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THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

 THE MODERN
STUDENT'S LIBRARY
EACH VOLUME EDITED BY A LEADING
AMERICAN AUTHORITY

This series is composed of such works as

are conspicuous in the province of literature
for their enduring influence. Every volume
is recognized as essential to a liberal edu-
cation and will tend to infuse a love for true
literature and an appreciation of the quali-
ties which cause it to endure.

A descriptive list of the volumes published in

this series appears in the last pages
of this volume

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

THE RETURN OF THE
NATIVE
BY
THOMAS HARDY

QDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

J. W. CUNLIFFE
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

*To sorrow
I bade good morrow,

And thought to ieave her far away behind;

But cheerlv, cheerly,
She loves me dearly ;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.
I would deceive ner,

And so leave !>er,

But ah! >he is so o^ns ant and so kind/

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON ATLANTA
SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS
 Copyright, 1917, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this book

may be reproduced in any form without
the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
 — ———————

A HARDY READING LIST

Under the Greenwood Tree (1872).
Far From the Madding Crowd (1874). ^
The Return of the Native (1878V
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)/
The Woodlanders (1887). *
Tess of the D' Urbervilles (1891).^
Jude the Obscure (1895). ^

MAGAZINE ARTICLES BY HARDY

The Dorsetshire Labourer, Longmans, July, 1879.
The Profitable Reading of Fiction, Forum, March, 1888.
Candour in English Fiction, New Review, Jan., 1890.
The Science of Fiction, New Review, Apr., 1891.
Hodge, as I Know Him, Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 2, 1892.

BOOKS ABOUT HARDY

Lionel Johnson The Art of Thomas Hardy, 1895.
F. A. Hedgcock Thomas Hardy, Penseur et Artiste, 1911.
Lascelles Abercrombie Thomas Hardy, 1912.
Annie Macdonnell Thomas Hardy (Contemporary Writers
Series), 1912.
H. C. Duffin Thomas Hardy, a Study of the Wessex Novels (Pub-
lications of the University of Manchester, England), 1916.

BOOKS ABOUT THE HARDY COUNTRY

Wilkinson Sherren The Wessex of Romance, 1903.
Charles George Harper The Hardy Country, 1904."
Clive Holland— Wessex, 1906.
Bertram Windle The Wessex of Thomas Hardy, 1906.
C. G. Harper— Wessex, 1911.
S. Heath— The Heart of Wessex, 1911.
H.
Herman Lea Thomas Hardy s Wessex, 1913.
1

A useful little " Handbook of the Wessex Country of Thomas Hardy's

Novels and Tales" is published by Kegan Paul (London).
 CONTENTS
BOOK FIRST
The Three Women
CHAPTER PA OB
I. A FACE ON WHICH TIME MAKES BUT LITTLE IM-
PRESSION 3

II. HUMANITY APPEARS UPON THE SCENE, HAND IN

% HAND WITH TROUBLE 7

III. THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY 13

IV. THE HALT ON THE TURNPIKE ROAD .... 34

V. PERPLEXITY AMONG HONEST PEOPLE .... 39

VI. THE FIGURE AGAINST THE SKY 51

VII. QUEEN OF NIGHT 65

VIII. THOSE WHO ARE FOUND WHERE THERE IS SAID

TO BE NOBODY • 71

IX. LOVE LEADS A SHREWD MAN INTO STRATEGY . 76

X. A DESPERATE ATTEMPT AT PERSUASION ... 86

XI. THE DISHONESTY OF AN HONEST WOMAN . . 95

BOOK SECOND
The Arrival

i. tidings of the comer 107

ii. the people at blooms-end make ready . . ill

vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
III. HOW A LITTLE SOUND PRODUCED A GREAT DREAM 116

IV. EUSTACIA IS LED ON TO AN ADVENTURE . . 120

V. THROUGH THE MOONLIGHT 130

VI. THE TWO STAND FACE TO FACE 137

VII. A COALITION BETWEEN BEAUTY AND ODDNESS . 148

VIII. FIRMNESS IS DISCOVERED IN A GENTLE HEART . 157

BOOK THIRD
The Fascination

i. "my mind to me a kingdom is" . . . . 169

ii. the new course causes disappointment . . 174

iii. the first act in timeworn drama . . . 182

iv. an hour of bliss and many hours of sadness 196

v. sharp words are spoken and a crisis ensues 204

vi. yeobright goes, and the breach is com-

PLETE 211

VII. THE MORNING AND THE EVENING OF A DAY . 218

VIII. A NEW FORCE DISTURBS THE CURRENT . . . 231

BOOK FOURTH
The Closed Door

i. the rencounter by the pool 241

II. HE IS SET UPON BY ADVERSITIES, BUT HE SINGS

A SONG 247
 CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER PAGE
III. SHE COES OUT TO BATTLE AGAINST DEPRESSION 258

IV. ROUGH COERCION IS EMPLOYED 270

V. THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE HEATH .... 277

VI. A CONJUNCTURE, AND ITS RESULT UPON THE

PEDESTRIAN 281

VII. THE TRAGIC MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS . 292

VIII. EUSTACIA HEARS OF GOOD FORTUNE AND BE-

HOLDS EVIL 299

BOOK FIFTH
The Discovery

i. "wherefore is light given to him that is

in misery" 311

ii. a lurid light breaks in upon a darkened

understanding 318

iii. eustacia dresses herself on a black morn-

ING 328

IV. THE MINISTRATIONS OF A HALF-FORGOTTEN ONE 336

V. AN OLD MOVE INADVERTENTLY REPEATED . . 341

VI. THOMASIN ARGUES WITH HER COUSIN, AND HE

WRITES A LETTER 347

VII. THE NIGHT OF THE SIXTH OF NOVEMBER . . 354

VIII. RAIN, DARKNESS, AND ANXIOUS WANDERERS . 362

IX. SIGHTS AND SOUNDS DRAW THE WANDERERS TO-

GETHER 372
x CONTENTS

BOOK SIXTH
Aftercourses
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE INEVITABLE MOVEMENT ONWARD . . . 385

II. THOMASIN WALKS IN A GREEN PLACE BY THE

ROMAN ROAD 394

III. THE SERIOUS DISCOURSE OF CLYM WITH HIS

COUSIN 397

IV. CHEERFULNESS AGAIN ASSERTS ITSELF AT BLOOMS-

END, AND CLYM FINDS HIS VOCATION . . . 402
 INTRODUCTION
The lines "To sorrow" which Hardy has prefaced to The
Return of should serve as a warning to the novel
the Native
reader that he is not here to expect the amusement of an
idle hour. If this significant motto should pass unheeded,
the opening chapter, with its wonderful description of the
austere beauty of Egdon Heath, strikes like a great organ
that note of majestic sadness which is to be maintained
throughout. Not that there is any lack of exciting incident,
for the narrative is conducted with compelling interest, and
we have occasional flashes of the richest Wessex humor; but
over all there broods the dark spirit of Egdon, embodying
in poetic form the modern Fates of Heredity and Environ-
ment which overclouded the vision of so many of Hardy's
generation.
The Return of the Native is the first ofHardy's great trage-
dies —possibly, for its perfection of form and justness of
balance, his tragic masterpiece. Born in 1840 in Upper
Bockhampton, a remote village of the district of South-
west England he was afterwards to make famous under the
name of Wessex, he had as a young man come under the in-
fluence of the sceptical current of modern scientific thought,
and had won the ear of the public in Under the Greenwood
Tree in 1872 by the idyllic charm of his pictures of country
life, which some readers still find enough to engage their

sympathy and admiration for his work. By the time that

he published The Return of the Native in 1878, he had attained
sufficient command of his art and sufficient confidence in
his own philosophy to allow his view of human life full ex-
pression, though he does not yet give vent to the embittered
reproaches with which he assails the Immortal Gods for their
dealings with Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude
xi
xii INTRODUCTION
the Obscure (1896). The reproach is there for the discen
ing reader, implicit in the warp and woof of The Return c
the Native and occasionally allowed direct expression, a
when the author says of Eustacia Vye in the first paragrapl
of Chapter VII that "Had jt bee n possible fo r the earth anc
mankind to be entirely "in her grasp for a while^Jhad she
handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own
free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of
government." We feel, too, that the creator of Eustacia
has a great .deaL of sympathy with her final protestations
.

against the cruelty and injustice of her lot— "I~was capable

of much; but Liiavabeen injured and blighted~and crushed
by things beyond my control! 0, how hard-it 4&-e£ -Heaven
to devise such^tortures for me, who have done no harm to
HeayenHaFall " Eustacia Vye, it is made abundantly clear,
!

was not a good woman; she was idle, luxurious, sensuous,

careless alike of the general weal and of the happiness of
any individual except herself. Her aspirations for the gaieties
of Paris are as foolish as her regrets for the gaieties of Bud-
mouth, and yet few readers will feel that she can be offered
up to unreserved condemnation. Altogether apart from her
queenly beauty, one has a haunting sense of vast capacities
in her unused. The problem is not solved by the statement
that with her temperament she could not have been happy
anywhere; for it leaves us to face the consideration that it
was her temperament, and that issue is left unanswered—
perhaps unanswerable. \

