No firm and sensible Mrs.Yeobright lived now to support the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an unimpassioned spectator might think of her loss of such a husband as Wildeve, there could be no doubt that for the moment she was distracted and horrified by the blow.As for himself, not being privileged to go to her and comfort her, he saw no reason for waiting longer in a house where he remained only as a stranger.
He returned across the heath to his van.The fire was not yet out, and everything remained as he had left it.
Venn now bethought himself of his clothes, which were saturated with water to the weight of lead.He changed them, spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep.
But it was more than he could do to rest here while excited by a vivid imagination of the turmoil they were in at the house he had quitted, and, blaming himself for coming away, he dressed in another suit, locked up the door, and again hastened across to the inn.Rain was still falling heavily when he entered the kitchen.A bright fire was shining from the hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom was Olly Dowden.
"Well, how is it going on now?" said Venn in a whisper.
"Mr.Yeobright is better; but Mrs.Yeobright and Mr.Wildeve are dead and cold.The doctor says they were quite gone before they were out of the water.""Ah! I thought as much when I hauled 'em up.And Mrs.Wildeve?""She is as well as can be expected.The doctor had her put between blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the river, poor young thing.
You don't seem very dry, reddleman."
"Oh, 'tis not much.I have changed my things.This is only a little dampness I've got coming through the rain again.""Stand by the fire.Mis'ess says you be to have whatever you want, and she was sorry when she was told that you'd gone away."Venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an absent mood.The steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs.Two were corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow.
The last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace was when the raffle was in progress; when Wildeve was alive and well; Thomasin active and smiling in the next room;Yeobright and Eustacia just made husband and wife, and Mrs.Yeobright living at Blooms-End.It had seemed at that time that the then position of affairs was good for at least twenty years to come.Yet, of all the circle, he himself was the only one whose situation had not materially changed.
While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs.
It was the nurse, who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper.The woman was so engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw Venn.She took from a cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace, tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line.
"What be they?" said Venn.
"Poor master's banknotes," she answered."They were found in his pocket when they undressed him.""Then he was not coming back again for some time?"said Venn.
"That we shall never know," said she.
Venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under this roof.As nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not remain.So he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row of banknotes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout.Then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together, carried the handful upstairs.Presently the doctor appeared from above with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his gloves, went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon the road.
At four o'clock there was a gentle knock at the door.
