Chapter: <CHAPTER>
5--Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues


When Yeobright was not with Eustacia he was sitting slavishly over his
books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. These meetings were
carried on with the greatest secrecy.

One afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to Thomasin. He
could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had
happened.

"I have been told an incomprehensible thing," she said mournfully. "The
captain has let out at the Woman that you and Eustacia Vye are engaged
to be married."

"We are," said Yeobright. "But it may not be yet for a very long time."

"I should hardly think it WOULD be yet for a very long time! You will
take her to Paris, I suppose?" She spoke with weary hopelessness.

"I am not going back to Paris."

"What will you do with a wife, then?"

"Keep a school in Budmouth, as I have told you."

"That's incredible! The place is overrun with schoolmasters. You have no
special qualifications. What possible chance is there for such as you?"

"There is no chance of getting rich. But with my system of education,
which is as new as it is true, I shall do a great deal of good to my
fellow-creatures."

"Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to be invented they
would have found it out at the universities long before this time."

"Never, Mother. They cannot find it out, because their teachers don't
come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that
is, those who have had no preliminary training. My plan is one for
instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them
with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins."

"I might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from
entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would have
been bad enough; but being----"

"She is a good girl."

"So you think. A Corfu bandmaster's daughter! What has her life been?
Her surname even is not her true one."

"She is Captain Vye's granddaughter, and her father merely took her
mother's name. And she is a lady by instinct."

"They call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain."

"He was in the Royal Navy!"

"No doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. Why doesn't he look
after her? No lady would rove about the heath at all hours of the day
and night as she does. But that's not all of it. There was something
queer between her and Thomasin's husband at one time--I am as sure of it
as that I stand here."

"Eustacia has told me. He did pay her a little attention a year ago; but
there's no harm in that. I like her all the better."

"Clym," said his mother with firmness, "I have no proofs against her,
unfortunately. But if she makes you a good wife, there has never been a
bad one."

"Believe me, you are almost exasperating," said Yeobright vehemently.
"And this very day I had intended to arrange a meeting between you. But
you give me no peace; you try to thwart my wishes in everything."

"I hate the thought of any son of mine marrying badly! I wish I had
never lived to see this; it is too much for me--it is more than I
dreamt!" She turned to the window. Her breath was coming quickly, and
her lips were pale, parted, and trembling.

"Mother," said Clym, "whatever you do, you will always be dear to
me--that you know. But one thing I have a right to say, which is, that
at my age I am old enough to know what is best for me."

Mrs. Yeobright remained for some time silent and shaken, as if she could
say no more. Then she replied, "Best? Is it best for you to injure your
prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? Don't you see that
by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know
what is best for you? You give up your whole thought--you set your whole
soul--to please a woman."

"I do. And that woman is you."

"How can you treat me so flippantly!" said his mother, turning again to
him with a tearful look. "You are unnatural, Clym, and I did not expect
it."

"Very likely," said he cheerlessly. "You did not know the measure you
were going to mete me, and therefore did not know the measure that would
be returned to you again."

"You answer me; you think only of her. You stick to her in all things."

"That proves her to be worthy. I have never yet supported what is bad.
And I do not care only for her. I care for you and for myself, and
for anything that is good. When a woman once dislikes another she is
merciless!"

"O Clym! please don't go setting down as my fault what is your obstinate
wrongheadedness. If you wished to connect yourself with an unworthy
person why did you come home here to do it? Why didn't you do it in
Paris?--it is more the fashion there. You have come only to distress me,
a lonely woman, and shorten my days! I wish that you would bestow your
presence where you bestow your love!"

Clym said huskily, "You are my mother. I will say no more--beyond this,
that I beg your pardon for having thought this my home. I will no longer
inflict myself upon you; I'll go." And he went out with tears in his
eyes.

It was a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer, and the moist
hollows of the heath had passed from their brown to their green stage.
Yeobright walked to the edge of the basin which extended down from
Mistover and Rainbarrow.

By this time he was calm, and he looked over the landscape. In the minor
valleys, between the hillocks which diversified the contour of the vale,
the fresh young ferns were luxuriantly growing up, ultimately to reach
a height of five or six feet. He descended a little way, flung himself
down in a spot where a path emerged from one of the small hollows, and
waited. Hither it was that he had promised Eustacia to bring his mother
this afternoon, that they might meet and be friends. His attempt had
utterly failed.