On Egdon Heath it is the force of [circumstance that drives

Eustacia Vye to irretrievable disaster, though for some
readers sympathy for her may be clouded by a lack of lik-
ing for her character. It is '^circumstance, too, that in-
—
volves her husband in the same ruin he can hardly be held
—
more fortunate in escaping with his life and in his case,
though some may find his nature less sympathetic, there
are not the defects of character and purpose that offer some
— —
excuse one can hardly call it justification for the fate of
Eustacia. The same is to be said for that high-minded
woman, his mother, who falls beneath a stroke of fortune
utterly undeserved. All this i% of course, within the author's
 INTRODUCTION xiii

intention. Indeed, it was his original purpose to deny the

final meed of happiness to the gentle Thomasin and her de-
voted Diggory Venn, condemning the former to perpetual
widowhood and the latter to a final disappearance from the
heath, " nobody knowing whither/' Hardy assures readers
with "an austere code" that they "can assume the
artistic
more consistent conclusion to be the true one," and he al-
lows it to be known that it was only " certain circumstances
of serial publication" that led to the happy ending. If it is
to the editor of Belgravia, in which The Return of the Native
was first published, that we are indebted for the author's
change of intent, most readers
be grateful for this ray
will
of sunshine in the prevailing gloom, for theunion of Diggory
and Thomasin, in itself natural enough, can hardly be said
to invalidate Hardy's artistic purpose, which is made abun-
dantly clear in the handling of the other characters. Only
those of a mind of equal austerity to that of the author
would have Diggory's valiant efforts to control the Fates
and Thomasin's gentle acquiescence lead only to empty de-
feat and meaningless renunciation. Besides, we should have
missed the waxing of the bed-tick in the wedding chapter.
Hardy's ideal of literary art is Greek tragedy, and it is
an ideal with which, in spite of obvious differences, he has
much in common. There is the same pervading sense of
overpowering and inexplicable fate, though the spirit of
iEschylus and Sophocles is that of reverent acceptance, and
that of Hardy is the spirit of vehement and irreconcilable
protest. There is the same great sweep of harmonious de-
sign; ""which in view of Hardy's earlier profession one may
without pedantry call architectonic. The Return of the
Native is magnificently constructed; the story moves easily
on the heights of human destiny, without haste or wasted
effort, and with a perfection of workmanship in detail of
which we are only conscious after careful examination.
One scene of impassioned or humorous interest succeeds an-
other, and we follow with ever-heightened attention to the
appointed end; it is only then that we perceive how every
smallest part fits into its place to make the perfect whole.
This unity of impression comes mainly from the unity of
xiv INTRODUCTION
conception already mentioned, but it is assisted by the sub-
ordinate unities of time and place which are in their way no
less characteristic of The Return of the Native than of Greek
tragedy as it was interpreted by Aristotle and succeeding ana-
lysts. The story opens with the Fifth of November bonfires
about which the fates of Thomasin and Eustacia center, and
passes to the Christmas Festival which welcomes "the return
of the native/' and brings as its ultimate consequences the
marriage, first of Thomasin and Wildeve, and then of Eustacia
and Clym Yeobright. The last hot day of August conducts
Clym's mother to her doom, and the unintentional signal fire
of the following Fifth of November leads, on the next day, to
the fatal flight of Eustacia and Wildeve. Within a year
and a day the principal characters have run their appointed
courses, and though we have a final book of "After courses/'
much shorter than the preceding divisions of the story, Hardy
is so concerned with what happens to the other char-
little
acters that, as we have seen, he does not much care whether
Thomasin and Diggory are married or not. The account of
Clym Yeobright' s preaching on Rainbarrow in a sense rounds
off the story, but it adds little to our knowledge of his char-
acter or destiny. So far as he is concerned, the novel might
well have ended with Book V.
The novel's unity of place is as remarkable as its unity
of time; for a story of its infinite significance and variety of
character and incident, it is compact in scene.
extraordinarily
All the incidents of the first book pass within a mile and a
half of Rainbarrow. Book II extends the radius by per-
haps half a mile so as to include Blooms-End, the home of
the Yeobrights. Book III takes us six miles from Blooms-
End to the cottage across the heath at Alderworth, the
scene of Clym Yeobright's short married life, and of his
mother's fatal visit of unaccomplished reconciliation. With-
in these limits the story moves to the end, for though Wild-
eve and Eustacia intend to go to Budmouth and beyond,
their intention is frustrated and they die within the limits
of the Heath. This restricted scene enables the novelist
to conduct his story with unbroken continuity; in so small
a community, any important happening to one individual
 INTRODUCTION xv

or family affects all the others, and

it is not necessary, as

in most drop one thread and take

stories of equal scope, to
up another, sometimes to drop both in order to take up
a third; the whole web moves evenly forward. Yet on
account of the situation of the community in question and
the supreme art of the novelist who has created it, there is
an extraordinary richness of character and incident. Hardy
has given noble proof here, as in The Woodlanders, that in
"one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the
world, from time to time dramas of a grandeur and
. . .

unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of

the concentrated passions and closely-knit interdependence
of the lives therein."
Eustacia Vye among
the most remarkable creations of
is

modern fiction, and yet

cannot be said that her character
it

is unaccounted for by her origin and circumstances; on the

contrary, it is the clash between her nature and her sur-

roundings that gives her personality and fate significance.
Wildeve, the Yeobrights, and the minor characters are no
less distinct, though they are less unusual, and a word of
special praise must be reserved for the admirable Diggory
Venn. The picturesque figure of the reddleman forms a
connecting link between the three families of superior social
—
station the Vyes, the Yeobrights and Wildeve and the —
peasants, who act as a kind of chorus to the tragedy. Their
superstitions, their fondness for ancient usages, and their
homely wisdom give the story a warmth and color which do
much to relieve its severity of outline. It is difficult to con-
ceive what the novel would be without the bonfire and the
wedding festivities, the play of Saint George and the Dragon,
the raffle, the village dance, and the burning of the waxen
image of Eustacia by Susan Nonsuch, for all these are part
of the action, and cannot be conceived in isolation from it.
To a degree perhaps unknown outside of Hardy's work,
they give a complete representation of the life of an entire
community, and not merely sketches of the lives of a few
individual members, considered almost in isolation.
With a larger canvas, this complete picture would have
been impossible, and yet this would not have been our greatest
xvi INTRODUCTION
loss. In The Return of the Native Hardy gives us not only
the life of Egdon Heath at a particular point of time —be-
tween 1840 and 1850; he shows us how sombre wildness
its
Series the revolutionary hand of man and reduces all his
efforts to its own unchangeableness. Eustacia's passion and
Wildeve's frivolity, Clym Yeobright's high aspirations and
his mother's deep affection, Thomasin's quiet faith and
Diggory's sturdy devotion, the humbler efforts of their
simpler neighbors come to an end and disappear. Egdon
Heath remains, not merely the same as when Hardy first
saw it, more than half a century ago, but the same as when,
in the far back ages, the first creature worthy of the name
of man clawed its grim bosom in search of plants or wild
berries.
-Jo W. Cunliffb.
 BOOK FIRST
THE THREE WOMEN
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
CHAPTER I AVi^k rvrtro

A FACE ON WHICH TIME MAKES BUT LITTLE

IMPRESSION

A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the

time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known
as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.
Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out
the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.
The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the
earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the
horizon was cjearly ma rjs&d. In such contrast., the heath
wore the appearance of an installment of night which had
taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come:
darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day
stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter
would have been inclined to continue work; looking down,
he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home.
The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed
to be a division in time no less than a division in matter.
.Thfijace of the heath by its mere complexion added half an
hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn,
sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely gen-
erated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to
a cause of shaking and dread.
In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly
roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon
waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the
heath who had not been there at such a time. It could
best be felt when it could not clearly be .seen, its complete
effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours
3
 4 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
before the next dawn: then, and only then, did it tell its
true tale. The spot was, indeed, [ajaear relation of night,
and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to grav-
itate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene.
The somber stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise
and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath
exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it.
And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land
'

closed together in a black fraternization towards which each

^advanced half-way.
The place became full of a w atchful intentness now; for
r

when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared

slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form
seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved,
during so many centuries, through the crises of so many
things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis
""""
— the final overthrow.
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those
who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity.
Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for
they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of
better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight
combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing
majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, em-
phatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qual-
ifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with
far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace
double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots
renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly want-
ing. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if
times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from the
mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from
the oppression of surroundings over sadly tinged. Haggard
Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more
~~Tee©ntly~-learnt emotion, than that which responds to the
sort of beauty called charming and fair.
Indeed, a question if the exclusive reign of this ortho-
it is

dox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new

Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule; human souls
 THE THREE WOMEN 5

may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with ex-

ternal things wearing a somberness distasteful to our race
when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not
actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a
sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in
keeping with the moods of the more thinking among man-
kind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like
Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens
of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden
be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand-
dunes of Scheveningen.
The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a
natural right to wander on Egdon: he was keeping within
the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open
to influences such as these. Colors and beauties so far sub-
dued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer
days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety.
Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn
than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was
often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists.
Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was \

4tsJover, and the wind its friend. Then it became^liFhome I

of ^angeTphWtoms'; "aSOTwas found to be the hitherto

unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which
are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight
dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after
the dream till revived by scenes like this.
It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's
—
nature neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly: neither common-
place, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and
enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in
its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have
long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its counte-
nance, [it had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities^.
This oBscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in
Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of^Ak*,
—
heathy, furzy, briary wilderness "Bruaria." Then follows
the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some un-
certainty exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal
 —
—
6 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
measure, appears from the figures that the area of Egdon
it

down day has but little diminished. "Tur-

to the present
— —
baria Bruaria" the right of cutting heath-turf occurs in
charters relating to the district. " Overgrown with heth and
mosse," says Leland of the same dark sweep of country.
Here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape
far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. The
untamable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it al-
ways had been. iCivilization was its enemy; and ever since
the beginning of vegetation Its^soil^had Worn the same an-
tique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of
the particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a
certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A per-
son on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colors has
^
more or less an anomalous look, W$ seem to want the old-
est and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the
earth is so primitive.
To reclineon a stump of thorn in the central valley of
Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye
could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and
shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference
of its glance, and to know that everything around and un-
derneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as
the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change,
and harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate
place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim.
Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by
the sun, kneaded by tJa&.moon, it is renewed in a year, in a
day, or in an hour. [The sea changed, the fields changed,
the rivers,^ the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon
remained, j Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be de-
structible" by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of
floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway,
and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to
themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long
continuance—even the trifling irregularities were not caused
by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very fin-
ger-touches of the last geological change.
The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels
 THE THREE WOMEN 7

of the heath, from one horizon to another. In many por-

tions of its it overlaid an old vicinal way, which
course
branched from the great Western road of the Romans, the
Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by. On the evening
under consideration it would have been noticed that, though
the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor
features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained
almost as clear as ever.

CHAPTER II

HUMANITY APPEARS UPON THE SCENE, HAND IN

HAND WTTH TROUBLE
Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed
as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded
in general
aspect. He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and
shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face.
In his hand was a silver-headed walking-stick, which he used
as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground
with its point at every few inches' interval. One would have
said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort
or other.
Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty,
and white. It was quite open to the heath on each side,
and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on
a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away on the
furthest horizon.
The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze
over the tract that he had yet to traverse. At length he
discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot,
which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going
the same way as that in which he himself was journeying.
It was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and
it only served to render the general loneliness more evident.

