Part 101

III. Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning

A consciousness of a vast impassivity in all which lay around him took possession even of Yeobright in his wild walk towards Alderworth. He had once before felt in his own person this overpowering of the fervid by the inanimate; but then it had tended to enervate a passion far sweeter than that which at present pervaded him. It was once when he stood parting from Eustacia in the moist still levels beyond the hills.

But dismissing all this he went onward home, and came to the front of his house. The blinds of Eustacia’s bedroom were still closely drawn, for she was no early riser. All the life visible was in the shape of a solitary thrush cracking a small snail upon the door-stone for his breakfast, and his tapping seemed a loud noise in the general silence which prevailed; but on going to the door Clym found it unfastened, the young girl who attended upon Eustacia being astir in the back part of the premises. Yeobright entered and went straight to his wife’s room.

The noise of his arrival must have aroused her, for when he opened the door she was standing before the looking glass in her nightdress, the ends of her hair gathered into one hand, with which she was coiling the whole mass round her head, previous to beginning toilette operations. She was not a woman given to speaking first at a meeting, and she allowed Clym to walk across in silence, without turning her head. He came behind her, and she saw his face in the glass. It was ashy, haggard, and terrible. Instead of starting towards him in sorrowful surprise, as even Eustacia, undemonstrative wife as she was, would have done in days before she burdened herself with a secret, she remained motionless, looking at him in the glass. And while she looked the carmine flush with which warmth and sound sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck dissolved from view, and the deathlike pallor in his face flew across into hers. He was close enough to see this, and the sight instigated his tongue.

“You know what is the matter,” he said huskily. “I see it in your face.”

Her hand relinquished the rope of hair and dropped to her side, and the pile of tresses, no longer supported, fell from the crown of her head about her shoulders and over the white nightgown. She made no reply.

“Speak to me,” said Yeobright peremptorily.

The blanching process did not cease in her, and her lips now became as white as her face. She turned to him and said, “Yes, Clym, I’ll speak to you. Why do you return so early? Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes, you can listen to me. It seems that my wife is not very well?”

“Why?”

“Your face, my dear; your face. Or perhaps it is the pale morning light which takes your colour away? Now I am going to reveal a secret to you. Ha-ha!”

“O, that is ghastly!”

“What?”

“Your laugh.”

“There’s reason for ghastliness. Eustacia, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!”

She started back from the dressing-table, retreated a few steps from him, and looked him in the face. “Ah! you think to frighten me,” she said, with a slight laugh. “Is it worth while? I am undefended, and alone.”

“How extraordinary!”

“What do you mean?”

“As there is ample time I will tell you, though you know well enough. I mean that it is extraordinary that you should be alone in my absence. Tell me, now, where is he who was with you on the afternoon of the thirty-first of August? Under the bed? Up the chimney?”

A shudder overcame her and shook the light fabric of her nightdress throughout. “I do not remember dates so exactly,” she said. “I cannot recollect that anybody was with me besides yourself.”

“The day I mean,” said Yeobright, his voice growing louder and harsher, “was the day you shut the door against my mother and killed her. O, it is too much—too bad!” He leant over the footpiece of the bedstead for a few moments, with his back towards her; then rising again—“Tell me, tell me! tell me—do you hear?” he cried, rushing up to her and seizing her by the loose folds of her sleeve.

The superstratum of timidity which often overlies those who are daring and defiant at heart had been passed through, and the mettlesome substance of the woman was reached. The red blood inundated her face, previously so pale.

“What are you going to do?” she said in a low voice, regarding him with a proud smile. “You will not alarm me by holding on so; but it would be a pity to tear my sleeve.”

Instead of letting go he drew her closer to him. “Tell me the particulars of—my mother’s death,” he said in a hard, panting whisper; “or—I’ll—I’ll—”

“Clym,” she answered slowly, “do you think you dare do anything to me that I dare not bear? But before you strike me listen. You will get nothing from me by a blow, even though it should kill me, as it probably will. But perhaps you do not wish me to speak—killing may be all you mean?”

“Kill you! Do you expect it?”

“I do.”

“Why?”