He was in a nest of vivid green. The ferny vegetation round him, though
so abundant, was quite uniform--it was a grove of machine-made foliage,
a world of green triangles with saw-edges, and not a single flower. The
air was warm with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness was unbroken.
Lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living things to
be beheld. The scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of the
carboniferous period, when the forms of plants were few, and of the fern
kind; when there was neither bud nor blossom, nothing but a monotonous
extent of leafage, amid which no bird sang.

When he had reclined for some considerable time, gloomily pondering, he
discerned above the ferns a drawn bonnet of white silk approaching from
the left, and Yeobright knew directly that it covered the head of her
he loved. His heart awoke from its apathy to a warm excitement, and,
jumping to his feet, he said aloud, "I knew she was sure to come."

She vanished in a hollow for a few moments, and then her whole form
unfolded itself from the brake.

"Only you here?" she exclaimed, with a disappointed air, whose
hollowness was proved by her rising redness and her half-guilty low
laugh. "Where is Mrs. Yeobright?"

"She has not come," he replied in a subdued tone.

"I wish I had known that you would be here alone," she said seriously,
"and that we were going to have such an idle, pleasant time as this.
Pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to
double it. I have not thought once today of having you all to myself
this afternoon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone."

"It is indeed."

"Poor Clym!" she continued, looking tenderly into his face. "You are
sad. Something has happened at your home. Never mind what is--let us
only look at what seems."

"But, darling, what shall we do?" said he.

"Still go on as we do now--just live on from meeting to meeting, never
minding about another day. You, I know, are always thinking of that--I
can see you are. But you must not--will you, dear Clym?"

"You are just like all women. They are ever content to build their lives
on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would fain
make a globe to suit them. Listen to this, Eustacia. There is a subject
I have determined to put off no longer. Your sentiment on the wisdom
of Carpe diem does not impress me today. Our present mode of life must
shortly be brought to an end."

"It is your mother!"

"It is. I love you none the less in telling you; it is only right you
should know."

"I have feared my bliss," she said, with the merest motion of her lips.
"It has been too intense and consuming."

"There is hope yet. There are forty years of work in me yet, and why
should you despair? I am only at an awkward turning. I wish people
wouldn't be so ready to think that there is no progress without
uniformity."

"Ah--your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it. Well, these sad
and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to
look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge
in. I have heard of people, who, upon coming suddenly into happiness,
have died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy it. I felt
myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but I shall be
spared it now. Let us walk on."

Clym took the hand which was already bared for him--it was a favourite
way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand--and led her through the
ferns. They formed a very comely picture of love at full flush, as they
walked along the valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down on
their right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as poplar
trees, far out across the furze and fern. Eustacia went with her head
thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and voluptuous air of triumph
pervading her eyes at having won by her own unaided self a man who was
her perfect complement in attainment, appearance, and age. On the young
man's part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him
from Paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were less
perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic
sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its
original proportions. They wandered onward till they reached the nether
margin of the heath, where it became marshy and merged in moorland.

"I must part from you here, Clym," said Eustacia.

They stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell. Everything
before them was on a perfect level. The sun, resting on the horizon
line, streamed across the ground from between copper-coloured and lilac
clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft green. All
dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread by
a purple haze, against which groups of wailing gnats shone out, rising
upwards and dancing about like sparks of fire.

"O! this leaving you is too hard to bear!" exclaimed Eustacia in a
sudden whisper of anguish. "Your mother will influence you too much;
I shall not be judged fairly, it will get afloat that I am not a good
girl, and the witch story will be added to make me blacker!"

"They cannot. Nobody dares to speak disrespectfully of you or of me."

"Oh how I wish I was sure of never losing you--that you could not be
able to desert me anyhow!"

Clym stood silent a moment. His feelings were high, the moment was
passionate, and he cut the knot.

"You shall be sure of me, darling," he said, folding her in his arms.
"We will be married at once."

"O Clym!"

"Do you agree to it?"

"If--if we can."

"We certainly can, both being of full age. And I have not followed my
occupation all these years without having accumulated money; and if you
will agree to live in a tiny cottage somewhere on the heath, until I
take a house in Budmouth for the school, we can do it at a very little
expense."

"How long shall we have to live in the tiny cottage, Clym?"

"About six months. At the end of that time I shall have finished my
reading--yes, we will do it, and this heart-aching will be over. We
shall, of course, live in absolute seclusion, and our married life will
only begin to outward view when we take the house in Budmouth, where I
have already addressed a letter on the matter. Would your grandfather
allow you?"