Its rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon
it sensibly.
When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van
 NW<*^ \^^ xH,s

8 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

ordinary in shape, but singular in color, this being a lurid
red. The driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was
completelyirea} One dye of that tincture covered his clothes,
the cap upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands.
He was not temporarily overlaid with the color: it permeated
him.
The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveler
—
with the cart was a reddleman a person whose vocation it
was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. He was
one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at
present in the rural world the place which, during the last
century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a
curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obso-
lete forms of life and those which generally prevail.
The decayed by degrees, came up alongside his
officer,
fellow wayfarer, and wished him good evening. The red-
dleman turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied
tones. He was young, and his face, if not exactly hand-
some, approached so near to handsome that nobody would
have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its
natural color. His eye, which glared so strangely through
—
his stain, was in itself attractive keen as that of a bird of
prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor
moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part
of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though,
as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant
twitch at their corners now and then. He was clothed
throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in
quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose;
but deprived of its original color by his trade. It showed
to advantage the good shape of his figure. A certain well-
to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for
his degree. The natural query of an observer would have
been, Why should such a promising being as this have hid-
den his prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular
occupation ?
After replying to the old man's greeting he showed no in-
clination to continue in talk, although they still walked side
by side, for the elder traveler seemed to desire company.
 THE THREE WOMEN 9

There were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon

the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling
wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two
shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy
animals, of a oreed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were
known as "heath-croppers" here.
Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occa-
sionally left his companion's side, and, stepping behind the
van, looked into its interior through a small window. The
look was always anxious. He would then return to the old
man, who made another remark about the state of the coun-
try and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly
replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The
silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in
these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, fre-
quently plod on for miles without speech contiguity amounts
;

to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such

contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination,
and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself.
Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their
parting, had it not been for the reddleman's visits to his
van. When he returned from his fifth time of looking in
the old man said, "You have something inside there besides
your load?"
"Yes."
"Somebody who wants looking after?"
"Yes."
Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior.
The reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came
away again.
"You have a child there, my man?"
"No, have a woman."
sir, I

"The deuce you have Why did she cry out?"

!

"Oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to travel-
ing, she's uneasy, and keeps dreaming."
" A young woman ? "
"Yes, a young woman."
"That would have interested me forty years ago.
haps she's your wife?"
10 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"My wife!" said the other bitterly. "She's above mat-
ing with such as I. But there's no reason why I should tell
you about that."
"That's true. And there's no reason why you should not.
What harm can I do to you or to her?"
The reddleman looked in the old man's face. "Well, sir,"
he said at last, "I knew her before to-day, though perhaps
it would have been better if I had not. But she's nothing
to me, and I am nothing to her; and she wouldn't have been
in my van if any better carriage had been there to take her."
"Where, may I ask?"
"At Anglebury."
"I know the town well. What was she doing there?"
—
"Oh, not much to gossip about. However, she's tired
to death now, and not at all well, and that's what makes
her so restless. She dropped off into a nap about an hour
ago, and do her good."
'twill
"A nice-lookinggirl, no doubt?"

"You would say so."

The other traveler turned his eyes with interest towards
the van window, and, without withdrawing them, said, "I
presume I might look in upon her?"
"No," said the reddleman abruptly. "It is getting too
dark for you to see much of her; and, more than that, I
have no right to allow you. Thank God she sleeps so well:
I hope she won't wake till she's home."
"Who is she? One of the neighborhood?"
"'Tis no matter who, excuse me."
"It is not that girl of Blooms^Ead, who has been talked
about more or less lately^ Ifso, I know her; and I can
guess what has happened."
"'Tis no matter. . Now, sir, I am sorry to say that
. .

we shall soon have to part company. My ponies are tired,

and I have further to go, and I am going to rest them under
this bank for an hour."
The elder traveler nodded his head indifferently, and the
reddleman turned his horses and van in upon the turf, say-
ing, "Good night." The old man replied, and proceeded on
his way as before. ,
 THE THREE WOMEN 11

The reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a

speck on the road and became absorbed in the thickening
films of night. He then took some hay from a truss which
was slung up under the van, and, throwing a portion of it
in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he laid
on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down,
leaning his back against the wheel. From the interior a
low soft breathing came to his ear. It appeared to satisfy
him, a nd he musingly purveyed the jscene, a s if considering —-
the next ste^^aT^^shottkLtake.
To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed,
indeed, to be a duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional
hour, for there was that in the condition of the heath itself
which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness. It
was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene.
This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the ap-
parent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy
life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable

thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and

at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those of
the meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who
thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered by under-
statement and reserve.
The scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series
of ascents from the level of the road backward into the heart
of the heath. It embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities,
one behind the other, till all was finished by a high hill cut-
ting against the still light sky. The hovered
traveler's eye
about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one
noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow. This bossy
projection of earth above its natural level occupied the
loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath con-
tained. Although from the vale it appeared but as a wart
on an Atlantean brow, its actual bulk was great. It formed
the pole and axis of this heathery world.
As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware
that its summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole
prospect round, was surmounted by something higher. It
rose from the semi-globular mound like a spike from a hel-
12 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
met. The first an imaginative stranger/might
instinct of
have been to suppose the person of one of the 'Celts who
it

built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn

from the scene. It seemed a sort of last man among them,
musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night
with the rest of his race.
/There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath.
Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow,
and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure
was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a
celesTBd globe.
Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure
give to the dark pile of that it seemed to be the only
hills
obvious justification of their outline. Without it, there was
the dome without the lantern; with it the architectural de-
mands of the mass were satisfied. The scene was strangely
homogeneous. The vale, the upland, the barrow, and the
figure above it amounted only to unity. Looking at this
or that member of the group was not observing a complete
thing, but a fraction of a thing.
£The form was so much like an organic part of the entire
motionless structure that to see it move would have im-
pressed the mind as a strange phenomenon^ Immobility
being the chief characteristic of that whole which the per-
son formed portion of, the discontinuance of immobility in
any quarter suggested confusion.
Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave,
up its fixity, shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if
alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow, with
the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished,
The movement had been sufficient to show more clearly tht/
characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.
The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared.
With her dropping out of sight on the right side, a new<
comer, bearing a burden, protruded into the sky on the left
side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on
the top. A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth,
and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burden id
figures.
 THE THREE WOMEN 13

The only intelligiblemeaning in this sky-backed panto-

mime of silhouetteswas that the woman had np-pelation to
the forms who had taken her place, was sedulously avoiding
these, and had come thither for another object than theirs.
The imagination of the observer clung by preference to that
vanished, solitary figure, as to something more interesting,
more important, more likely to have a history worth know-
ing than these new-comers, and unconsciously regarded them
as intruders. But they remained, and established them-
selves; and the lonely person who hitherto had been queen
of the solitude did not at present seem likely to return.

CHAPTER III

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY

T Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of
tEe barrow, he would have learned that these persons were
boys and men of the neighboring hamlets. Each, as he
ascended the barrow, had been heavily laden with furze-
faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long stake
sharpened at each end for impaling them easily two in —
front and two behind. They came from a part of the heath
a quarter of a mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively
prevailed as a product.
Every individual was so involved in furze by his method
of carrying the faggots that he appeared like a busji_jc>nr4egs
till he had thrown them down. The party had marched in
trail, like a traveling flock of sheep; that is to say, the strong-
est first, the weak and young behind.
The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze
thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the
tumulus, which was known as Rainbarrow for many miles
round. Some made themselves busy with matches, and in
selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the
bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others,
again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept
the vast expanse of country commanded by their position,
 •

{
t
14 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
now lying nearly obliterated by shade. In the valleys of the
heath nothing save its own wild face was visible at any
time of day; but this spot commanded a horizon enclosing
a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond the
heath country. None of its features could be seen now, but
the whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness.
While the men and lads were building the pile, a change
took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant
landscape. Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to
arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the
bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged
in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant,
and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale
strawlike beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan.
Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the
shade, like wounds in a black hide. Some were Msenades,
with winy faces and blown hair. These tinctured the silent
bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral
caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons.
Perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within
the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be
told on a clockface when the figures themselves are invisible,
so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle
and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed.
The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky,
attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant con-
flagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind.
The cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human
circle —now increased by other male and female
stragglers, —
with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf
around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into
obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight.
It showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as per-
fect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little
ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough
had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the
heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the his-
torian. There had been no obliteration, because there had
been no tending.
 A THE THREE WOMEN 15

\ It was as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some

I radiant upper story of the world, detached from and inde-
pendent of the dark stretches below. The heath down there
fwas now a vast abyss, and no longer a continuation of what
Jthey stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the blaze, could see
Inothing of the deeps beyond its influence. Occasionally, it
is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their faggots
sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to
some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling
these to replies of the same color, till all was lost in darkness
again. Then the whole black phenomenon beneath repre-
sented Limbo as viewed from the brink by the sublime Flor-
entine in his vision, and the muttered articulations of the
wind in the hollows were as complaints and petitions from
the " souls of mighty worth" suspended therein.
It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into
past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which
hacT^Before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the
original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay
fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread.
The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had
shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now.
Festival fires to Th or and Woden had followed on the same
ground and duly had their day^ Indeed, it is pretty well
known that such blazes ^s this the heathmen were now en-
joying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Dru-
idical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of
^"''popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot.
/[Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant
aat of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded
throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous/ ftqme-
thean rebelliousness against the fiat that this recurrent sea-
son shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death.
Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say,
Let there be light .J
^
The brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon
the skin and clothes of the persons standing round caused
their lineaments and general contours to be drawn with
Dureresque vigor and dash. Yet the permanent moral ex-
 16 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
pression of each face it was impossible to discover, for as

the nimble flames towered, nodded, and swooped through

the surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light
upon the countenances of the group changed shape and posi-
tion endlessly. All was unstable; quivering as leaves, eva-
nescent as lightning. Shadowy eye-sockets, deep as those of
a death's head, suddenly turned into pits of luster: a lantern-
jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles were em-
phasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed
ray. Nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt
mouldings; things with no particular polish on them were
glazed; bright objects, such as the tip of a furze-hook one
oi the men carried, were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little
\ lanterns. Those whom Nature had depicted as merely quaint
I became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for all
* "
| was in extremity.
Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like
others been called to the heights by the rising flames, was
not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but
an appreciable quantity of human countenance. He stood
complacently sunning himself in the heat. With a speaker,
or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the con-
flagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lift-
ing his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow
the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into
darkness. The beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth,
seemed to breed in him a cumulative cheerfulness, which
soon amounted to delight. With his stick in his hand he
began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shin-
ing and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat:
he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue—
"The king call'd down his no-bles all,

By one, by two, by three;

Earl Mar-shal, I'll go shrive the queen,
And thou shalt wend with me.
A boon, a boon, quoth Earl Mar-shal,
And on his bend-ded knee,
fell
That what-so-e'er the queen shall say,
No harm there-of may be."
 !

