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 recent struggle for life was in his fingertips, which were worn and sacrificed in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face of the weir-wall.
Yeobright's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so few syllables since his reappearance, that Venn imagined him resigned.It was only when they had left the room and stood upon the landing that the true state of his mind was apparent.Here he said, with a wild smile, inclining his head towards the chamber in which Eustacia lay, "She is the second woman I have killed this year.
I was a great cause of my mother's death, and I am the chief cause of hers.""How?" said Venn.
"I spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house.
I did not invite her back till it was too late.It is I who ought to have drowned myself.It would have been a charity to the living had the river overwhelmed me and borne her up.
But I cannot die.Those who ought to have lived lie dead;and here am I alive!"
"But you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way,"said Venn."You may as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder by the child, for without the parents the child would never have been begot.""Yes, Venn, that is very true; but you don't know all the circumstances.If it had pleased God to put an end to me it would have been a good thing for all.
But I am getting used to the horror of my existence.
They say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with it.Surely that time will soon come to me!""Your aim has always been good," said Venn."Why should you say such desperate things?""No, they are not desperate.They are only hopeless;and my great regret is that for what I have done no man or law can punish me!"