"Don't trouble about it, Clym.They may get to be friends."He shook his head."Not two people with inflammable natures like theirs.Well, what must be will be.""One thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost.""I would rather have lost them twice over than have had this happen."Amid these jarring events Yeobright felt one thing to be indispensable--that he should speedily make some show of progress in his scholastic plans.With this view he read far into the small hours during many nights.
One morning, after a severer strain than usual, he awoke with a strange sensation in his eyes.The sun was shining directly upon the window-blind, and at his first glance thitherward a sharp pain obliged him to close his eyelids quickly.
At every new attempt to look about him the same morbid sensibility to light was manifested, and excoriating tears ran down his cheeks.He was obliged to tie a bandage over his brow while dressing; and during the day it could not be abandoned.Eustacia was thoroughly alarmed.
On finding that the case was no better the next morning they decided to send to Anglebury for a surgeon.
Towards evening he arrived, and pronounced the disease to be acute inflammation induced by Clym's night studies, continued in spite of a cold previously caught, which had weakened his eyes for the time.
Fretting with impatience at this interruption to a task he was so anxious to hasten, Clym was transformed into an invalid.
He was shut up in a room from which all light was excluded, and his condition would have been one of absolute misery had not Eustacia read to him by the glimmer of a shaded lamp.He hoped that the worst would soon be over;but at the surgeon's third visit he learnt to his dismay that although he might venture out of doors with shaded eyes in the course of a month, all thought of pursuing his work, or of reading print of any description, would have to be given up for a long time to come.
One week and another week wore on, and nothing seemed to lighten the gloom of the young couple.
Dreadful imaginings occurred to Eustacia, but she carefully refrained from uttering them to her husband.
Suppose he should become blind, or, at all events, never recover sufficient strength of sight to engage in an occupation which would be congenial to her feelings, and conduce to her removal from this lonely dwelling among the hills? That dream of beautiful Paris was not likely to cohere into substance in the presence of this misfortune.
As day after day passed by, and he got no better, her mind ran more and more in this mournful groove, and she would go away from him into the garden and weep despairing tears.
Yeobright thought he would send for his mother;and then he thought he would not.Knowledge of his state could only make her the more unhappy; and the seclusion of their life was such that she would hardly be likely to learn the news except through a special messenger.
Endeavouring to take the trouble as philosophically as possible, he waited on till the third week had arrived, when he went into the open air for the first time since the attack.The surgeon visited him again at this stage, and Clym urged him to express a distinct opinion.
The young man learnt with added surprise that the date at which he might expect to resume his labours was as uncertain as ever, his eyes being in that peculiar state which, though affording him sight enough for walking about, would not admit of their being strained upon any definite object without incurring the risk of reproducing ophthalmia in its acute form.
Clym was very grave at the intelligence, but not despairing.
A quiet firmness, and even cheerfulness, took possession of him.He was not to be blind; that was enough.
To be doomed to behold the world through smoked glass for an indefinite period was bad enough, and fatal to any kind of advance; but Yeobright was an absolute stoic in the face of mishaps which only affected his social standing; and, apart from Eustacia, the humblest walk of life would satisfy him if it could be made to work in with some form of his culture scheme.To keep a cottage night-school was one such form; and his affliction did not master his spirit as it might otherwise have done.
He walked through the warm sun westward into those tracts of Egdon with which he was best acquainted, being those lying nearer to his old home.He saw before him in one of the valleys the gleaming of whetted iron, and advancing, dimly perceived that the shine came from the tool of a man who was cutting furze.The worker recognized Clym, and Yeobright learnt from the voice that the speaker was Humphrey.
Humphrey expressed his sorrow at Clym's condition, and added, "Now, if yours was low-class work like mine, you could go on with it just the same.""Yes, I could," said Yeobright musingly."How much do you get for cutting these faggots?""Half-a-crown a hundred, and in these long days I can live very well on the wages."During the whole of Yeobright's walk home to Alderworth he was lost in reflections which were not of an unpleasant kind.
On his coming up to the house Eustacia spoke to him from the open window, and he went across to her.
"Darling," he said, "I am much happier.And if my mother were reconciled to me and to you I should, I think, be happy quite.""I fear that will never be," she said, looking afar with her beautiful stormy eyes."How CAN you say 'I am happier,' and nothing changed?""It arises from my having at last discovered something Ican do, and get a living at, in this time of misfortune.""Yes?"
"I am going to be a furze- and turf-cutter.""No, Clym!" she said, the slight hopefulness previously apparent in her face going off again, and leaving her worse than before.