THE THREE WOMEN 17

Want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and

the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing
man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-
shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to
do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might
erroneously have attached to him.
"A fair stave, Grandfer Cantle; but I am afeard 'tis too
much for the mouldy weasand 1 of such a old man as you/' he
said to the wrinkled reveler. "Dostn't wish th' wast three
sixes again, Grandfer, as you was when you first learnt to
sing it?"
"Hey?" said Grandfer Cantle, stopping in his dance.
"Dostn't wish was young^ again, I say? There's a hole
in thy poor bellows nowadays seemingly."
"But there's good art in me. If I couldn't make a little
wind go a long ways I should seem no younger than the
most aged man, should I, Timothy?"
"And how about the new-married folks down there at the
Quiet Woman Inn?" the other inquired, pointing towards a
dim light in the direction of the distant highway, but con-
siderably apart from where the reddleman was at that mo-
ment resting. "What's the rights of the matter about 'em?
You ought to know, being an understanding man."
"But a little rakish, hey? I own to it. Master Cantle
is that, or he's nothing. Yet 'tis a gay fault, neighbor Fair-
way, that age will cure."
"I heard that they were coming home to-night. By this
time they must have come. What besides?"
"The next thing is for us to go and wish 'em joy, I sup-
pose?"
"Well, no."
"No? Now, I thought we must. I must, or 'twould be-
—
very unlike me the first in every spree that's going

'Do thou put on a fri-ar's coat,

And I'll put on a-no-ther,
And we will to Queen Eleanor go ?

Like Friar and his bro-ther.'

Throat.
 '

ib THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

\

i I met Mis'ess Yeobright, the young bride's aunt, last night,

J

I
and she told me that her son Qlyni was comm g home a'
j
—
Christmas. Wonderful clever, 'a believe ah, I should like
5
to have all that's under that young man's hair. Well, then,
i I spoke to her in my well-known merry way, and she said,
4 !
^ that what's shaped so venerable should tall^ like a fool
—that's what she said to me. I don't care for her, be j owned
if I do, and so I told her. 'Be j owned if I care for 'ee,' I
said. —
I had her there hey ?
"
"I rather think she had you," said Fairway.
"No," said Grandfer Cantle, his countenance slightly
flagging. " 'Tisn't so bad as that with me ? "
" Seemingly 'tis; however, is it because of the wedding that
—
Clym is coming home a' Christmas to make a new arrange-
ment because his mother is now left in the house alone?"
—
" Yes, yes that's it. But, Timothy, hearken to me," said
the Grandfer earnestly. "Though known as such a joker, I
be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and I am
serious now. I can tell 'ee lots about the married couple.
Yes, this morning at six o'clock they went up the country
to do the job, and neither veil 1 nor mark have been seen of
*ern since, though I reckon that this afternoon has brought
—
'em home again, man and woman wife, that is. Isn't it
spoke like a man, Timothy, and wasn't Mis'ess Yeobright
wrong abc lit me ? "
"Yes, it will do. I didn't know the two had walked to-
gether since last fall, when her mother forbade the banns.
How long has this new set-to been in mangling then? Do
you know, Humphrey?"
"Yes, how long?" said Grandfer Cantle smartly, likewise
turning to Humphrey. "I ask that question."
"Ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might
foae the man after all," replied Humphrey, without removing
T
his eyes from the fire. ie was a somewhat solemn young
fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-
cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed
in bulging laggings as stiff as the Philistine's greaves of brass.
* That's why they went away to be married, I count. You
1 Fell, skin.
 a

THE THREE WOMEN 19

up such a nunny-watch 1 and forbidding the

see, after kicking
banns 'twould have made Mis'ess Yeobright seem foolish-
like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if
she'd never gainsaid it."
—
"Exactly seem foolish-like; and that's very bad for the
poor things that be so, though I only guess as much, to be
sure," said Grandfer Cantle, still strenuously preserving a,
sensible bearing and mien.
"Ah, well, I was at church that day," said Fairway,,
"which was a very curious thing to happen."
"If 'twasn't my name's Simple," said the Grandfer em-
phatically. "I ha'n't been there to-year; and now the win-
ter is a-coming on I won't say I shall."
"I ha'n't been these three years," said Humphrey; "for
I'm so dead sleepy of a Sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get
there; and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor J
chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many
|
Dain't, that I bide at home and don't go at all."
"I not only happened to be there," said Fairway, with a
fresh collection of emphasis, "but I was sitting in the same
pew as Mis' ess Yeobright. And though you may not see
it as such, it fairly made my blood run cold to hear her.

Yes, it is a curious thing; but it made my blood run cold,

for I was close at her elbow." The speaker looked round
upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with
his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his
descriptive moderation.
"'Tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there/*
jsaid a woman behind.
"'Ye are to declare it,' wez the parson's words," Fairway
continued. "And then up stood a woman at my side —
touching of me. 'Well, be damned if there isn't Mis'ess
Yeobright a-standing up/ I said to myself. Yes, neighbors,
though I was in the temple of prayer that's what I said.
'Tis against my conscience to curse and swear in company,
and I hope any woman here will overlook it. Still what I
did say I did say, and 'twould be a lie if I didn't own it."
"So 'twould, neighbor Fairway."
1 Disturbance.
20 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"'Be damned if there isn't Mis'ess Yeobright a-standing
up/ I said," the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word
with the same passionless severity of face as before, which
proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with
the iteration. "And the next thing I heard was, 'I forbid
the banns/ from her. Til speak to you after the service/
—
said the parson, in quite a homely way yes, turning all at
once into a common man no holier than you or I. Ah, her
face was pale ! Maybe you can call to mind that monument
—
in church the cross-legged soldier 1 that have had his nose
knocked away by the school-children? Well, he would about
have matched that woman's face, when she said, 'I forbid
the banns/"
The audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks
into the fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to
give themselves time to weigh the moral of the story.
"I'm sure when I heard they'd been forbid I felt as glad
as if anybody had gied me sixpence/' said an earnest voice
— that of Oily Dowden, a woman who lived by making heath
brooms, or besoms. Her nature was to be civil to enemies
as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting
her remain alive.
"And now the maid have married him just the same,"
said Humphrey.
"After the Mis'ess Yeobright came round and was quite
agreeable," Fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show
that his words were no appendage to Humphrey's, but the
result of independent reflection.
"Supposing they were ashamed, I don't see why they
shouldn't have done it here-right," said a wide-spread
woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped
or turned. "'Tis well to call the neighbors together and to
hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well
be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. I don't care
for close ways."
"Ah, now, you'd hardly believe it, but I don't care for
.gay weddings," said Timothy Fairway, his eyes again trav-
eling round. "I hardly blame Thomasin Yeobright and
1 Crusader.
 (

Qx(/fi

THE THREE WOMEN

neighbor Wildeve for doing it quiet, if I must own it. A
wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour;
and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty."
"True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say
nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be
expected to make yourself worth your victuals." —
— —-—
"You be bound to dance at Christmas because 'tis the
time o' year; you must dance at weddings because 'tis the
time o' life. At christenings folk will even smuggle in a reel
or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or second chieL
And this is not naming the songs you've got to sing. . ..

For my part I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything.

You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties,,
and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in
talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in
hornpipes." __^
"Nine folks out of ten would own 'twas going too far to
dance then, I suppose?" said Grandfer Cantle inquiringly.
"'Tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at
after the mug have been round a few times."
"Well, I can't understand a quiet lady-like little body like
Tamsin Yeobright caring to be married in such a mean way,"
said Susan Nunsuch, the wide woman, who preferred the
original subject. "'Tis worse than the poorest do. And I
shouldn't have cared about the man, though some may say
he's good-looking."
"To give him his due he's a clever, learned fellow in his
—
way a'most as clever as Clym Yeobright used to be. He
was brought up to better things than keeping the Quiet
—
Woman. An engineer that's what the man was, as we
know; but he threw away his chance, and so 'a took a pub-
lic-house to live. His learning was no use to him at all."
"Very often the case," said Oily, the besom-maker.
"And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The
class of folk that couldn't use to make a round to save
their bones from the pit can write their names now without
a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what
—
do I say? why, almost without a desk to lean their stom-
achs and elbows upon."
 "

22 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"True: 'tis amazing what a polish the world have been
brought to/' said Humphrey.
"Why, afore I went a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as
we was called), in the year four/ chimed in Grandfer Can tie
7

brightly, "I didn't know no more what the world was like
than the commonest man among ye. And now, jown it all,
I won't say what I bain't fit for, hey?"
"Couldst sign the book, no doubt," said Fairway, "if wast
young enough to join hands with a woman again, like Wild-
eve and Mis 'ess Tamsin, which is more than Humph there
could do, for he follows his father in learning. Ah, Humph,
well I can mind when I was married how I zid 1 thy father's
mark staring me in the face as I went to put down my name.
He and your mother were the couple married just afore we
were, and there stood thy father's cross with arms stretched
out like a great banging scarecrow. What a terrible black
—
cross that was thy father's very likeness in en 2 To save !

my soul I couldn't help laughing when I zid en, though all

the time I was as hot as dog-days, what with the marrying,
and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with
Jack Changley and a lot more chaps grinning at me through
church window. But the next moment a strawmote would
have knocked me down, for I called to mind that if thy father
and mother had had high words once, they'd been at it
twenty times since they'd been man and wife, and I zid myself
as the next poor stunpoll ? to get into the same mess. , . „

Ah— well, what a day 'twas

!

