and shine. As for me, I will
stick to my doom. At that kind of meeting people would shun me. My hook
and gloves are like the St. Lazarus rattle of the leper, warning the
world to get out of the way of a sight that would sadden them." He
kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out.

When he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to herself,
"Two wasted lives--his and mine. And I am come to this! Will it drive me
out of my mind?"

She cast about for any possible course which offered the least
improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. She
imagined how all those Budmouth ones who should learn what had become
of her would say, "Look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!"
To Eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that death
appeared the only door of relief if the satire of Heaven should go much
further.

Suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, "But I'll shake it off. Yes,
I WILL shake it off! No one shall know my suffering. I'll be bitterly
merry, and ironically gay, and I'll laugh in derision. And I'll begin by
going to this dance on the green."

She ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous care.
To an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost
seem reasonable. The gloomy corner into which accident as much as
indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate
partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the Supreme
Power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed
in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than a
blessing.

It was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready
for her walk. There was material enough in the picture for twenty new
conquests. The rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when she
sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her outdoor
attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it, devoid of
harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its environment as
from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation between flesh and
clothes. The heat of the day had scarcely declined as yet, and she went
along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there being ample time for
her idle expedition. Tall ferns buried her in their leafage whenever her
path lay through them, which now formed miniature forests, though not
one stem of them would remain to bud the next year.

The site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawnlike oases
which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux of the
heath district. The brakes of furze and fern terminated abruptly round
the margin, and the grass was unbroken. A green cattletrack skirted the
spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern, and this path
Eustacia followed, in order to reconnoitre the group before joining it.
The lusty notes of the East Egdon band had directed her unerringly, and
she now beheld the musicians themselves, sitting in a blue wagon with
red wheels scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to which
boughs and flowers were tied. In front of this was the grand central
dance of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked by minor dances of inferior
individuals whose gyrations were not always in strict keeping with the
tune.

The young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with a flush on their
faces footed it to the girls, who, with the excitement and the exercise,
blushed deeper than the pink of their numerous ribbons. Fair ones with
long curls, fair ones with short curls, fair ones with lovelocks, fair
ones with braids, flew round and round; and a beholder might well have
wondered how such a prepossessing set of young women of like size, age,
and disposition, could have been collected together where there were
only one or two villages to choose from. In the background was one happy
man dancing by himself, with closed eyes, totally oblivious of all the
rest. A fire was burning under a pollard thorn a few paces off, over
which three kettles hung in a row. Hard by was a table where elderly
dames prepared tea, but Eustacia looked among them in vain for the
cattle-dealer's wife who had suggested that she should come, and had
promised to obtain a courteous welcome for her.

This unexpected absence of the only local resident whom Eustacia knew
considerably damaged her scheme for an afternoon of reckless gaiety.
Joining in became a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were she
to advance, cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea and make
much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowledge to themselves.
Having watched the company through the figures of two dances, she
decided to walk a little further, to a cottage where she might get some
refreshment, and then return homeward in the shady time of evening.

This she did, and by the time that she retraced her steps towards the
scene of the gipsying, which it was necessary to repass on her way to
Alderworth, the sun was going down. The air was now so still that she
could hear the band afar off, and it seemed to be playing with more
spirit, if that were possible, than when she had come away. On reaching
the hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little difference
either to Eustacia or to the revellers, for a round yellow moon was
rising before her, though its rays had not yet outmastered those from
the west. The dance was going on just the same, but strangers had
arrived and formed a ring around the figure, so that Eustacia could
stand among these without a chance of being recognized.

A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year
long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts of those
waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months
before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the time paganism
was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they
adored none other than themselves.

How many of those impassioned but temporary embraces were destined to
become perpetual was possibly the wonder of some of those who indulged
in them, as well as of Eustacia who looked on. She began to envy those
pirouetters, to hunger for the hope and happiness which the fascination
of the dance seemed to engender within them. Desperately fond of
dancing herself, one of Eustacia's expectations of Paris had been the
opportunity it might afford her of indulgence in this favourite pastime.
Unhappily, that expectation was now extinct within her for ever.

Whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluctuating in the
increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her name whispered by a voice
over her shoulder. Turning in surprise, she beheld at her elbow one
whose presence instantly caused her to flush to the temples.

It was Wildeve. Till this moment he had not met her eye since the
morning of his marriage, when she had been loitering in the church,
and had startled him by lifting her veil and coming forward to sign the
register as witness. Yet why the sight of him should have instigated
that sudden rush of blood she could not tell.

Before she could speak he whispered, "Do you like dancing as much as
ever?"

"I think I do," she replied in a low voice.

"Will you dance with me?"

"It would be a great change for me; but will it not seem strange?"

"What strangeness can there be in relations dancing together?"

"Ah--yes, relations. Perhaps none."

"Still, if you don't like to be seen, pull down your veil; though there
is not much risk of being known by this light. Lots of strangers are
here."

She did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that she
accepted his offer.

