1 - The Inevitable Movement Onward The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was told throughout Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months.
All the known incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and modified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance to the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues.Yet, upon the whole, neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death.
Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay.
On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different.
Strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of one more; but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginings amount to appreciable preparation for it.The very suddenness of her bereavement dulled, to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet irrationally enough, a consciousness that the husband she had lost ought to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning at all.On the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off the dead husband in his young wife's eyes, and to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow.
But the horrors of the unknown had passed.Vague misgivings about her future as a deserted wife were at an end.
The worst had once been matter of trembling conjecture;it was now matter of reason only, a limited badness.
Her chief interest, the little Eustacia, still remained.
There was humility in her grief, no defiance in her attitude;and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to be stilled.
Could Thomasin's mournfulness now and Eustacia's serenity during life have been reduced to common measure, they would have touched the same mark nearly.But Thomasin's former brightness made shadow of that which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself.
The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her;the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day.Outward events flattered Thomasin not a little.Wildeve had died intestate, and she and the child were his only relatives.When administration had been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue of her husband's uncle's property had come into her hands, it was found that the sum waiting to be invested for her own and the child's benefit was little less than ten thousand pounds.
Where should she live? The obvious place was Blooms-End.
The old rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of a frigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-case she brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobs on its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as the rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared to her by every early recollection.
Clym very gladly admitted her as a tenant, confining his own existence to two rooms at the top of the back staircase, where he lived on quietly, shut off from Thomasin and the three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now that she was a mistress of money, going his own ways, and thinking his own thoughts.
His sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance;and yet the alteration was chiefly within.It might have been said that he had a wrinkled mind.He had no enemies, and he could get nobody to reproach him, which was why he so bitterly reproached himself.
He did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune, so far as to say that to be born is a palpable dilemma, and that instead of men aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate how to retreat out of it without shame.But that he and his had been sarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such irons thrust into their souls he did not maintain long.
It is usually so, except with the sternest of men.
Human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears.
Thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in his presence, he found relief in a direction of his own choosing when left to himself.For a man of his habits the house and the hundred and twenty pounds a year which he had inherited from his mother were enough to supply all worldly needs.Resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but upon the proportion of spendings to takings.
He frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its tale.His imagination would then people the spot with its ancient inhabitants--forgotten Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection.
Those of the dyed barbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparison with those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper beside writers on parchment.
Their records had perished long ago by the plough, while the works of these remained.Yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics.It reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution of immortality.
Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and sparkling starlight.The year previous Thomasin had hardly been conscious of the season's advance; this year she laid her heart open to external influences of every kind.