"Wildeve is older than Tamsin Yeobright by a good-few

summers. A pretty maid too she is. A young woman with
a home must be a fool to tear her smock 4 for a man like
that."
The speaker, a peat or turf-cutter, who had newly joined
the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-
shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labor ;

and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the

beams of the fire.
"A hundred maidens would have had him if he'd asked
'em," said the wide woman.
1
Seed- saw. 2 Him, it. 3
Blockhead Marry.
 THE THREE WOMEN 23

"Didst ever know a man, neighbor, that no woman at all

would marry?" inquired Humphrey.
"I never did," said the turf -cutter.
"Nor I," said another.
"Nor I," said Grandfer Cantle.
"Well, now, I did once," said Timothy Fairway, adding
more firmness to one of his legs. "I did know of such a
man. But only once, mind." He gave his throat a thor-
ough rake round, as if it were the duty of every person not-
to be mistaken through thickness of voice. "Yes, I knev
of such a man," he said.
"And what ghastly gallicrow 1 might the poor fellow have
been like, Master Fairway?" asked the turf-cutter.
"Well, 'a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor
a blind man. What 'a was I don't say."
"Is he known in these parts?" said Oily Dowden.
"Hardly," said Timothy; "but I name no name. , . .

Come, keep the fire up there, youngsters."

"Whatever is Christian Cantle's teeth a-chattering for?'*
said a boy from amid the smoke and shades on the other
side of the blaze. "Be ye a-cold, Christian?"
A thin, jibbering voice was heard to reply, "No, not at
all."
"Come forward, Christian, and show yourself. I didn't
know you were here," said Fairway, with a humane look
across towards that quarter.
Thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no
shoulders, and a great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond
his clothes, advanced .a step or two by his own will, and was
pushed by the will of others half a dozen steps more. He
was Grandfer Cantle's youngest son.
"What be ye quaking for, Christian?" said the turf-cutter
kindly.
"I'm the man."
"Whatman?"
"The man no woman will marry."
"The deuce you be !" Timothy Fairway, enlarging his
said
gaze to cover Christian's whole surface and a great deal more;
1
Gallowscrow.
24 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Grandfer Cantle meanwhile staring as a hen stares at the
duck she has hatched.
"Yes, I be he; and it makes me afeard," said Christian.
"D'ye think 'twill hurt me? I shall always say I don't care,
and swear to it, though I do care all the while.''
"Well, be damned if this isn't the queerest start ever I
know'd," said Mr. Fairway. "I didn't mean you at all.
There's another in the country, then! Why did ye reveal
yer misfortune, Christian?"
"'Twas to be if 'twas, I suppose. I can't help it, can I?"
He turned upon them his painfully circular eyes, surrounded
by concentric lines like targets.
"No, that's true. But 'tis a melancholy thing, and my
blood ran cold when you spoke, for I felt there were two
poor fellows where I had thought only one. 'Tis a sad
thing for ye, Christian. How'st know the women won't hae
thee?"
"I've asked 'em."
"Sure I should never have thought you had the face.
Well, and what did the last one say to ye? Nothing that
can't be got over, perhaps, after all?"
"'Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking,
maphrotight 1 fool/ was the woman's words to me."
"Not encouraging, I own," said Fairway. "'Get out of
my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking fool/ is rather a
hard way of saying No. But even that might be overcome
by time and patience, so as to let a few gray hairs show
themselves in the hussy's head. How old be you, Chris-
tian?"
"Thirty-one last tatie-digging, 2 Mister Fairway."
—
"Not a boy not a boy. Still there's hope yet."
"That's my age by baptism, because that's put down in
—
the great book of the Judgment that they keep down in
church vestry; but mother told me I was born some time
afore I was christened."
"Ah!"
"But she couldn't tell wh&i, to save her life, except That
there was no moon."
1 Hermaphrodite. 2 Potato-digging.
 Ttt*T THREE WOMEN 25

"No moon: that's bad. Hey, neighbors, that's bad for

him!"
"Yes, 'tis bad," said Grandfer Cantle, shaking his head.
"Mother know'd 'twas no moon, for she asked another
woman that had an almanac, as she did whenever a boy
,

was born to her, because of the sayin^No moon, no inan73

which made her afeard every man-chilal3rie"~kft4i ©tfye —
really think it serious, Mister Fairway, that there was no
moon?"
"Yes; 'No moon, no man.' "lis one of the truest sayings
ever spit out. The boy never comes to anything that's born
at new moon. A bad job for thee, Christian, that you should
have showed your nose then of all days in the month."
"I suppose the moon was terrible full when you were
born?" said Christian, with a look of hopeless admiration at
Fairway.
"Well, 'a was not new," Mr. Fairway replied, with a dis-
interested gaze.
"I'd sooner go without drink at Lammas-tide than be a
man of no moon," continued Christian, in the same shattered
recitative. uvTis said I be only the rames 1 of a man, and no
good for my race at all; and I suppose that's the cause o't."
"Ay," said Grandfer Cantle, somewhat subdued in spirit;
"and yet his mother cried for scores of hours when 'a was
a boy, for fear he should outgrow hisself and go for a soldier."
"Well, there's many just as bad as he," said Fairway.
"Wethers must live their time as well as other sheep, poor
soul."
"So, perhaps I shall rub on? Ought I to be afeard o'
nights, Master Fairway?"
"You'll have to lie alone all your life; and 'tis not to mar-
ried couples but to single sleepers that a ghost shows hisself
when 'a do come. One has been seen lately, too. A very
strange one."
—
"No don't talk about it ff^Eis" agreeable of ye not to!
'Twill make my skin crawl when I think of it in bed alone.
—
But you will ah, you will, I know, Timothy; and I shall
dream all night o't! A very strange one? What sort of a
i Skeleton, remains.
26 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
spirit didye mean when ye said, a very strange one, Tim-
— —
othy? no, no don't tell me/'
"I don't half believe in spirits myself. But I think it
—
ghostly enough what I was told. 'Twas a little boy that
zid it."
"
" What was it like?—no, don't
"A (red) one. Yes, most ghosts be white; but this is as if
it had Been dipped in blood."
Christian drew a deep breath without letting it expand his
body, and Humphrey said, " Where has it been seen?"
"Not exactly here; but in this same heth. But 'tisn't a
thing to talk about. What do ye say," continued Fairway
in brisker tones, and turning upon them as if the idea had
—
not been Grandfer Cantle's "what do you say to giving
the new man and wife a bit of a song to-night afore we go
—
to bed being their wedding day? When folks are just mar-
ried 'tis as well to look glad o't, since looking sorry won't
unjoin 'em. I am no drinker, as we know, but when the
womenfolk and youngsters have gone home we can drop
down across to the Quiet Woman, and strike up a ballet 1 in
front of the married folks' door. 'Twill please the young
wife, and that's what
should like to do, for many's the
I
skinful I've had at her hands when she lived with her aunt
at Blooms-End."
"Hey? And so we will!" said Grandfer Cantle, turning
so briskly that his copper seals swung extravagantly. "I'm
as dry as a kex 2 with biding up here in the wind, and I haven't
seen the color of drink since nammet-time 3 to-clay. 'Tis said
that the last brew at the Woman is very pretty drinking.
And, neighbors, if we should be a little late in the finishing,
why, to-morrow's Sunday, and we can sleep it off!"
"Grandfer Cantle! you take things very careless for an
old man," said the wide woman.
—
"I take things careless; I do -too careless to please the
women! Klk! I'll sing the Jovial Crew,' or any other
'

song, when a weak old man would cry his eyes out. Jown
it; I am up for anything.

i
Ballad.
* The dry stalk of cow-parsnip and other marsh plants
3 Luncheon-time.
 " •

THE THREE WOMEN 27

'The king look'd o-ver his left shoul-der,

And a grim look look-ed hee,
Earl Mar-shal, he said, but for my oath,
Or hang-ed thou shouldst bee.'
"Well, that's what we'll do," said Fairway. "We'll give
'em a song, an' it please the Lord. What's the good of
Thomasin's cousin Clym a-coming home after the deedV
done? He should have come afore, if so be he wanted to
stop it, and marry her himself." ^ '

"Perhaps he's coming to bide with his mother a little time,

as she must feel lonely now the maid's gone."
—
"Now, 'tis very odd, but I never feel lonely no, not at
all," said Grandfer Cantle. "I am as brave in the night-time
as a' admiral!"
The bonfire was by this time beginning to sink low, for the
fuel had not been of that substantial sort which can support
a blaze long. Most of the other fires within the wide hori-
zon were also dwindling weak. Attentive observation of
their brightness, color, and length of existence would have
revealed the quality of the material burnt; and through that,
to some extent the natural produce of the district in which
each bonfire was situate. The clear, kingly effulgence which
had characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze
country like their own, which in one direction extended an
unlimited number of miles: the rapid flares and extinctions
at other points of the compass showed the lightest of fuel —
straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from arable land.
—
The most enduring of all steady unaltering eyes like planets
—
•
signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and
stout billets. Fires of the last-mentioned materials were
rare, and, though comparatively small in magnitude beside
the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by
mere long-continuance. The great ones had perished, but
these remained. They occupied the remotest visible posi-
tions —sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and
plantation districts to the north, where the soil was different,
and heath foreign and strange.
Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the mpjDa of
the whole shining throng. It lay in a direction precisely
 "

28 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

opposite to that of the little window in the vale below. Its
nearness was such that, notwithstanding its actual smallness %
its glow infinitely transcended theirs.
This quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time,
and when their own fire had become sunken and dim it

attracted more; some even of the wood fires more recently

lighted had reached their decline, but no change was per-
ceptible here.
" To be sure, how near that fire is !
" said Fairway. " Seem-
ingly, I can see a fellow of some sort walking round it. Lit-
tle and good must be said of that fire, surely.
"I can throw a stone there," said the boy.
"And so can I !" said Grandfer Cantle.
"No, no, my
you can't, sonnies. That fire is not much

less than a mile and a half off, for all that 'a seems so near."
"'Tis in the heath, but not furze," said the turf-cutter.
"'Tis cleft-wood, that's what 'tis," said Timothy Fairway.
"Nothing would burn like that except clean timber. And
'tis on the knap afore the old captain's house at Mist over.
1

Such a queer mortal as that man is To have a little fire

!

inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody else may enjoy
it or come anigh it And what a zany an old chap must be,
!

to light a bonfire when there's no youngsters to please."