Wildeve gave her his arm and took her down on the outside of the ring
to the bottom of the dance, which they entered. In two minutes more they
were involved in the figure and began working their way upwards to the
top. Till they had advanced halfway thither Eustacia wished more than
once that she had not yielded to his request; from the middle to the
top she felt that, since she had come out to seek pleasure, she was only
doing a natural thing to obtain it. Fairly launched into the ceaseless
glides and whirls which their new position as top couple opened up to
them, Eustacia's pulses began to move too quickly for long rumination of
any kind.

Through the length of five-and-twenty couples they threaded their giddy
way, and a new vitality entered her form. The pale ray of evening lent
a fascination to the experience. There is a certain degree and tone
of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to
promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives
the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving in
inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc
of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia most
of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard,
beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the moonlight,
shone like a polished table. The air became quite still, the flag above
the wagon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and the players
appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular
mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and French horn gleamed out like
huge eyes from the shade of their figures. The pretty dresses of the
maids lost their subtler day colours and showed more or less of a misty
white. Eustacia floated round and round on Wildeve's arm, her face
rapt and statuesque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten her
features, which were left empty and quiescent, as they always are when
feeling goes beyond their register.

How near she was to Wildeve! it was terrible to think of. She could feel
his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. How badly she had
treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. The enchantment
of the dance surprised her. A clear line of difference divided like
a tangible fence her experience within this maze of motion from her
experience without it. Her beginning to dance had been like a change
of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped in arctic frigidity by
comparison with the tropical sensations here. She had entered the dance
from the troubled hours of her late life as one might enter a brilliant
chamber after a night walk in a wood. Wildeve by himself would have been
merely an agitation; Wildeve added to the dance, and the moonlight, and
the secrecy, began to be a delight. Whether his personality supplied the
greater part of this sweetly compounded feeling, or whether the dance
and the scene weighed the more therein, was a nice point upon which
Eustacia herself was entirely in a cloud.

People began to say "Who are they?" but no invidious inquiries were
made. Had Eustacia mingled with the other girls in their ordinary
daily walks the case would have been different: here she was not
inconvenienced by excessive inspection, for all were wrought to their
brightest grace by the occasion. Like the planet Mercury surrounded
by the lustre of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without much
notice in the temporary glory of the situation.

As for Wildeve, his feelings are easy to guess. Obstacles were a
ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment in a delirium of
exquisite misery. To clasp as his for five minutes what was another
man's through all the rest of the year was a kind of thing he of all men
could appreciate. He had long since begun to sigh again for Eustacia;
indeed, it may be asserted that signing the marriage register with
Thomasin was the natural signal to his heart to return to its first
quarters, and that the extra complication of Eustacia's marriage was the
one addition required to make that return compulsory.

Thus, for different reasons, what was to the rest an exhilarating
movement was to these two a riding upon the whirlwind. The dance had
come like an irresistible attack upon whatever sense of social order
there was in their minds, to drive them back into old paths which were
now doubly irregular. Through three dances in succession they spun their
way; and then, fatigued with the incessant motion, Eustacia turned to
quit the circle in which she had already remained too long. Wildeve
led her to a grassy mound a few yards distant, where she sat down, her
partner standing beside her. From the time that he addressed her at the
beginning of the dance till now they had not exchanged a word.

"The dance and the walking have tired you?" he said tenderly.

"No; not greatly."

"It is strange that we should have met here of all places, after missing
each other so long."

"We have missed because we tried to miss, I suppose."

"Yes. But you began that proceeding--by breaking a promise."

"It is scarcely worth while to talk of that now. We have formed other
ties since then--you no less than I."

"I am sorry to hear that your husband is ill."

"He is not ill--only incapacitated."

"Yes--that is what I mean. I sincerely sympathize with you in your
trouble. Fate has treated you cruelly."

She was silent awhile. "Have you heard that he has chosen to work as a
furze-cutter?" she said in a low, mournful voice.

"It has been mentioned to me," answered Wildeve hesitatingly. "But I
hardly believed it."

"It is true. What do you think of me as a furze-cutter's wife?"

"I think the same as ever of you, Eustacia. Nothing of that sort can
degrade you--you ennoble the occupation of your husband."

"I wish I could feel it."

"Is there any chance of Mr. Yeobright getting better?"

"He thinks so. I doubt it."

"I was quite surprised to hear that he had taken a cottage. I thought,
in common with other people, that he would have taken you off to a home
in Paris immediately after you had married him. 'What a gay, bright
future she has before her!' I thought. He will, I suppose, return there
with you, if his sight gets strong again?"

Observing that she did not reply he regarded her more closely. She was
almost weeping. Images of a future never to be enjoyed, the revived
sense of her bitter disappointment, the picture of the neighbour's
suspended ridicule which was raised by Wildeve's words, had been too
much for proud Eustacia's equanimity.

Wildeve could hardly control his own too forward feelings when he saw
her silent perturbation. But he affected not to notice this, and she
soon recovered her calmness.

"You do not intend to walk home by yourself?" he asked.

"O yes," said Eustacia. "What could hurt me on this heath, who have
nothing?"

