The Return of the Native
advanced a mile on his way all the heath purples, browns, and greens
had merged in a uniform dress without airiness or graduation, and
broken only by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz
sand showed the entrance to a rabbit burrow, or where the white flints
of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost every one of
the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a nighthawk
revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as
he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling
round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening
beginning to whirr again. At each brushing of Clym’s feet white
millermoths flew into the air just high enough to catch upon their
dusty wings the mellowed light from the west, which now shone across
the depressions and levels of the ground without falling thereon to
light them up.
Yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all would
soon be well. Three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfume was
wafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment to inhale the
familiar scent. It was the place at which, four hours earlier, his
mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered with
shepherd’s-thyme. While he stood a sound between a breathing and a moan
suddenly reached his ears.
He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared there save
the verge of the hillock stretching against the sky in an unbroken
line. He moved a few steps in that direction, and now he perceived a
recumbent figure almost close to his feet.
Among the different possibilities as to the person’s individuality
there did not for a moment occur to Yeobright that it might be one of
his own family. Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out of
doors at these times, to save a long journey homeward and back again;
but Clym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the form
was feminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave.
But he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother till he
stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.
His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguish
which would have escaped him died upon his lips. During the momentary
interval that elapsed before he became conscious that something must be
done all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and
his mother were as when he was a child with her many years ago on this
heath at hours similar to the present. Then he awoke to activity; and
bending yet lower he found that she still breathed, and that her breath
though feeble was regular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp.
“O, what is it! Mother, are you very ill—you are not dying?” he cried,
pressing his lips to her face. “I am your Clym. How did you come here?
What does it all mean?”
At that moment the chasm in their lives which his love for Eustacia had
caused was not remembered by Yeobright, and to him the present joined
continuously with that friendly past that had been their experience
before the division.
She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; and then
Clym strove to consider how best to move her, as it would be necessary
to get her away from the spot before the dews were intense. He was
able-bodied, and his mother was thin. He clasped his arms round her,
lifted her a little, and said, “Does that hurt you?”
She shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace, went
onward with his load. The air was now completely cool; but whenever he
passed over a sandy patch of ground uncarpeted with vegetation there
was reflected from its surface into his face the heat which it had
imbibed during the day. At the beginning of his undertaking he had
thought but little of the distance which yet would have to be traversed
before Blooms-End could be reached; but though he had slept that
afternoon he soon began to feel the weight of his burden. Thus he
proceeded, like Æneas with his father; the bats circling round his
head, nightjars flapping their wings within a yard of his face, and not
a human being within call.
While he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother exhibited
signs of restlessness under the constraint of being borne along, as if
his arms were irksome to her. He lowered her upon his knees and looked
around. The point they had now reached, though far from any road, was
not more than a mile from the Blooms-End cottages occupied by Fairway,
Sam, Humphrey, and the Cantles. Moreover, fifty yards off stood a hut,
built of clods and covered with thin turves, but now entirely disused.
The simple outline of the lonely shed was visible, and thither he
determined to direct his steps. As soon as he arrived he laid her down
carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an
armful of the dryest fern. Spreading this within the shed, which was
entirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon; then he ran
with all his might towards the dwelling of Fairway.
Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the broken
breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began to animate the
line between heath and sky. In a few moments Clym arrived with Fairway,
Humphrey, and Susan Nunsuch; Olly Dowden, who had chanced to be at
Fairway’s, Christian and Grandfer Cantle following helter-skelter
behind. They had brought a lantern and matches, water, a pillow, and a
few other articles which had occurred to their minds in the hurry of
the moment. Sam had been despatched back again for brandy, and a boy
brought Fairway’s pony, upon which he rode off to the nearest medical
man, with directions to call at Wildeve’s on his way, and inform
Thomasin that her aunt was unwell.
Sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered by the light
of the lantern; after which she became sufficiently conscious to
signify by signs that something was wrong with her foot. Olly Dowden at
length understood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated. It was
swollen and red. Even as they watched the red began to assume a more
livid colour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller
than a pea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose
above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere.
“I know what it is,” cried Sam. “She has been stung by an adder!”
“Yes,” said Clym instantly. “I remember when I was a child seeing just
such a bite. O, my poor mother!”