"I think he would--on the understanding that it should not last longer
than six months."

"I will guarantee that, if no misfortune happens."

"If no misfortune happens," she repeated slowly.

"Which is not likely. Dearest, fix the exact day."

And then they consulted on the question, and the day was chosen. It was
to be a fortnight from that time.

This was the end of their talk, and Eustacia left him. Clym watched her
as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up with
her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting
sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery
overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that
untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the
poorest blade. There was something in its oppressive horizontality which
too much reminded him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare
equality with, and no superiority to, a single living thing under the
sun.

Eustacia was now no longer the goddess but the woman to him, a being
to fight for, support, help, be maligned for. Now that he had reached
a cooler moment he would have preferred a less hasty marriage; but the
card was laid, and he determined to abide by the game. Whether Eustacia
was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly to love
long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly a ready way of
proving.

</CHAPTER>
<CHAPTER>
6--Yeobright Goes, and the Breach Is Complete


All that evening smart sounds denoting an active packing up came from
Yeobright's room to the ears of his mother downstairs.

Next morning he departed from the house and again proceeded across the
heath. A long day's march was before him, his object being to secure a
dwelling to which he might take Eustacia when she became his wife.
Such a house, small, secluded, and with its windows boarded up, he had
casually observed a month earlier, about two miles beyond the village
of East Egdon, and six miles distant altogether; and thither he directed
his steps today.

The weather was far different from that of the evening before. The
yellow and vapoury sunset which had wrapped up Eustacia from his parting
gaze had presaged change. It was one of those not infrequent days of
an English June which are as wet and boisterous as November. The cold
clouds hastened on in a body, as if painted on a moving slide. Vapours
from other continents arrived upon the wind, which curled and parted
round him as he walked on.

At length Clym reached the margin of a fir and beech plantation that had
been enclosed from heath land in the year of his birth. Here the trees,
laden heavily with their new and humid leaves, were now suffering more
damage than during the highest winds of winter, when the boughs are
especially disencumbered to do battle with the storm. The wet young
beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings, and harsh
lacerations, from which the wasting sap would bleed for many a day to
come, and which would leave scars visible till the day of their burning.
Each stem was wrenched at the root, where it moved like a bone in its
socket, and at every onset of the gale convulsive sounds came from the
branches, as if pain were felt. In a neighbouring brake a finch was
trying to sing; but the wind blew under his feathers till they stood on
end, twisted round his little tail, and made him give up his song.

Yet a few yards to Yeobright's left, on the open heath, how
ineffectively gnashed the storm! Those gusts which tore the trees merely
waved the furze and heather in a light caress. Egdon was made for such
times as these.

Yeobright reached the empty house about midday. It was almost as lonely
as that of Eustacia's grandfather, but the fact that it stood near
a heath was disguised by a belt of firs which almost enclosed the
premises. He journeyed on about a mile further to the village in which
the owner lived, and, returning with him to the house, arrangements were
completed, and the man undertook that one room at least should be ready
for occupation the next day. Clym's intention was to live there alone
until Eustacia should join him on their wedding-day.

Then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the drizzle that had
so greatly transformed the scene. The ferns, among which he had lain in
comfort yesterday, were dripping moisture from every frond, wetting
his legs through as he brushed past; and the fur of the rabbits leaping
before him was clotted into dark locks by the same watery surrounding.

He reached home damp and weary enough after his ten-mile walk. It had
hardly been a propitious beginning, but he had chosen his course, and
would show no swerving. The evening and the following morning were spent
in concluding arrangements for his departure. To stay at home a minute
longer than necessary after having once come to his determination would
be, he felt, only to give new pain to his mother by some word, look, or
deed.

He had hired a conveyance and sent off his goods by two o'clock that
day. The next step was to get some furniture, which, after serving
for temporary use in the cottage, would be available for the house
at Budmouth when increased by goods of a better description. A mart
extensive enough for the purpose existed at Anglebury, some miles beyond
the spot chosen for his residence, and there he resolved to pass the
coming night.

It now only remained to wish his mother good-bye. She was sitting by the
window as usual when he came downstairs.

"Mother, I am going to leave you," he said, holding out his hand.

"I thought you were, by your packing," replied Mrs. Yeobright in a voice
from which every particle of emotion was painfully excluded.