"Cap'n<yye>jias been for a long walk to-day, and is quite
tired out," said Grandfer Cantle, "so 'tisn't likely to be he."
"And he would hardly afford good fuel like that," said
the wide woman.
"Then it must be his grand-daughter," said Fairway.
"Not that a body of her age can want a fire much."
"She is very strange in her ways, living up there by her-
self, and such things please her," said Susan.
"She's a well-favored maid enough," said Humphrey the
furze-cutter; "especially when she's got one of her dandy
gowns on."
"That's true," said Fairway. "Well, let her bonfire burn
an't will. Ours is well-nigh out by the look o't."
"How dark 'tis now the fire's gone down!" said Christian
Cantle, looking behind him with his hare eyes. "Don't ye
i Knoll
 " —

THE THREE WOMEN 29

think we'd better get home-along, neighbors ? The heth isn't

haunted, I know; but we'd better get home. Ah, what
. . .

was that?" r ^ .

" Only the wind/' said the turf-cutter. \ h'^ J^

b~ V*
"I don't think .Fiftftpol-IiQvembers oughi) to be kept up
by night except in towns. It shouIcTbe by day in outstep, 1
!
ill-accounted places like this
" Nonsense. Christian. Lift up your spirits like a man!
Susy, dear, you and I will have a jig hey, my honey? —
before 'tis quite too dark to see how well-favored you be
still, though so many summers have passed since your hus-

band, a son of a witch, snapped you up from me."

This was addressed to Susan Nunsuch; and the next cir-
cumstance of which the beholders were conscious was a
vision of the matron's broad form whisking off towards the
space whereon the fire had been kindled. She was lifted
bodily by Mr. Fairway's arm, which had been flung round
her waist before she had become aware of his intention.
The site of the fire was now merely a circle of ashes flecked
with red embers and sparks, the furze having burnt com-
pletely away. Once within the circle he whirled her round
and round in a dance. She was a woman noisily constructed;
in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and
lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather
and in dry, to preserve her boots from wear; and when Fair-
way began to jump about with her, the clicking of the pat-
tens, the creaking of the stays, and her screams of surprise,
formed a very audible concert.
"I'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy 2 chap," said
Mrs. Nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her
feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "My ankles
were all in a fever afore, from walking through that prickly
furze, and now you must make 'em worse with these vl ank-
ers 3 !"
The vagary Timothy Fairway was infectious. The
of
turf-cutter seized old Oily Dowden, and, somewhat more
gently, poussetted with her likewise. The young men were
not slow to imitate the example of their elders, and seized
1 Out-of-the-way. 2 Beggarly. 3 Sparks.
 30 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
the maids; Grandfer Can tie and his stick jigged in the form
/ of a three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute
I all that could be seen on Rainbarrow was a whirling of dark
\ shapes amid a boiling confusion of sparks, which leapt around
\the dancers as high as their waists. The chief noises were
women's shrill cries men's laughter, Susan's stays and pat-
;

tens, Oily Dowden's " heu-heu-heu " and the strumming of

!

the wind upon the furze-bushes, which formed a kind of tune

to the demoniac measure they trod. Christian alone stood
aloof, uneasily rocking himself as he murmured, "They ought
—
not to do it how the vlankers do fly! 'tis tempting the
Wicked one, 'tis."
"What was that?" said one of the lads, stopping.
"Ah—where?" said Christian, hastily closing up to the
rest.
The dancers all lessened their speed.
"'Twas behind you, Christian, that I heard it —down
there."
—
"Yes 'tis behind me!" Christian said. "Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I lie on; four angels
-"
guard
"Hold your tongue. What is it?" said Fairway.
"Hoi-i-i-i!" cried a voice from the darkness.
" Halloo-o-o-o " said Fairway.
!

"Is there any cart-track up across here to Mis'e^ Yeo-

bright's, of Blooms-End?" came to them in the same voice,
as a long, slim, indistinct figure approached the barrow.
"Ought we not to run home as hard as we can, neighbors,
as 'tis getting late?" said Christian. "Not run away from
one another, you know; run close together, I mean."
"Scrape up a few stray locks of furze, and make a blaze,
so that we can see who the man is," said Fairway.
When the flame arose it revealed a young man in tight
raiment, and red from top to toe. "Is there a track across
here to Mis'ess Yeobright's house?" he repeated.
—
"Ay keep along the path down there."
"I mean a way two horses and a van can travel over?"
"Well, yes; you can get up the vale below here with time.
The track is rough, but if you've got a light your horses may
 THE THREE WOMEN 31

pick along wi' care. Have ye brought your cart far up,
neighbor reddleman?"
"I've left it in the bottom, about half a mile back. I
stepped on in front to make sure of the way, as 'tis night-
time, and I han't been here for so long."
"Oh, well, you can get up," said Fairway. "What a turn
it did give me when I zid him !" he added to the whole group,
the reddleman included. "Lord's sake, I thought, whatever
fiery mommet 1 is this come to trouble us ? No slight to your
looks, reddleman, for ye bain't bad-looking in the ground-
work, though the finish is queer. My meaning is just to
say how curious I felt. I half thought 'twas the devil or
the red ghost the boy told of."
"It gied me a turn likewise," said Susan Nunsuch, "for
I had a dream last night of a death's head."
"Don't ye talk o't no more," said Christian. "If he had
a handkerchief over his head he'd look for all the world like
the Devil in the picture of the Temptation."
"Well, thank you for telling me," said the young reddle-
man, smiling faintly. "And good night t'ye all."
He withdrew from their sight down the barrow.
"I fancy I've seen that young man's face before," said
Humphrey. "But where, or how, or what his name is, I
don't know."
The _dleman had not been gone more than a few min-
i

utes when another person approached the partially revived

bonfire. It proved to be a well-known and respected widow
of the neighborhood, of a standing which can only be ex-
pressed by the word genteel. Her face, encompassed by the
blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely, and with-
out half-lights, like a cameo.
She was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features
of the type usually found where perspicacity is the chief
quality enthroned within. At moments she seemed to be
regarding issues from a Nebo denied to others around. She
had something of an estranged mien: the solitude exhaled
from the heath was concentrated in this face that had risen
from it. The air with which she looked at the heathmea
i Image, puppet, *'guy."
32 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what
might be their opinions of her for walking in that lonely
spot at such an hour, thus indirectly implying that in some
respect or other they were not up to her level. The explana-
tion lay in the fact that though her husband had been a
small farmer she herself was a curate's daughter, who had
once dreamt of doing better things.
Persons with any weight of character carry, like planets,
their atmospheres along with them in their orbits; and the
matron who entered now upon the scene could, and usually
did, bring her own tone into a company. Her normal manner
among the heathfolk had that reticence which results from
the consciousness of superior communicative power. But the
effect of coming into society and light after lonely wandering
in darkness is a sociability in the comer above its usual pitch,
expressed in the features even more than in the words.
"Why, 'tis Mis'ess Yeobright," said Fairway. "Mis'ess
Yeobright, not ten minutes ago a man was here asking for
—
you a reddleman."
"What did he want?" said she.
"He didn't tell us."
"Something to sell, I suppose; what it can be I am at a

loss to understand."
"I am glad to hear that your son Mr. Clym is coming
home at Christmas, ma'am," said Sam, the turf-cutter.
"What a dog he used to be for bonfires!"
"Yes. I believe he is coming," she said.
"He must be a fine fellow by this time," said Fairway.
"He is a man now," she replied quietly.
"'Tis very lonesome for 'ee in the heth to-night, mis'ess,"
said Christian, coming from the seclusion he had hitherto
maintained. "Mind you don't get lost. Egdon Heth is a
bad place to get lost in, and the winds do huffle queerer to-
night than ever I heard 'em afore. Them that know Egdon
best have been pixy-led 1 here at times."
"Is that you, Christian?" said Mrs. Yeobright. "What
made you hide away from me?"
"'Twas that I didn't know you in this light, mis'ess; and
* Misled by fairies.
 / THE THREE W01VJEN 33

beingl&JHlinof the mournf ullest jiiakei I was scared a little,

that's all. <3TT£iTdmeir^^^ how terrible down

I get in my
mind, 'twould make 'ee quite nervous for fear
I should die by my hand."
"You don't take after your father/' said Mrs. Yeobright,
looking towards the fire, where Grandfer Cantle, with some
want of originality, was dancing by himself among the sparks,
as the others had done before.
"Now, Grandfer," said Timothy Fairway, "we are ashamed
of ye. A reyerent old patriarch man as you be seventy if —
—
a day to go|hornpiping like that by yourself
!"

"A harrowing old man, Mis'ess Yeobright," said Christian

despondingly. "I wouldn't live with him a week, so play-
ward 1 as he is, if I could get away."
"'Twould be more seemly in ye to stand still and welcome
Mis'ess Yeobright, and you the venerablest here, Grandfer
Cantle," said the besom-woman.
"Faith, and so it would," said the reveler, checking him-
self repentantly. "I've such a bad memory, Mis'ess Yeo-
bright, that I forget how I'm looked up to by the rest of
'em. My spirits must be wonderful good, you'll say? But
not always. 'Tis a weight upon a man to be looked up to
as commander, and I often feel it."
"I am sorry to stop the talk," said Mrs. Yeobright. "But
I must be leaving you now. I am crossing the heath towards
my niece's new home, who is returning to-night with her
husband; and hearing Olly's voice I came up here to ask
her if she would soon be going home; I should like her to
walk with me, as her way is mine."
"Ay, sure, ma'am, I'm just thinking of moving," said Oily.
"Why, you'll be safe to meet the reddleman that I told
ye of," said Fairway. "He's only gone back to get his van.
We heard that your niece and her husband were coming
straight home as soon as they were married, and we are
going down there shortly, to give 'em a song o' welcome."
"Thank you indeed," said Mrs. Yeobright.
"But we shall take a shorter cut through the furze than you
can go with long clothes; so we won't trouble you to wait."
i
Playful.
34 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
—
"Very well are you ready, Oily?"
"Yes, ma'am. And there's a light shining from your
niece's window, see. It will help to keep us in the path."
She indicated the fakit light at the bottom of the valley
which Fairway had pointed out; and the two women de-
scended the barrow.