“It was my father who was bit,” said Sam. “And there’s only one way to
cure it. You must rub the place with the fat of other adders, and the
only way to get that is by frying them. That’s what they did for him.”
“’Tis an old remedy,” said Clym distrustfully, “and I have doubts about
it. But we can do nothing else till the doctor comes.”
“’Tis a sure cure,” said Olly Dowden, with emphasis. “I’ve used it when
I used to go out nursing.”
“Then we must pray for daylight, to catch them,” said Clym gloomily.
“I will see what I can do,” said Sam.
He took a green hazel which he had used as a walking stick, split it at
the end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his hand went
out into the heath. Clym had by this time lit a small fire, and
despatched Susan Nunsuch for a frying pan. Before she had returned Sam
came in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in the
cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging dead across it.
“I have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be,”
said Sam. “These limp ones are two I killed today at work; but as they
don’t die till the sun goes down they can’t be very stale meat.”
The live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinister look in its
small black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet pattern on its back
seemed to intensify with indignation. Mrs. Yeobright saw the creature,
and the creature saw her—she quivered throughout, and averted her eyes.
“Look at that,” murmured Christian Cantle. “Neighbours, how do we know
but that something of the old serpent in God’s garden, that gied the
apple to the young woman with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakes
still? Look at his eye—for all the world like a villainous sort of
black currant. ’Tis to be hoped he can’t ill-wish us! There’s folks in
heath who’ve been overlooked already. I will never kill another adder
as long as I live.”
“Well, ’tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can’t help it,” said
Grandfer Cantle. “’Twould have saved me many a brave danger in my
time.”
“I fancy I heard something outside the shed,” said Christian. “I wish
troubles would come in the daytime, for then a man could show his
courage, and hardly beg for mercy of the most broomstick old woman he
should see, if he was a brave man, and able to run out of her sight!”
“Even such an ignorant fellow as I should know better than do that,”
said Sam.
“Well, there’s calamities where we least expect it, whether or no.
Neighbours, if Mrs. Yeobright were to die, d’ye think we should be took
up and tried for the manslaughter of a woman?”
“No, they couldn’t bring it in as that,” said Sam, “unless they could
prove we had been poachers at some time of our lives. But she’ll fetch
round.”
“Now, if I had been stung by ten adders I should hardly have lost a
day’s work for’t,” said Grandfer Cantle. “Such is my spirit when I am
on my mettle. But perhaps ’tis natural in a man trained for war. Yes,
I’ve gone through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me after
I joined the Locals in four.” He shook his head and smiled at a mental
picture of himself in uniform. “I was always first in the most
galliantest scrapes in my younger days!”
“I suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest fool
afore,” said Fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing it
with his breath.
“D’ye think so, Timothy?” said Grandfer Cantle, coming forward to
Fairway’s side with sudden depression in his face. “Then a man may feel
for years that he is good solid company, and be wrong about himself
after all?”
“Never mind that question, Grandfer. Stir your stumps and get some more
sticks. ’Tis very nonsense of an old man to prattle so when life and
death’s in mangling.”
“Yes, yes,” said Grandfer Cantle, with melancholy conviction. “Well,
this is a bad night altogether for them that have done well in their
time; and if I were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor viol, I
shouldn’t have the heart to play tunes upon ’em now.”
Susan now arrived with the frying pan, when the live adder was killed
and the heads of the three taken off. The remainders, being cut into
lengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissing
and crackling over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the
carcases, whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into the
liquid and anointed the wound.
VIII.
Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil
In the meantime Eustacia, left alone in her cottage at Alderworth, had
become considerably depressed by the posture of affairs. The
consequences which might result from Clym’s discovery that his mother
had been turned from his door that day were likely to be disagreeable,
and this was a quality in events which she hated as much as the
dreadful.
To be left to pass the evening by herself was irksome to her at any
time, and this evening it was more irksome than usual by reason of the
excitements of the past hours. The two visits had stirred her into
restlessness. She was not wrought to any great pitch of uneasiness by
the probability of appearing in an ill light in the discussion between
Clym and his mother, but she was wrought to vexation, and her
slumbering activities were quickened to the extent of wishing that she