"By diverging a little I can make my way home the same as yours. I
shall be glad to keep you company as far as Throope Corner." Seeing that
Eustacia sat on in hesitation he added, "Perhaps you think it unwise to
be seen in the same road with me after the events of last summer?"

"Indeed I think no such thing," she said haughtily. "I shall accept
whose company I choose, for all that may be said by the miserable
inhabitants of Egdon."

"Then let us walk on--if you are ready. Our nearest way is towards that
holly bush with the dark shadow that you see down there."

Eustacia arose, and walked beside him in the direction signified,
brushing her way over the damping heath and fern, and followed by the
strains of the merrymakers, who still kept up the dance. The moon had
now waxed bright and silvery, but the heath was proof against such
illumination, and there was to be observed the striking scene of a dark,
rayless tract of country under an atmosphere charged from its zenith to
its extremities with whitest light. To an eye above them their two
faces would have appeared amid the expanse like two pearls on a table of
ebony.

On this account the irregularities of the path were not visible, and
Wildeve occasionally stumbled; whilst Eustacia found it necessary
to perform some graceful feats of balancing whenever a small tuft of
heather or root of furze protruded itself through the grass of the
narrow track and entangled her feet. At these junctures in her progress
a hand was invariably stretched forward to steady her, holding her
firmly until smooth ground was again reached, when the hand was again
withdrawn to a respectful distance.

They performed the journey for the most part in silence, and drew near
to Throope Corner, a few hundred yards from which a short path branched
away to Eustacia's house. By degrees they discerned coming towards them
a pair of human figures, apparently of the male sex.

When they came a little nearer Eustacia broke the silence by saying,
"One of those men is my husband. He promised to come to meet me."

"And the other is my greatest enemy," said Wildeve.

"It looks like Diggory Venn."

"That is the man."

"It is an awkward meeting," said she; "but such is my fortune. He knows
too much about me, unless he could know more, and so prove to himself
that what he now knows counts for nothing. Well, let it be--you must
deliver me up to them."

"You will think twice before you direct me to do that. Here is a man
who has not forgotten an item in our meetings at Rainbarrow--he is in
company with your husband. Which of them, seeing us together here, will
believe that our meeting and dancing at the gipsy party was by chance?"

"Very well," she whispered gloomily. "Leave me before they come up."

Wildeve bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across the fern and
furze, Eustacia slowly walking on. In two or three minutes she met her
husband and his companion.

"My journey ends here for tonight, reddleman," said Yeobright as soon as
he perceived her. "I turn back with this lady. Good night."

"Good night, Mr. Yeobright," said Venn. "I hope to see you better soon."

The moonlight shone directly upon Venn's face as he spoke, and revealed
all its lines to Eustacia. He was looking suspiciously at her. That
Venn's keen eye had discerned what Yeobright's feeble vision had not--a
man in the act of withdrawing from Eustacia's side--was within the
limits of the probable.

If Eustacia had been able to follow the reddleman she would soon have
found striking confirmation of her thought. No sooner had Clym given her
his arm and led her off the scene than the reddleman turned back from
the beaten track towards East Egdon, whither he had been strolling
merely to accompany Clym in his walk, Diggory's van being again in the
neighbourhood. Stretching out his long legs, he crossed the pathless
portion of the heath somewhat in the direction which Wildeve had taken.
Only a man accustomed to nocturnal rambles could at this hour have
descended those shaggy slopes with Venn's velocity without falling
headlong into a pit, or snapping off his leg by jamming his foot into
some rabbit burrow. But Venn went on without much inconvenience to
himself, and the course of his scamper was towards the Quiet Woman Inn.
This place he reached in about half an hour, and he was well aware that
no person who had been near Throope Corner when he started could have
got down here before him.

The lonely inn was not yet closed, though scarcely an individual was
there, the business done being chiefly with travellers who passed the
inn on long journeys, and these had now gone on their way. Venn went to
the public room, called for a mug of ale, and inquired of the maid in an
indifferent tone if Mr. Wildeve was at home.

Thomasin sat in an inner room and heard Venn's voice. When customers
were present she seldom showed herself, owing to her inherent dislike
for the business; but perceiving that no one else was there tonight she
came out.

"He is not at home yet, Diggory," she said pleasantly. "But I expected
him sooner. He has been to East Egdon to buy a horse."

"Did he wear a light wideawake?"

"Yes."

"Then I saw him at Throope Corner, leading one home," said Venn drily.
"A beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night. He will soon
be here, no doubt." Rising and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet
face of Thomasin, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the
time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, "Mr. Wildeve seems
to be often away at this time."

"O yes," cried Thomasin in what was intended to be a tone of gaiety.
"Husbands will play the truant, you know. I wish you could tell me of
some secret plan that would help me to keep him home at my will in the
evenings."

"I will consider if I know of one," replied Venn in that same light
tone which meant no lightness. And then he bowed in a manner of his own
invention and moved to go. Thomasin offered him her hand; and without a
sigh, though with food for many, the reddleman went out.