CHAPTER IV

THE HALT ON THE TURNPIKE ROAD

—
Down-, downward they went, and yet further down their
descent at each step seeming to outmeasure their advance.
Their skirts were scratched noisily by the furze, their shoul-
ders brushed by the ferns, which, though dead and dry,
stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter weather hav-
ing as yet arrived to beat them down. Their Tartarean
situation might by some have been called an imprudent one
for two unattended women. But these shaggy recesses were
at all seasons a familiar surrounding to Oily and Mrs. Yeo-
bright; and the addition of darkness lends no f rightfulness
to the face of a friend.
"And so Tamsin has married him at last," said Oily, when
the incline had become so much less steep that their foot-
steps no longer required undivided attention.
Mrs. Yeobright answered slowly, "Yes: at last."
—
"How you will miss her living with ye as a daughter,
as she always have."
"I do miss her."
Oily, though without the tact to perceive when remarks
were untimely, was saved by her very simplicity from ren-
dering them offensive. Questions that would have been re-
sented in others she could ask with impunity. This ac-
counted for Mrs. Yeobright 's acquiescence in the revival of
an evidently sore subject.
"I was quite strook to hear you'd agreed to it, ma'am,
that I was," continued the besom-maker.
"You were not more struck by it than I should have been
last year this time, Oily. There are a good many sides to
 THE THREE WOMEN 35

that wedding. I could not tell you all of them, even if I

tried."
"I felt myself that he was hardly solid-going enough to
—
mate with your family. Keeping an inn what is it? But
Vs clever, that's true, and they say he was an engineering
gentleman once, but has come down by being too outwardly
«"iven."
"I saw that, upon the whole, it would be better she should
marry where she wished."
"Poor little thing, her feelings got the better of her, no
doubt. 'Tis nature. Well, they may call him what they
will— he've several acres of heth ground broke up here, be-
sides the public-house, and the heth-croppers, and his man-
ners be quite like a gentleman's. And what's done cannot
be undone."
"It cannot," said Mrs. Yeobright. "See, here's the
wagon-track at last. Now we shall get along better."
The wedding subject was no further dwelt upon; and soon
a faint diverging path was reached, where they parted com-
pany, Oily first begging her companion to remind Mr. Wild-
eve that he had not sent her sick husband the bottle of wine
promised on the occasion of his marriage. The besom-maker
turned to the left towards her own house, behind a spur of
the hill, and Mrs. Yeobright followed the straight track,
which further on joined the highway by the Quiet Woman
Inn, whither she supposed her niece to hav£ returned with
Wildeve from their wedding at Anglcbury that day.
She first reached Wildeve 's Patch, as it was called, a plot
of land redeemed from the heath, and after long and laborious
years brought into cultivation. The man who had discov-
ered that it could be tilled died of the labor: the man who
succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilizing it.
Wildeve came like Amerigo Vespucci, and received the honors
due to those who had gone before.
When Mrs. Yeobright had drawn near to the inn, and
was about to enter, she saw a horse and vehicle some two
hundred yards beyond it, coming towards her, a man walk-
ing alongside with a lantern in his hand. It was soon evi-
dent that this was the reddleman who had inquired for her.
 "

3b THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Instead of entering the inn at once, she walked by it and
towards the van.
The conveyance came close, and the man was about to
pass her with little notice, when she turned to him and said,
"I, think you have been inquiring for me? I am Mrs. Yeo-
bright of Blooms-End.
The reddleman started, and held up his finger. He stopped
the horses, and beckoned to her to withdraw with him a few
yards aside, which she did, wondering.
"You don't know me, ma'am, I suppose?" he said.
"I do not," said she. "Why, yes, I do! You are young
Venn—your father was a dairyman somewhere here?"
__.-"Yes; and I knew your niece, Miss Tamsin, a little. I
have something bad to tell you."
—
"About her no? She has just come home, I believe,
with her husband. They arranged to return this afternoon
— to the inn beyond here?"
"She's not there."
"How do you know?"
"Because she's here. She's in my van," he added slowly.
"What new trouble has come?" murmured Mrs. Yeo-
bright, putting her hand over her eyes.
"I can't explain much, ma'am. All I know is that, as I
was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of
Anglebury, I heard something trotting after me like a doe,
i
and looking round there she was, white as death itself. Oh,
Diggory Venn she said, I thought 'twas you will you help
!
'
'
:

me? Iam in trouble.'"

"How did she know your Christian name?" said Mrs.
Yeobright doubtingly.
"I had met her as a lad before I went away in this trade.
She asked then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a
faint. I picked her up and put her in, and there she has been
ever since. She has cried a good deal, but she has hardly
spoke; all she has told me being that she was to have been
married this morning. I tried to get her to eat something,
but she couldn't; and at last she fell asleep."
"Let me see her at once," said Mrs. Yeobright, hastening
towards the van.
 THE THREE WOMEN 37

The reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping

up first, assisted Mrs. Yeobright to mount beside him. On
the door being opened she perceived at the end of the van
an extemporized couch, around which was hung apparently
all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to keep the
occupant of the little couch from contact with the red mate-
rials of his trade. A young girl lay thereon, covered with a
cloak. She was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon
her features.
A fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, re-
posing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. It was between
pretty and beautiful. Though her eyes were closed, one
could easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as
the culmination of the luminous workmanship around. The
groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now
lay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. The
grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing
of the bloom which had as yet but given a dignity to what
it might eventually undermine. The scarlet of her lips had
not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more
intense by the absence of the neighboring and more tran-
*^
sient color of her cheek. The lips frequently parted, with
a murmur of words. She seemed to belong rightly to a
madrigal — to require viewing through rhyme and har-
mony.
One thing at least was obvious: she was not made to be
looked at thus. The reddleman had appeared conscious of
as much, and, while Mrs. Yeobright looked in upon her, he
cast his eyes aside with a delicacy which well became him.
The sleeper apparently thought so too, for the next moment
she opened her eyes.
The lips then parted with something of anticipation, some-
thing more of doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions
of thoughts, as signaled by the changes on her face, were
exhibited by the light to the utmost nicety. An ingenuous,
transparent life was disclosed; as if the flow of her existence
could be seen passing within her. She understood the scene
in a moment.
"0 yes, it is I, aunt/' she cried. "I know how frightened
 "

38 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

you are, and how you cannot believe it; but all the same, it
is I who have come home like this !

"Tamsin, Tamsin!" said Mrs. Yeobright, stooping over

the young woman and kissing her. "0 my dear girl!"
Thomasin was now on the verge of a sob; but by an un-
expected self-command she uttered no sound. With a gen-
tle panting breath she sat upright.
"I did not expect to see you in this state, any more than
you me," she went on quickly. " Where am I, aunt?"
" Nearly home, my dear. In Egdon Bottom. What
dreadful thing is it?"
"I'll tell you in a moment. Then I
So near, are we?
will get out and walk. I want home by the path."
to go
"But this kind man who has done so much will, I am sure,
take you right on to my house?" said the aunt, turning to
the reddleman, who had withdrawn from the front of the
van on the awakening of the girl, and stood in the road.
"Why should you think it necessary to ask me? I will,
of course," said he.
"He is indeed kind," murmured Thomasin. "I was once
acquainted with him, aunt, and when I saw him to-day I
thought I should prefer his van to any conveyance of a
stranger. But I'll walk now. Reddleman, stop the horses,
case."
The man regarded her with tender reluctance, but stopped
them.
s* Aunt and from the van, Mrs. Yeo-
niece then descended
bright saying to owner, "I quite recognize you now.
its
What made vou change from the nice business your father
left you?" *
{ "Well, I did," he said, and looked at Thomasin, who
flushed a little. "Then you'll not be wanting me any more
'
to-night, ma'am?"
Mrs. Yeobright glanced around at the dark sky, at tha
hills, at the perishing bonfires, and at the lighted window of

the inn they had neared. "I think not," she said, "since
Thomasin wishes to walk. We can soon run up the path
and reach home: we know it well."
And after a few further words they parted, the reddleman

W*
 THE THREE WOMEN 39

moving onwards with his van, and the two women remaining
standing in the road. As soon as the vehicle and its driver
had withdrawn so far as to be beyond all possible reach of
her voice, Mrs. Yeobright turned to her niece.
"Now, Thomasin," she said sternly, " what's the mean-
ing of this [disgraceful performance ? y ,„.,,,..,
:

CHAPTER V
PERPLEXITY AMONG HONEST PEOPLE

Thomasin looked as if quite overcome by her aunt's change

of manner. "It means just what it seems to mean: I am—
not married/' she replied faintly. "Excuse me for humil* —
iating you, aunt, by this mishap: I am sorry for it. But I
cannot help it."
"Me? Think of yourself first."
"It was nobody's fault. When we got there the parson
wouldn't marry us because of some trifling irregularity in
the license."
"What irregularity?"
"I don't know. Mr. Wildeve can explain. I did not
think when I went away this morning that I should come
back like this." It being dark, Thomasin allowed her emo-
tion to escape her by the silent way of tears, which could
roll down her cheeks unseen.
"I could almost say that it serves you right if I did not—
feel that you don't deserve it," continued Mrs. Yeobright,
who," possessing two distinct moods in close contiguity, a
gentle mood and an angry, flew from one to the other with-
out the least warning. "Remember, Thomasin, this busi-
ness was none of my seeking; from the very first, when you
began to feel foolish about that man, I warned you he would
not make you happy. I felt it so strongly that I did what I
would never have believed myself capable of doing stood —
up in the church, and made myself the public talk for weeks.
But having once consented, I don't submit to these fancies
without good reason. Marry him you must after this."
40 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Do you think I wish to do otherwise for one moment ?"
said Thomasin, with a heavy sigh. "I know how wrong it

war of me to love him, but don't pain me by talking like

that, aunt You would not
! have had me stay there with
—
him, would you? and your house is the only home I have
to return to. He says we can be married in a day or two."
"I wish he had never seen you."
"Very well; then I will be the miserablest woman in the
world, and not let him see me again. No, I won't have
him!"
"It too late to speak so. Come with me. I am going
is

to the inn to see if he has returned. Of course I shall get to

the bottom of this story at once. Mr. Wildeve must not
suppose he can play tricks upon me, or any belonging to me."
"It was not that. The license was wrong, and he couldn't
get another the same day. He will tell you in a moment
how it was, if he comes."
"Why didn't he bring you back?"
" Tha £ was me!" again sobbed Thomasin.
J

