The Return of the Native
She nearly fainted, and would have been unable to proceed another step
but that the necessity of preserving the little girl from harm nerved
her to an amazing self-control. In this agony of suspense she entered
the house, put the baby in a place of safety, woke the lad and the
female domestic, and ran out to give the alarm at the nearest cottage.
Diggory, having returned to the brink of the pool, observed that the
small upper hatches or floats were withdrawn. He found one of these
lying upon the grass, and taking it under one arm, and with his lantern
in his hand, entered at the bottom of the pool as Clym had done. As
soon as he began to be in deep water he flung himself across the hatch;
thus supported he was able to keep afloat as long as he chose, holding
the lantern aloft with his disengaged hand. Propelled by his feet, he
steered round and round the pool, ascending each time by one of the
back streams and descending in the middle of the current.
At first he could see nothing. Then amidst the glistening of the
whirlpools and the white clots of foam he distinguished a woman’s
bonnet floating alone. His search was now under the left wall, when
something came to the surface almost close beside him. It was not, as
he had expected, a woman, but a man. The reddleman put the ring of the
lantern between his teeth, seized the floating man by the collar, and,
holding on to the hatch with his remaining arm, struck out into the
strongest race, by which the unconscious man, the hatch, and himself
were carried down the stream. As soon as Venn found his feet dragging
over the pebbles of the shallower part below he secured his footing and
waded towards the brink. There, where the water stood at about the
height of his waist, he flung away the hatch, and attempted to drag
forth the man. This was a matter of great difficulty, and he found as
the reason that the legs of the unfortunate stranger were tightly
embraced by the arms of another man, who had hitherto been entirely
beneath the surface.
At this moment his heart bounded to hear footsteps running towards him,
and two men, roused by Thomasin, appeared at the brink above. They ran
to where Venn was, and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned
persons, separating them, and laying them out upon the grass. Venn
turned the light upon their faces. The one who had been uppermost was
Yeobright; he who had been completely submerged was Wildeve.
“Now we must search the hole again,” said Venn. “A woman is in there
somewhere. Get a pole.”
One of the men went to the footbridge and tore off the handrail. The
reddleman and the two others then entered the water together from below
as before, and with their united force probed the pool forwards to
where it sloped down to its central depth. Venn was not mistaken in
supposing that any person who had sunk for the last time would be
washed down to this point, for when they had examined to about halfway
across something impeded their thrust.
“Pull it forward,” said Venn, and they raked it in with the pole till
it was close to their feet.
Venn vanished under the stream, and came up with an armful of wet
drapery enclosing a woman’s cold form, which was all that remained of
the desperate Eustacia.
When they reached the bank there stood Thomasin, in a stress of grief,
bending over the two unconscious ones who already lay there. The horse
and cart were brought to the nearest point in the road, and it was the
work of a few minutes only to place the three in the vehicle. Venn led
on the horse, supporting Thomasin upon his arm, and the two men
followed, till they reached the inn.
The woman who had been shaken out of her sleep by Thomasin had hastily
dressed herself and lighted a fire, the other servant being left to
snore on in peace at the back of the house. The insensible forms of
Eustacia, Clym, and Wildeve were then brought in and laid on the
carpet, with their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as
could be thought of were adopted at once, the stableman being in the
meantime sent for a doctor. But there seemed to be not a whiff of life
in either of the bodies. Then Thomasin, whose stupor of grief had been
thrust off awhile by frantic action, applied a bottle of hartshorn to
Clym’s nostrils, having tried it in vain upon the other two. He sighed.
“Clym’s alive!” she exclaimed.
He soon breathed distinctly, and again and again did she attempt to
revive her husband by the same means; but Wildeve gave no sign. There
was too much reason to think that he and Eustacia both were for ever
beyond the reach of stimulating perfumes. Their exertions did not relax
till the doctor arrived, when one by one, the senseless three were
taken upstairs and put into warm beds.
Venn soon felt himself relieved from further attendance, and went to
the door, scarcely able yet to realize the strange catastrophe that had
befallen the family in which he took so great an interest. Thomasin
surely would be broken down by the sudden and overwhelming nature of
this event. No firm and sensible Mrs. Yeobright lived now to support
the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an unimpassioned
spectator might think of her loss of such a husband as Wildeve, there
could be no doubt that for the moment she was distracted and horrified
by the blow. As for himself, not being privileged to go to her and
comfort her, he saw no reason for waiting longer in a house where he
remained only as a stranger.
