“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 half-way 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.
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.
