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hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a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>

 It's August and it's a super hot day. Mrs. Yeobright sets out in the heat to visit her son and her daughter-in-law. She's hot and exhausted and the walk is very long. She comes across a fellow furze-cutter who directs her to Clym's house. Mrs. Yeobright follows a familiar-looking figure and is stunned to discover that it's her son and that he is a furze-cutter. She sits down for a bit to think things over. We get lots of descriptions of the hot day and the heath, which makes us want some lemonade. Mrs. Yeobright continues to watch the house and think deep thoughts.