When Wildeve returned, a quarter of an hour later Thomasin said simply,
and in the abashed manner usual with her now, "Where is the horse,
Damon?"

"O, I have not bought it, after all. The man asks too much."

"But somebody saw you at Throope Corner leading it home--a beauty, with
a white face and a mane as black as night."

"Ah!" said Wildeve, fixing his eyes upon her; "who told you that?"

"Venn the reddleman."

The expression of Wildeve's face became curiously condensed. "That is
a mistake--it must have been someone else," he said slowly and testily,
for he perceived that Venn's countermoves had begun again.

</CHAPTER>
<CHAPTER>
4--Rough Coercion Is Employed

Those words of Thomasin, which seemed so little, but meant so much,
remained in the ears of Diggory Venn: "Help me to keep him home in the
evenings."

On this occasion Venn had arrived on Egdon Heath only to cross to the
other side--he had no further connection with the interests of the
Yeobright family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. Yet
he suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of
manoeuvring on Thomasin's account.

He sat in his van and considered. From Thomasin's words and manner
he had plainly gathered that Wildeve neglected her. For whom could
he neglect her if not for Eustacia? Yet it was scarcely credible
that things had come to such a head as to indicate that Eustacia
systematically encouraged him. Venn resolved to reconnoitre somewhat
carefully the lonely road which led along the vale from Wildeve's
dwelling to Clym's house at Alderworth.

At this time, as has been seen, Wildeve was quite innocent of any
predetermined act of intrigue, and except at the dance on the green he
had not once met Eustacia since her marriage. But that the spirit of
intrigue was in him had been shown by a recent romantic habit of his--a
habit of going out after dark and strolling towards Alderworth, there
looking at the moon and stars, looking at Eustacia's house, and walking
back at leisure.

Accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival, the
reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over the front gate
of Clym's garden, sigh, and turn to go back again. It was plain that
Wildeve's intrigue was rather ideal than real. Venn retreated before him
down the hill to a place where the path was merely a deep groove
between the heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a few
minutes, and retired. When Wildeve came on to that spot his ankle was
caught by something, and he fell headlong.

As soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and
listened. There was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir
of the summer wind. Feeling about for the obstacle which had flung
him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together
across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain
overthrow. Wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on
with tolerable quickness. On reaching home he found the cord to be of a
reddish colour. It was just what he had expected.

Although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to physical fear,
this species of coup-de-Jarnac from one he knew too well troubled the
mind of Wildeve. But his movements were unaltered thereby. A night
or two later he again went along the vale to Alderworth, taking the
precaution of keeping out of any path. The sense that he was watched,
that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes, added piquancy
to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long as the danger was of no
fearful sort. He imagined that Venn and Mrs. Yeobright were in league,
and felt that there was a certain legitimacy in combating such a
coalition.

The heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted; and Wildeve, after
looking over Eustacia's garden gate for some little time, with a cigar
in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling
had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite
closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. He could see into the
room, and Eustacia was sitting there alone. Wildeve contemplated her
for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly,
whereupon moths flew out alarmed. Securing one, he returned to the
window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. The moth
made towards the candle upon Eustacia's table, hovered round it two or
three times, and flew into the flame.

Eustacia started up. This had been a well-known signal in old times when
Wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to Mistover. She at once knew
that Wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her
husband came in from upstairs. Eustacia's face burnt crimson at the
unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that
it too frequently lacked.

"You have a very high colour, dearest," said Yeobright, when he came
close enough to see it. "Your appearance would be no worse if it were
always so."

"I am warm," said Eustacia. "I think I will go into the air for a few
minutes."

"Shall I go with you?"

"O no. I am only going to the gate."

She arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping
began upon the front door.

"I'll go--I'll go," said Eustacia in an unusually quick tone for her;
and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown;
but nothing appeared there.

"You had better not at this time of the evening," he said. Clym stepped
before her into the passage, and Eustacia waited, her somnolent manner
covering her inner heat and agitation.

She listened, and Clym opened the door. No words were uttered outside,
and presently he closed it and came back, saying, "Nobody was there. I
wonder what that could have meant?"

He was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation
offered itself, and Eustacia said nothing, the additional fact that she
knew of only adding more mystery to the performance.

Meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved Eustacia
from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least.
Whilst Wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had
come behind him up to the gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand,
looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked
up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner
and over the hedge.

"Damn him!" said Wildeve. "He has been watching me again."

As his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping
Wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the
path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. Halfway
down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the
general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. When
Wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent
gunshots fell among the leaves around him.

There was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun's
discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes
furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. This attack was a
more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before Wildeve
recovered his equanimity. A new and most unpleasant system of menace
had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm.
Wildeve had looked upon Venn's first attempt as a species of horseplay,
which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but
now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the
perilous.

Had Wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest Venn had become he might
have been still more alarmed. The reddleman had been almost exasperated
by the sight of Wildeve outside Clym's house, and he was prepared to go
to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young
innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. The doubtful legitimacy of
such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of Venn. It troubles few
such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted.
From the impeachment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch's short way with the
scamps of Virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are
mockeries of law.