"And you will part friends with me?"

"Certainly, Clym."

"I am going to be married on the twenty-fifth."

"I thought you were going to be married."

"And then--and then you must come and see us. You will understand me
better after that, and our situation will not be so wretched as it is
now."

"I do not think it likely I shall come to see you."

"Then it will not be my fault or Eustacia's, Mother. Good-bye!"

He kissed her cheek, and departed in great misery, which was several
hours in lessening itself to a controllable level. The position had
been such that nothing more could be said without, in the first place,
breaking down a barrier; and that was not to be done.

No sooner had Yeobright gone from his mother's house than her face
changed its rigid aspect for one of blank despair. After a while she
wept, and her tears brought some relief. During the rest of the day she
did nothing but walk up and down the garden path in a state bordering
on stupefaction. Night came, and with it but little rest. The next day,
with an instinct to do something which should reduce prostration
to mournfulness, she went to her son's room, and with her own hands
arranged it in order, for an imaginary time when he should return
again. She gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily
bestowed, for they no longer charmed her.

It was a great relief when, early in the afternoon, Thomasin paid her an
unexpected visit. This was not the first meeting between the relatives
since Thomasin's marriage; and past blunders having been in a rough way
rectified, they could always greet each other with pleasure and ease.

The oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became
the young wife well. It illuminated her as her presence illuminated the
heath. In her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of
the feathered creatures who lived around her home. All similes and
allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. There was as much
variety in her motions as in their flight. When she was musing she was
a kestrel, which hangs in the air by an invisible motion of its wings.
When she was in a high wind her light body was blown against trees and
banks like a heron's. When she was frightened she darted noiselessly
like a kingfisher. When she was serene she skimmed like a swallow, and
that is how she was moving now.

"You are looking very blithe, upon my word, Tamsie," said Mrs.
Yeobright, with a sad smile. "How is Damon?"

"He is very well."

"Is he kind to you, Thomasin?" And Mrs. Yeobright observed her narrowly.

"Pretty fairly."

"Is that honestly said?"

"Yes, Aunt. I would tell you if he were unkind." She added, blushing,
and with hesitation, "He--I don't know if I ought to complain to you
about this, but I am not quite sure what to do. I want some money, you
know, Aunt--some to buy little things for myself--and he doesn't give
me any. I don't like to ask him; and yet, perhaps, he doesn't give it me
because he doesn't know. Ought I to mention it to him, Aunt?"

"Of course you ought. Have you never said a word on the matter?"

"You see, I had some of my own," said Thomasin evasively, "and I have
not wanted any of his until lately. I did just say something about it
last week; but he seems--not to remember."

"He must be made to remember. You are aware that I have a little box
full of spade-guineas, which your uncle put into my hands to divide
between yourself and Clym whenever I chose. Perhaps the time has come
when it should be done. They can be turned into sovereigns at any
moment."

"I think I should like to have my share--that is, if you don't mind."

"You shall, if necessary. But it is only proper that you should first
tell your husband distinctly that you are without any, and see what he
will do."

"Very well, I will.... Aunt, I have heard about Clym. I know you are in
trouble about him, and that's why I have come."

Mrs. Yeobright turned away, and her features worked in her attempt to
conceal her feelings. Then she ceased to make any attempt, and said,
weeping, "O Thomasin, do you think he hates me? How can he bear to
grieve me so, when I have lived only for him through all these years?"

"Hate you--no," said Thomasin soothingly. "It is only that he loves her
too well. Look at it quietly--do. It is not so very bad of him. Do you
know, I thought it not the worst match he could have made. Miss Vye's
family is a good one on her mother's side; and her father was a romantic
wanderer--a sort of Greek Ulysses."

"It is no use, Thomasin; it is no use. Your intention is good; but I
will not trouble you to argue. I have gone through the whole that can be
said on either side times, and many times. Clym and I have not parted
in anger; we have parted in a worse way. It is not a passionate quarrel
that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and
persistence in going wrong that he has shown. O Thomasin, he was so good
as a little boy--so tender and kind!"

"He was, I know."

"I did not think one whom I called mine would grow up to treat me like
this. He spoke to me as if I opposed him to injure him. As though I
could wish him ill!"

"There are worse women in the world than Eustacia Vye."

"There are too many better that's the agony of it. It was she, Thomasin,
and she only, who led your husband to act as he did--I would swear it!"

