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.
The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends
He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep,
sat up, and looked around. Eustacia was sitting
in a chair hard by him, and though she held a book
in her hand she had not looked into it for some time.
“Well, indeed!” said Clym, brushing his
eyes with his hands. “How soundly I have
slept! I have had such a tremendous dream, too:
one I shall never forget.”
“I thought you had been dreaming,” said
she.
“Yes. It was about my mother. I dreamt
that I took you to her house to make up differences,
and when we got there we couldn’t get in, though
she kept on crying to us for help. However, dreams
are dreams. What o’clock is it, Eustacia?”
“Half-past two.”
“So late, is it? I didn’t mean to
stay so long. By the time I have had something
to eat it will be after three.”
“Ann is not come back from the village, and
I thought I would let you sleep on till she returned.”
Clym went to the window and looked out. Presently
he said, musingly, “Week after week passes,
and yet mother does not come. I thought I should
have heard something from her long before this.”
Misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift
course of expression in Eustacia’s dark eyes.
She was face to face with a monstrous difficulty,
and she resolved to get free of it by postponement.
“I must certainly go to Blooms-End soon,”
he continued, “and I think I had better go alone.”
He picked up his leggings and gloves, threw them down
again, and added, “As dinner will be so late
today I will not go back to the heath, but work in
the garden till the evening, and then, when it will
be cooler, I will walk to Blooms-End. I am quite
sure that if I make a little advance mother will be
willing to forget all. It will be rather late
before I can get home, as I shall not be able to do
the distance either way in less than an hour and a
half. But you will not mind for one evening,
dear? What are you thinking of to make you look
so abstracted?”
“I cannot tell you,” she said heavily.
“I wish we didn’t live here, Clym.
The world seems all wrong in this place.”
“Well—if we make it so. I wonder
if Thomasin has been to Blooms-End lately. I
hope so. But probably not, as she is, I believe,
expecting to be confined in a month or so. I
wish I had thought of that before. Poor mother
must indeed be very lonely.”
“I don’t like you going tonight.”
“Why not tonight?”
“Something may be said which will terribly injure
me.”