About half a mile below Clym's secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where
lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of
Alderworth, and Wildeve went straight to the constable's cottage. Almost
the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable's
truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the
means to his purpose. On inquiry, however, of the constable's wife he
learnt that the constable was not at home. Wildeve said he would wait.

The minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive. Wildeve cooled
down from his state of high indignation to a restless dissatisfaction
with himself, the scene, the constable's wife, and the whole set of
circumstances. He arose and left the house. Altogether, the experience
of that evening had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on
misdirected tenderness, and Wildeve was in no mood to ramble again to
Alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance from Eustacia.

Thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in his rude
contrivances for keeping down Wildeve's inclination to rove in the
evening. He had nipped in the bud the possible meeting between Eustacia
and her old lover this very night. But he had not anticipated that the
tendency of his action would be to divert Wildeve's movement rather than
to stop it. The gambling with the guineas had not conduced to make him a
welcome guest to Clym; but to call upon his wife's relative was natural,
and he was determined to see Eustacia. It was necessary to choose some
less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night. "Since it is unsafe to go
in the evening," he said, "I'll go by day."

Meanwhile Venn had left the heath and gone to call upon Mrs. Yeobright,
with whom he had been on friendly terms since she had learnt what a
providential countermove he had made towards the restitution of the
family guineas. She wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no
objection to see him.

He gave her a full account of Clym's affliction, and of the state in
which he was living; then, referring to Thomasin, touched gently upon
the apparent sadness of her days. "Now, ma'am, depend upon it," he said,
"you couldn't do a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself
at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at
first."

"Both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; therefore I have no
interest in their households. Their troubles are of their own making."
Mrs. Yeobright tried to speak severely; but the account of her son's
state had moved her more than she cared to show.

"Your visits would make Wildeve walk straighter than he is inclined to
do, and might prevent unhappiness down the heath."

"What do you mean?"

"I saw something tonight out there which I didn't like at all. I wish
your son's house and Mr. Wildeve's were a hundred miles apart instead of
four or five."

"Then there WAS an understanding between him and Clym's wife when he
made a fool of Thomasin!"

"We'll hope there's no understanding now."

"And our hope will probably be very vain. O Clym! O Thomasin!"

"There's no harm done yet. In fact, I've persuaded Wildeve to mind his
own business."

"How?"

"O, not by talking--by a plan of mine called the silent system."

"I hope you'll succeed."

"I shall if you help me by calling and making friends with your son.
You'll have a chance then of using your eyes."

"Well, since it has come to this," said Mrs. Yeobright sadly, "I will
own to you, reddleman, that I thought of going. I should be much happier
if we were reconciled. The marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut
short, and I should wish to die in peace. He is my only son; and since
sons are made of such stuff I am not sorry I have no other. As for
Thomasin, I never expected much from her; and she has not disappointed
me. But I forgave her long ago; and I forgive him now. I'll go."

At this very time of the reddleman's conversation with Mrs. Yeobright
at Blooms-End another conversation on the same subject was languidly
proceeding at Alderworth.

All the day Clym had borne himself as if his mind were too full of its
own matter to allow him to care about outward things, and his words now
showed what had occupied his thoughts. It was just after the mysterious
knocking that he began the theme. "Since I have been away today,
Eustacia, I have considered that something must be done to heal up this
ghastly breach between my dear mother and myself. It troubles me."

"What do you propose to do?" said Eustacia abstractedly, for she could
not clear away from her the excitement caused by Wildeve's recent
manoeuvre for an interview.

"You seem to take a very mild interest in what I propose, little or
much," said Clym, with tolerable warmth.

"You mistake me," she answered, reviving at his reproach. "I am only
thinking."

"What of?"

"Partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt up in the wick of
the candle," she said slowly. "But you know I always take an interest in
what you say."

"Very well, dear. Then I think I must go and call upon her." ...He went
on with tender feeling: "It is a thing I am not at all too proud to do,
and only a fear that I might irritate her has kept me away so long. But
I must do something. It is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go
on."

"What have you to blame yourself about?"

"She is getting old, and her life is lonely, and I am her only son."

"She has Thomasin."

"Thomasin is not her daughter; and if she were that would not excuse me.
But this is beside the point. I have made up my mind to go to her, and
all I wish to ask you is whether you will do your best to help me--that
is, forget the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled,
meet her halfway by welcoming her to our house, or by accepting a
welcome to hers?"

At first Eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do anything
on the whole globe than what he suggested. But the lines of her mouth
softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened,
and she said, "I will put nothing in your way; but after what has passed
it is asking too much that I go and make advances."

"You never distinctly told me what did pass between you."

"I could not do it then, nor can I now. Sometimes more bitterness is
sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that
may be the case here." She paused a few moments, and added, "If you had
never returned to your native place, Clym, what a blessing it would have
been for you!... It has altered the destinies of----"

"Three people."

"Five," Eustacia thought; but she kept that in.