"No," said Thomasin eagerly. "It was before he knew me that he thought
of her, and it was nothing but a mere flirtation."

"Very well; we will let it be so. There is little use in unravelling
that now. Sons must be blind if they will. Why is it that a woman can
see from a distance what a man cannot see close? Clym must do as he
will--he is nothing more to me. And this is maternity--to give one's
best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised!"

"You are too unyielding. Think how many mothers there are whose sons
have brought them to public shame by real crimes before you feel so
deeply a case like this."

"Thomasin, don't lecture me--I can't have it. It is the excess above
what we expect that makes the force of the blow, and that may not
be greater in their case than in mine--they may have foreseen the
worst.... I am wrongly made, Thomasin," she added, with a mournful smile.
"Some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by
turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. But I
always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd creature--I had not the compass of
heart nor the enterprise for that. Just as forlorn and stupefied as
I was when my husband's spirit flew away I have sat ever since--never
attempting to mend matters at all. I was comparatively a young woman
then, and I might have had another family by this time, and have been
comforted by them for the failure of this one son."

"It is more noble in you that you did not."

"The more noble, the less wise."

"Forget it, and be soothed, dear Aunt. And I shall not leave you alone
for long. I shall come and see you every day."

And for one week Thomasin literally fulfilled her word. She endeavoured
to make light of the wedding; and brought news of the preparations, and
that she was invited to be present. The next week she was rather unwell,
and did not appear. Nothing had as yet been done about the guineas, for
Thomasin feared to address her husband again on the subject, and Mrs.
Yeobright had insisted upon this.


One day just before this time Wildeve was standing at the door of
the Quiet Woman. In addition to the upward path through the heath
to Rainbarrow and Mistover, there was a road which branched from the
highway a short distance below the inn, and ascended to Mistover by a
circuitous and easy incline. This was the only route on that side for
vehicles to the captain's retreat. A light cart from the nearest town
descended the road, and the lad who was driving pulled up in front of
the inn for something to drink.

"You come from Mistover?" said Wildeve.

"Yes. They are taking in good things up there. Going to be a wedding."
And the driver buried his face in his mug.

Wildeve had not received an inkling of the fact before, and a sudden
expression of pain overspread his face. He turned for a moment into the
passage to hide it. Then he came back again.

"Do you mean Miss Vye?" he said. "How is it--that she can be married so
soon?"

"By the will of God and a ready young man, I suppose."

"You don't mean Mr. Yeobright?"

"Yes. He has been creeping about with her all the spring."

"I suppose--she was immensely taken with him?"

"She is crazy about him, so their general servant of all work tells me.
And that lad Charley that looks after the horse is all in a daze about
it. The stun-poll has got fond-like of her."

"Is she lively--is she glad? Going to be married so soon--well!"

"It isn't so very soon."

"No; not so very soon."

Wildeve went indoors to the empty room, a curious heartache within him.
He rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece and his face upon his hand.
When Thomasin entered the room he did not tell her of what he had heard.
The old longing for Eustacia had reappeared in his soul--and it was
mainly because he had discovered that it was another man's intention to
possess her.

To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care
for the remote, to dislike the near; it was Wildeve's nature always.
This is the true mark of the man of sentiment. Though Wildeve's fevered
feeling had not been elaborated to real poetical compass, it was of the
standard sort. His might have been called the Rousseau of Egdon.


</CHAPTER>

 When Mrs. Yeobright discovers that Clym and Eustacia are engaged, her comments to him are bitter and typical of those of a mother to a son. Clym tells his mother that he will move out of the house, and when he meets Eustacia he says they must marry right away, though it will mean living in a small cottage on the heath for a few months before he is ready to set up as a schoolteacher in Budmouth. He finds a cottage to rent so that he can have some place to live even before they marry, and moves from his mother's house. When Mrs. Yeobright discovers that Clym and Eustacia are engaged, her comments to him are bitter and typical of those of a mother to a son. Clym tells his mother that he will move out of the house, and when he meets Eustacia he says they must marry right away, though it will mean living in a small cottage on the heath for a few months before he is ready to set up as a schoolteacher in Budmouth. He finds a cottage to rent so that he can have some place to live even before they marry, and moves from his mother's house. After Clym's departure, Thomasin visits Mrs. Yeobright, but is unable to console her. When Wildeve hears of Eustacia's approaching marriage, he immediately wants her again.

