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hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a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

 On the hot thirty-first day of August, Mrs. Yeobright decides to go to Alderworth to attempt a reconciliation. Not being sure of the way, she wanders around on the heath longer than she should have. Finally she inquires about the way from a laborer and is told to follow a certain furze cutter, whom she can just see in the distance. She follows him, soon realizing that it is Clym. Before reaching Clym's house, Mrs. Yeobright stops to rest. From her resting place, she sees a man come to the house and be admitted by Eustacia. The caller is Wildeve, who Eustacia dares to admit since her husband is sound asleep on the floor. Eustacia and Wildeve discuss her marriage, and Wildeve hints that he still loves her. Feeling stronger after the rest, Mrs. Yeobright continues her journey. She knocks on the door and sees Eustacia look out of a window at her. Eustacia panics over what to do. She rushes Wildeve out the back, assuming that Clym will hear the knock, awaken, and let his mother inside. On her return to the living room, Eustacia finds that Clym is still asleep, the door is still closed, and Mrs. Yeobright has vanished. Clym's mother returns across the heath the way she has come. Knowing that her son was at home when she knocked and that Eustacia has seen her, Mrs. Yeobright feels that her daughter-in- law has turned her son against her. On the way she meets Johnny Nunsuch. He stays with her for awhile, but grows annoyed by her ramblings. He leaves and she sits down to rest.