</CHAPTER>

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Determined to fight off her depression, Eustacia decides to go to a "gipsying," or dance, in East Egdon. Envious of the young people dancing, and later, surprised by Wildeve's presence there, she consents to dance with her former lover and enjoys it more than she can understand. Allowing Wildeve to walk part way home with her, she encounters Clym and Venn, though Wildeve leaves her before Clym can see him. Sure he has seen Wildeve with Eustacia, Venn hurries to the inn and learns from questioning Thomasin that it was her husband. Thereupon, Venn keeps watch on Clym's house and on several occasions frustrates Wildeve's loitering outside the house and trying to communicate with Eustacia. Venn also calls on Mrs. Yeobright, urging her to establish relations with both Clym and Thomasin for the good of all. She decides to forgive Clym and call on him. At the same time, Clym tells Eustacia he must do something to improve relations with his mother.


prompt:
Chapter: <CHAPTER>
5--The Journey across the Heath

Thursday, the thirty-first of August, was one of a series of days during
which snug houses were stifling, and when cool draughts were treats;
when cracks appeared in clayey gardens, and were called "earthquakes" by
apprehensive children; when loose spokes were discovered in the wheels
of carts and carriages; and when stinging insects haunted the air, the
earth, and every drop of water that was to be found.

In Mrs. Yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind flagged
by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at eleven; and even
stiff cabbages were limp by noon.

It was about eleven o'clock on this day that Mrs. Yeobright started
across the heath towards her son's house, to do her best in getting
reconciled with him and Eustacia, in conformity with her words to the
reddleman. She had hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the heat
of the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found that this
was not to be done. The sun had branded the whole heath with its mark,
even the purple heath-flowers having put on a brownness under the dry
blazes of the few preceding days. Every valley was filled with air like
that of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of the winter water-courses,
which formed summer paths, had undergone a species of incineration since
the drought had set in.

In cool, fresh weather Mrs. Yeobright would have found no inconvenience
in walking to Alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey
a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age; and at the end of the
third mile she wished that she had hired Fairway to drive her a portion
at least of the distance. But from the point at which she had arrived it
was as easy to reach Clym's house as to get home again. So she went on,
the air around her pulsating silently, and oppressing the earth with
lassitude. She looked at the sky overhead, and saw that the sapphirine
hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a
metallic violet.

Occasionally she came to a spot where independent worlds of ephemerons
were passing their time in mad carousal, some in the air, some on the
hot ground and vegetation, some in the tepid and stringy water of a
nearly dried pool. All the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous
mud amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscure creatures could
be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing with enjoyment. Being a
woman not disinclined to philosophize she sometimes sat down under her
umbrella to rest and to watch their happiness, for a certain hopefulness
as to the result of her visit gave ease to her mind, and between
important thoughts left it free to dwell on any infinitesimal matter
which caught her eyes.

Mrs. Yeobright had never before been to her son's house, and its exact
position was unknown to her. She tried one ascending path and another,
and found that they led her astray. Retracing her steps, she came again
to an open level, where she perceived at a distance a man at work. She
went towards him and inquired the way.

The labourer pointed out the direction, and added, "Do you see that
furze-cutter, ma'am, going up that footpath yond?"

Mrs. Yeobright strained her eyes, and at last said that she did perceive
him.

"Well, if you follow him you can make no mistake. He's going to the same
place, ma'am."

She followed the figure indicated. He appeared of a russet hue, not more
distinguishable from the scene around him than the green caterpillar
from the leaf it feeds on. His progress when actually walking was more
rapid than Mrs. Yeobright's; but she was enabled to keep at an equable
distance from him by his habit of stopping whenever he came to a brake
of brambles, where he paused awhile. On coming in her turn to each of
these spots she found half a dozen long limp brambles which he had cut
from the bush during his halt and laid out straight beside the path.
They were evidently intended for furze-faggot bonds which he meant to
collect on his return.

The silent being who thus occupied himself seemed to be of no more
account in life than an insect. He appeared as a mere parasite of
the heath, fretting its surface in his daily labour as a moth frets a
garment, entirely engrossed with its products, having no knowledge of
anything in the world but fern, furze, heath, lichens, and moss.

The furze-cutter was so absorbed in the business of his journey that he
never turned his head; and his leather-legged and gauntleted form at
length became to her as nothing more than a moving handpost to show her
the way. Suddenly she was attracted to his individuality by observing
peculiarities in his walk. It was a gait she had seen somewhere before;
and the gait revealed the man to her, as the gait of Ahimaaz in the
distant plain made him known to the watchman of the king. "His walk
is exactly as my husband's used to be," she said; and then the thought
burst upon her that the furze-cutter was her son.

She was scarcely able to familiarize herself with this strange reality.
She had been told that Clym was in the habit of cutting furze, but she
had supposed that he occupied himself with the labour only at odd times,
by way of useful pastime; yet she now beheld him as a furze-cutter and
nothing more--wearing the regulation dress of the craft, and thinking
the regulation thoughts, to judge by his motions. Planning a dozen hasty
schemes for at once preserving him and Eustacia from this mode of life,
she throbbingly followed the way, and saw him enter his own door.