He returned across the heath to his van. The fire was not yet out, and
everything remained as he had left it. Venn now bethought himself of
his clothes, which were saturated with water to the weight of lead. He
changed them, spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep. But
it was more than he could do to rest here while excited by a vivid
imagination of the turmoil they were in at the house he had quitted,
and, blaming himself for coming away, he dressed in another suit,
locked up the door, and again hastened across to the inn. Rain was
still falling heavily when he entered the kitchen. A bright fire was
shining from the hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom
was Olly Dowden.
“Well, how is it going on now?” said Venn in a whisper.
“Mr. Yeobright is better; but Mrs. Yeobright and Mr. Wildeve are dead
and cold. The doctor says they were quite gone before they were out of
the water.”
“Ah! I thought as much when I hauled ’em up. And Mrs. Wildeve?”
“She is as well as can be expected. The doctor had her put between
blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the river,
poor young thing. You don’t seem very dry, reddleman.”
“Oh, ’tis not much. I have changed my things. This is only a little
dampness I’ve got coming through the rain again.”
“Stand by the fire. Mis’ess says you be to have whatever you want, and
she was sorry when she was told that you’d gone away.”
Venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an
absent mood. The steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney
with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs. Two were
corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and
a widow. The last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace
was when the raffle was in progress; when Wildeve was alive and well;
Thomasin active and smiling in the next room; Yeobright and Eustacia
just made husband and wife, and Mrs. Yeobright living at Blooms-End. It
had seemed at that time that the then position of affairs was good for
at least twenty years to come. Yet, of all the circle, he himself was
the only one whose situation had not materially changed.
While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs. It was the nurse,
who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper. The woman was so
engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw Venn. She took from a
cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace,
tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward
for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them
one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line.
“What be they?” said Venn.
“Poor master’s banknotes,” she answered. “They were found in his pocket
when they undressed him.”
“Then he was not coming back again for some time?” said Venn.
“That we shall never know,” said she.
Venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under
this roof. As nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except
the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not
remain. So he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used
to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row
of banknotes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the
chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout.
Then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together,
carried the handful upstairs. Presently the doctor appeared from above
with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his
gloves, went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying
away upon the road.
At four o’clock there was a gentle knock at the door. It was from
Charley, who had been sent by Captain Vye to inquire if anything had
been heard of Eustacia. The girl who admitted him looked in his face as
if she did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to where
Venn was seated, saying to the reddleman, “Will you tell him, please?”
Venn told. Charley’s only utterance was a feeble, indistinct sound. He
stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, “I shall see her
once more?”
“I dare say you may see her,” said Diggory gravely. “But hadn’t you
better run and tell Captain Vye?”
“Yes, yes. Only I do hope I shall see her just once again.”
“You shall,” said a low voice behind; and starting round they beheld by
the dim light, a thin, pallid, almost spectral form, wrapped in a
blanket, and looking like Lazarus coming from the tomb.
It was Yeobright. Neither Venn nor Charley spoke, and Clym continued,
“You shall see her. There will be time enough to tell the captain when
it gets daylight. You would like to see her too—would you not, Diggory?
She looks very beautiful now.”
Venn assented by rising to his feet, and with Charley he followed Clym
to the foot of the staircase, where he took off his boots; Charley did
the same. They followed Yeobright upstairs to the landing, where there
was a candle burning, which Yeobright took in his hand, and with it led
the way into an adjoining room. Here he went to the bedside and folded
back the sheet.
They stood silently looking upon Eustacia, who, as she lay there still
in death, eclipsed all her living phases. Pallor did not include all
the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was
almost light. The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant,
as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking.
Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between
fervour and resignation. Her black hair was looser now than either of
them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest.
The stateliness of look which had been almost too marked for a dweller
in a country domicile had at last found an artistically happy
background.
Nobody spoke, till at length Clym covered her and turned aside. “Now
come here,” he said.
They went to a recess in the same room, and there, on a smaller bed,
lay another figure—Wildeve. Less repose was visible in his face than in
Eustacia’s, but the same luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the
least sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that he
was born for a higher destiny than this. The only sign upon him of his