By no effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits which he had experienced ever since his last meeting with Eustacia, but he hoped there was that in his situation which money could cure.He had persuaded himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle wife by settling on her the half of his property, and with chivalrous devotion towards another and greater woman by sharing her fate, was possible.And though he meant to adhere to Eustacia's instructions to the letter, to deposit her where she wished and to leave her, should that be her will, the spell that she had cast over him intensified, and his heart was beating fast in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face of a mutual wish that they should throw in their lot together.
He would not allow himself to dwell long upon these conjectures, maxims, and hopes, and at twenty minutes to twelve he again went softly to the stable, harnessed the horse, and lit the lamps; whence, taking the horse by the head, he led him with the covered car out of the yard to a spot by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the inn.
Here Wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a high bank that had been cast up at this place.
Along the surface of the road where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and clicked together before the wind, which, leaving them in heaps, plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes into darkness.Only one sound rose above this din of weather, and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction.
He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the midnight hour must have struck.A very strong doubt had arisen in his mind if Eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather; yet knowing her nature he felt that she might."Poor thing! 'tis like her ill-luck,"he murmured.
At length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch.
To his surprise it was nearly a quarter past midnight.
He now wished that he had driven up the circuitous road to Mistover, a plan not adopted because of the enormous length of the route in proportion to that of the pedestrian's path down the open hillside, and the consequent increase of labour for the horse.
At this moment a footstep approached; but the light of the lamps being in a different direction the comer was not visible.The step paused, then came on again.
"Eustacia?" said Wildeve.
The person came forward, and the light fell upon the form of Clym, glistening with wet, whom Wildeve immediately recognized; but Wildeve, who stood behind the lamp, was not at once recognized by Yeobright.
He stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could have anything to do with the flight of his wife or not.
The sight of Yeobright at once banished Wildeve's sober feelings, who saw him again as the deadly rival from whom Eustacia was to be kept at all hazards.
Hence Wildeve did not speak, in the hope that Clym would pass by without particular inquiry.
While they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible above the storm and wind.Its origin was unmistakable--it was the fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir.
Both started."Good God! can it be she?" said Clym.
"Why should it be she?" said Wildeve, in his alarm forgetting that he had hitherto screened himself.
"Ah!--that's you, you traitor, is it?" cried Yeobright.
"Why should it be she? Because last week she would have put an end to her life if she had been able.She ought to have been watched! Take one of the lamps and come with me."Yeobright seized the one on his side and hastened on;Wildeve did not wait to unfasten the other, but followed at once along the meadow track to the weir, a little in the rear of Clym.
Shadwater Weir had at its foot a large circular pool, fifty feet in diameter, into which the water flowed through ten huge hatches, raised and lowered by a winch and cogs in the ordinary manner.The sides of the pool were of masonry, to prevent the water from washing away the bank; but the force of the stream in winter was sometimes such as to undermine the retaining wall and precipitate it into the hole.Clym reached the hatches, the framework of which was shaken to its foundations by the velocity of the current.Nothing but the froth of the waves could be discerned in the pool below.
He got upon the plank bridge over the race, and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off, crossed to the other side of the river.There he leant over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the returning current.
Wildeve meanwhile had arrived on the former side, and the light from Yeobright's lamp shed a flecked and agitated radiance across the weir pool, revealing to the ex-engineer the tumbling courses of the currents from the hatches above.
Across this gashed and puckered mirror a dark body was slowly borne by one of the backward currents.
"O, my darling!" exclaimed Wildeve in an agonized voice;and, without showing sufficient presence of mind even to throw off his greatcoat, he leaped into the boiling caldron.
Yeobright could now also discern the floating body, though but indistinctly; and imagining from Wildeve's plunge that there was life to be saved he was about to leap after.Bethinking himself of a wiser plan, he placed the lamp against a post to make it stand upright, and running round to the lower part of the pool, where there was no wall, he sprang in and boldly waded upwards towards the deeper portion.Here he was taken off his legs, and in swimming was carried round into the centre of the basin, where he perceived Wildeve struggling.
While these hasty actions were in progress here, Venn and Thomasin had been toiling through the lower corner of the heath in the direction of the light.