At one side of Clym's house was a knoll, and on the top of the knoll a
clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the sky that their foliage
from a distance appeared as a black spot in the air above the crown
of the hill. On reaching this place Mrs. Yeobright felt distressingly
agitated, weary, and unwell. She ascended, and sat down under their
shade to recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground
with Eustacia, so as not to irritate a woman underneath whose apparent
indolence lurked passions even stronger and more active than her own.

The trees beneath which she sat were singularly battered, rude, and
wild, and for a few minutes Mrs. Yeobright dismissed thoughts of her own
storm-broken and exhausted state to contemplate theirs. Not a bough in
the nine trees which composed the group but was splintered, lopped,
and distorted by the fierce weather that there held them at its mercy
whenever it prevailed. Some were blasted and split as if by lightning,
black stains as from fire marking their sides, while the ground at their
feet was strewn with dead fir-needles and heaps of cones blown down in
the gales of past years. The place was called the Devil's Bellows, and
it was only necessary to come there on a March or November night to
discover the forcible reasons for that name. On the present heated
afternoon, when no perceptible wind was blowing, the trees kept up a
perpetual moan which one could hardly believe to be caused by the air.

Here she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could summon resolution
to go down to the door, her courage being lowered to zero by her
physical lassitude. To any other person than a mother it might have
seemed a little humiliating that she, the elder of the two women, should
be the first to make advances. But Mrs. Yeobright had well considered
all that, and she only thought how best to make her visit appear to
Eustacia not abject but wise.

From her elevated position the exhausted woman could perceive the roof
of the house below, and the garden and the whole enclosure of the
little domicile. And now, at the moment of rising, she saw a second man
approaching the gate. His manner was peculiar, hesitating, and not that
of a person come on business or by invitation. He surveyed the house
with interest, and then walked round and scanned the outer boundary
of the garden, as one might have done had it been the birthplace of
Shakespeare, the prison of Mary Stuart, or the Chateau of Hougomont.
After passing round and again reaching the gate he went in. Mrs.
Yeobright was vexed at this, having reckoned on finding her son and his
wife by themselves; but a moment's thought showed her that the
presence of an acquaintance would take off the awkwardness of her first
appearance in the house, by confining the talk to general matters until
she had begun to feel comfortable with them. She came down the hill to
the gate, and looked into the hot garden.

There lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds,
rugs, and carpets were unendurable. The leaves of the hollyhocks hung
like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and
foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. A small
apple tree, of the sort called Ratheripe, grew just inside the gate, the
only one which throve in the garden, by reason of the lightness of
the soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground beneath were wasps
rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping about the little caves in each
fruit which they had eaten out before stupefied by its sweetness. By the
door lay Clym's furze-hook and the last handful of faggot-bonds she had
seen him gather; they had plainly been thrown down there as he entered
the house.

</CHAPTER>
<CHAPTER>
6--A Conjuncture, and Its Result upon the Pedestrian

Wildeve, as has been stated, was determined to visit Eustacia boldly, by
day, and on the easy terms of a relation, since the reddleman had spied
out and spoilt his walks to her by night. The spell that she had thrown
over him in the moonlight dance made it impossible for a man having no
strong puritanic force within him to keep away altogether. He merely
calculated on meeting her and her husband in an ordinary manner,
chatting a little while, and leaving again. Every outward sign was to be
conventional; but the one great fact would be there to satisfy him--he
would see her. He did not even desire Clym's absence, since it was just
possible that Eustacia might resent any situation which could compromise
her dignity as a wife, whatever the state of her heart towards him.
Women were often so.

He went accordingly; and it happened that the time of his arrival
coincided with that of Mrs. Yeobright's pause on the hill near the
house. When he had looked round the premises in the manner she had
noticed he went and knocked at the door. There was a few minutes'
interval, and then the key turned in the lock, the door opened, and
Eustacia herself confronted him.

Nobody could have imagined from her bearing now that here stood the
woman who had joined with him in the impassioned dance of the week
before, unless indeed he could have penetrated below the surface and
gauged the real depth of that still stream.

"I hope you reached home safely?" said Wildeve.

"O yes," she carelessly returned.

"And were you not tired the next day? I feared you might be."

"I was rather. You need not speak low--nobody will over-hear us. My
small servant is gone on an errand to the village."

"Then Clym is not at home?"

"Yes, he is."

"O! I thought that perhaps you had locked the door because you were
alone and were afraid of tramps."

"No--here is my husband."

They had been standing in the entry. Closing the front door and turning
the key, as before, she threw open the door of the adjoining room and
asked him to walk in. Wildeve entered, the room appearing to be empty;
but as soon as he had advanced a few steps he started. On the hearthrug
lay Clym asleep. Beside him were the leggings, thick boots, leather
gloves, and sleeve-waistcoat in which he worked.

"You may go in; you will not disturb him," she said, following behind.
"My reason for fastening the door is that he may not be intruded upon
by any chance comer while lying here, if I should be in the garden or
upstairs."

"Why is he sleeping there?" said Wildeve in low tones.

"He is very weary. He went out at half-past four this morning, and has
been working ever since. He cuts furze because it is the only thing he
can do that does not put any strain upon his poor eyes." The contrast
between the sleeper's appearance and Wildeve's at this moment was
painfully apparent to Eustacia, Wildeve being elegantly dressed in a new
summer suit and light hat; and she continued: "Ah! you don't know how
differently he appeared when I first met him, though it is such a little
while ago. His hands were as white and soft as mine; and look at them
now, how rough and brown they are! His complexion is by nature fair, and
that rusty look he has now, all of a colour with his leather clothes, is
caused by the burning of the sun."

"Why does he go out at all!" Wildeve whispered.

"Because he hates to be idle; though what he earns doesn't add much to
our exchequer. However, he says that when people are living upon their
capital they must keep down current expenses by turning a penny where
they can."

"The fates have not been kind to you, Eustacia Yeobright."

"I have nothing to thank them for."

"Nor has he--except for their one great gift to him."

"What's that?"

Wildeve looked her in the eyes.

Eustacia blushed for the first time that day. "Well, I am a questionable
gift," she said quietly. "I thought you meant the gift of content--which
he has, and I have not."

"I can understand content in such a case--though how the outward
situation can attract him puzzles me."

"That's because you don't know him. He's an enthusiast about ideas, and
careless about outward things. He often reminds me of the Apostle Paul."

"I am glad to hear that he's so grand in character as that."

"Yes; but the worst of it is that though Paul was excellent as a man in
the Bible he would hardly have done in real life."

Their voices had instinctively dropped lower, though at first they had
taken no particular care to avoid awakening Clym. "Well, if that means
that your marriage is a misfortune to you, you know who is to blame,"
said Wildeve.

"The marriage is no misfortune in itself," she retorted with some little
petulance. "It is simply the accident which has happened since that has
been the cause of my ruin. I have certainly got thistles for figs in a
worldly sense, but how could I tell what time would bring forth?"

"Sometimes, Eustacia, I think it is a judgment upon you. You rightly
belonged to me, you know; and I had no idea of losing you."

"No, it was not my fault! Two could not belong to you; and remember
that, before I was aware, you turned aside to another woman. It was
cruel levity in you to do that. I never dreamt of playing such a game on
my side till you began it on yours."

"I meant nothing by it," replied Wildeve. "It was a mere interlude. Men
are given to the trick of having a passing fancy for somebody else in
the midst of a permanent love, which reasserts itself afterwards just as
before. On account of your rebellious manner to me I was tempted to go
further than I should have done; and when you still would keep playing
the same tantalizing part I went further still, and married her."
Turning and looking again at the unconscious form of Clym, he murmured,
"I am afraid that you don't value your prize, Clym.... He ought to be
happier than I in one thing at least. He may know what it is to come
down in the world, and to be afflicted with a great personal calamity;
but he probably doesn't know what it is to lose the woman he loved."

"He is not ungrateful for winning her," whispered Eustacia, "and in that
respect he is a good man. Many women would go far for such a husband.
But do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life--music,
poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that are going on
in the great arteries of the world? That was the shape of my youthful
dream; but I did not get it. Yet I thought I saw the way to it in my
Clym."

"And you only married him on that account?"

"There you mistake me. I married him because I loved him, but I won't
say that I didn't love him partly because I thought I saw a promise of
that life in him."

"You have dropped into your old mournful key."

"But I am not going to be depressed," she cried perversely. "I began a
new system by going to that dance, and I mean to stick to it. Clym can
sing merrily; why should not I?"

Wildeve looked thoughtfully at her. "It is easier to say you will sing
than to do it; though if I could I would encourage you in your attempt.
But as life means nothing to me, without one thing which is now
impossible, you will forgive me for not being able to encourage you."

"Damon, what is the matter with you, that you 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 must be a very curious woman to talk like that."

"O no, not at all," she said, returning to the boy's 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>

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: On an extremely hot day at the end of August, Mrs. Yeobright sets off across the heath to visit Clym and Eustacia, but loses her way to the unfamiliar village of Alderworth, where they live. Seeking directions, she is told to follow a furze cutter going along a path. She does so, only to realize finally that it is her son Clym. Resting in a clump of trees near Clym's house, she sees a man come to the house before she can get there. It is Wildeve, come to call on Eustacia in the daytime. Eustacia admits him, and they talk in a room where Clym is asleep on the hearth rug. They discuss her marriage, Wildeve hinting that he is still in love with her. When Mrs. Yeobright knocks on the front door, Eustacia doesn't know what to do, finally deciding that Clym will probably awaken and answer the door. She quickly lets Wildeve out the back. When she returns, she finds Clym still asleep and Mrs. Yeobright no longer at the door. Mrs. Yeobright has already started for home, previously overheated and exhausted and now shocked because Clym has apparently allowed Eustacia to refuse her entrance. The older woman encounters Johnny Nunsuch, who goes a short distance with her and is upset by her appearance. When he leaves her, she finally sits down to rest, watching a heron flying gracefully in the sky.