"When I found
we could not be married I didn't like to come back with him,
and I was very ill. Then I saw Diggory Venn, and was
glad to get him to take me home. I cannot explain it any
better, and you must be angry with me if you will."
"I shall see about that," said Mrs. Yeobright; and they
turned towards the inn, known in the neighborhood as the
Quiet Woman, the sign of which represented the figure of a
matron carrying her head under her arm. The front of the
house was towards the heath and Rainbarrow, whose dark
shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. Upon the door
was a neglected brass plate, bearing the unexpected inscrip-
tion, "Mr. Wildeve, Engineer" —
a useless yet cherished relic
from the time when he had been started in that profession
in an office at Budmouth by those who had hoped much
from him, and had been disappointed. The garden was at
the back, and behind this ran a still, deep stream, forming
the margin of the heath in this direction, meadow-land
appearing beyond the stream.
But the thick obscurity permitted only sky-lines to be
visible of any scene at present. The water at the back of
 THE THREE WOMEN 41

the house could be heard, idly spinning whirlpools in its

creep between the rows of dry feather-headed reeds which
formed a stockade along each bank. Their presence was
denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly, pro-
duced by their rubbing against each other in the slow wind.
The window, whence the candlelight had shone up the
vale to the eyes of the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but
the sill lay too high for a pedestrian on the outside to look
over it into the room. A vast shadow, in which could be
dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted half
the ceiling.
"He seems to be at home," said Mrs. Yeobright.
"Must I come in, too, aunt?" asked Thomasin faintly.
"I suppose not; it would be wrong."
—
"You must come, certainly to confront him, so that he
may make no false representations to me. We shall not be
five minutes in the house, and then we'll walk home."
Entering the open passage, she tapped at the door of the
private parlor, unfastened it, and looked in.
The back and shoulders of a man came between Mrs.
Yeobright' s eyes and the fire. Wilde ve, whose form it was,
immediately turned, arose, and advanced to meet his visitors.
He was quite a young man, and of the two properties,
form and motion, the latter first attracted the eye in him.
The grace of his movement was singular: it was the panto-
mimic expression of a lady-killing career. Next came into
notice the more material qualities, among which was a pro-
fuse crop of hair impending over the top of his face, lending
to his forehead the high-cornered outline of an early Gothic
shield; and a neck which was smooth and round as a cylinder.
The lower half of his figure was of light build. Altogether he
was one in whom no man would have seen anything to ad-
mire, and in whom no w6man would have seen anything to
dislike.
He discerned the young girl's form in the passage, and
said,"Thomasin, then, has reached home. How could you
leave me in that way, darling?" And turning to Mrs.
Yeobright: "It was useless to argue with her. She would
go, and go alone."
42 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"But what's the meaning of it all?" demanded Mrs. Yeo-
bright haughtily.
"Take a seat," said Wildeve, placing chairs for the two
women. "Well, it was a very stupid mistake, but such mis-
takes will happen. The license was useless at Anglebury.
It was made out for Budmouth, but as I didn't read it I
wasn't aware of that."
"But you had been staying at Anglebury?"
—
"No. I had been at Budmouth till two days ago and —
that was where I had intended to take her; but when I came
to fetch her we decided upon Anglebury, forgetting that a
new license would be necessary. There was not time to get
to Budmouth afterwards."
"I think you are very much to blame," said Mrs. Yeo-
bright.
"It was quice my fault we chose Anglebury," Thomasin
pleaded. "I proposed it because I was not known there."
"I know so well that I am to blame that you need not
remind me of it," replied Wilde ve shortly.
"Such things don't happen for nothing," said the aunt.
"It is a great slight to me and my family; and when it gets
known there will be a very unpleasant time for us. How
can she look her friends in the face to-morrow? It is a very
great injury, and one I cannot easily forgive. It may even
reflect on her character."
"Nonsense," said Wildeve.
Thomasin's large eyes had flown from the face of one to
the face of the other during this discussion, and she now
said anxiously, "Will you allow me, aunt, to talk it over
alone with Damon for five minutes? Will you, Damon?"
"Certainly, dear," said Wildeve, "if your aunt will excuse
us." He led her into an adjoining room, leaving Mrs. Yeo-
bright by the fire.
As soon as they were alone, and the door closed, Thomasin
said, turning up her pale, tearful face to him, "It is kill-
ing me, this, Damon ! I did not mean to part from you in
anger at Anglebury this morning; but I was frightened, and
hardly knew what I said. I've not let aunt know how much
I have suffered to-day; and it is so hard to command my
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 43

face and voice, and to smile as if it were a slight thing to me;

but I try to do so, that she may not be still more indignant
with you. I know you could not help it, dear, whatever
aunt may think."
"She is very unpleasant."
"Yes," Thomasin murmured, "and I suppose I seem so
now. . .Damon, what do you mean to do about me?"
.

"Do about you?"

"Yes. Those who don't like you whisper things which at
moments make me doubt you. We mean to marry, I sup-
pose, don'twe?"
"Of course we do. We have only to go to Budmouth on
Monday, and we may marry at once."
" Then do let us go !
—
Damon, what you make me say !

She hid her face in her handkerchief. "Here am I asking

you to marry me; when by rights you ought to be on your
knees imploring me, your cruel mistress, not to refuse you,
and saying it would break your heart if I did. I used to
think it would be pretty and sweet like that; but how dif-
ferent!"
"Yes, real life is never at all like that."
"But I don't care personally if it never takes place," she
added with a little dignity; "no, I can live without you. It
is aunt think of. She is so proud, and thinks so much of
I
her family respectability, that she will be cut down with
mortification if this story should get abroad before it is —
done. My
cousin Clym, too, will be much wounded."
"Then he will be very unreasonable. In fact, you are all
rather unreasonable."
Thomasin colored a little, and not with love. But what-
ever the momentary feeling which caused that flush in her,
it went as it came, and she humbly said, "I never mean to

be, if I can help it. I merely feel that you have my aunt to
some extent in your power at last."
"As a matter of justice it is almost due to me," said Wild-
eve. "Think what I have gone through to win her consent;
the insult that it is to any man to have the banns forbidden:
the double insult to a man unlucky enough to be cursed with
sensitiveness, and blue demons, and Heaven knows what, as
 —

44 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

I am. I can never forget those banns. A harsher man
would rejoice now in the power I have of turning upon your
aunt by going no further in the business."
She looked wistfully at him with her sorrowful eyes as he
said those words, and her aspect showed that more than one
person in the room could deplore the possession of sensitive-
ness. Seeing that she was really suffering he seemed dis-
turbed and added, "This is merely a reflection, you know.
I have-not the least intention to refuse to complete the mar-
riage, Tamsie mine —
I could not bear it."
"You could not, I know!" said the fair girl, brightening.
"You, who cannot bear the sight of pain in even an insect,
or any disagreeable sound, or unpleasant smell even, will not
long cause pain to me and mine."
"I will not, if I can help it."
"Your hand upon it, Damon."
He gave her his hand.
carelessly
"Ah, by my crown, what's that?" he said suddenly.
There fell upon their ears the sound of numerous voices
singing in front of the house. Among these, two made them-
selves prominent by their peculiarity: one was a very strong
bass, the other a wheezy thin piping. Thomasin recognized
them as belonging to Timothy Fairway and Grandfer Cantle
respectively.
"What —
does it mean it is not skimmity-riding, 1 I hope?"
she with a frightened gaze at Wilde ve.
said,
"Of course not; no, it is that the heathfolk have come to
sing to us a welcome. This is intolerable " He began pacing
!

about, the men outside singing cheerily

"He told her that she was the joy of his life,
And if she'd con-sent he would make her his wife;
She could not refuse him; to church so they went,
Young Will was forgot, and young Sue was con-tent;
And then was she kiss'd and set down on his knee,
No man in the world was so lov-ing as he !"
Mrs. Yeobright burst in from the outer room. "Thom-
!
asin, Thomasin " she said, looking indignantly at Wild*
1
CharivarL burlesque serenade for an unpopular marriage.
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 45

eve; "here's a pretty exposure! Let us escape at once.

Come!"
It was, however, too late to get away by the passage. A
mgged knocking had begun upon the door of the front room.
Wilde ve, who had gone to the window, came back.
"Stop!" he said imperiously, putting his hand upon Mrs.
Yeobright's arm. "We are regularly besieged. There are
fifty of them out there if there's one. You stay in this room
with Thomasin; I'll go out and face them. You must stay
now, for my sake, till they are gone, so that it may seem as
if all was right. Come, Tamsie dear, don't go making a
—
scene we must marry after this; that you can see as well
as I. —
Sit still, that's all and don't speak much. I'll man-
age them. Blundering fools!"
He pressed the agitated girl into a seat, returned to the
outer room and opened the door. Immediately outside, in
the passage, appeared Grandfer Cantle singing in concert
with those still standing in front of the house. He came
into the room and nodded abstractedly to Wilde ve, his lips
still parted, and his features excruciatingly strained in the

emission of the chorus. This being ended, he said heartily,

" Here's welcome to the new-made couple, and God bless 'em !

"Thank you," said Wildeve, with dry resentment, his

face as gloomy as a thunderstorm.
At the Grandfer's heels now came the rest of the group,
which included Fairway, Christian, Sam the turf-cutter,
Humphrey, and a dozen others. All smiled upon Wildeve,
and upon his tables and chairs likewise, from a general sense
of friendliness towards the articles as well as towards their
owner.
"We be not here afore Mrs. Yeobright after all," said
Fairway, recognizing the matron's bonnet through the glass
partition which divided the public apartment they had en-
tered from the room where the women sat. "We struck
down across, d'ye see, Mr. Wildeve, and she went round by
the path."
"And I see the young bride's little head!" said Grandfer,
peeping in the same direction, and discerning Thomasin,
who was waiting beside her aunt in a miserable and awk-
46 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
ward way. "Not quite settled yet — well, well, there's plenty
of time."
Wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the
sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he pro-
duced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters
at once.
"That's a drop of the right sort, I can see," said Grandfer
Cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show
any hurry to taste it.

"Yes," said Wildeve, "'tis some old mead. I hope you

will like it."
"Oh ay," replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural
when the words demanded by politeness coincide with those
of deepest feeling. "There isn't a prettier drink under the
sun."
"I'll take my oath there isn't," added Grandfer Cantle.
"All that can be said against mead is that 'tis rather heady,
and apt to lie about a man a good while. But to-morrow's
Sunday, thank God."
"I feel'd for all the world like some bold soldier after I
had had some once," said Christian.
"You shall feel so again," said Wildeve, with condescen-
sion. "Cups or glasses, gentlemen?"
"Well, if you don't mind, we'll have the
beaker, and pass
'en round; 'tis better than heling
out in dribbles."
it

"Jown the slippery glasses," said Grandfer Cantle.

" What's the good of a thing that you can't put down in the
ashes to warm, hey, neighbors; that's what I ask?"
"Right, Grandfer," said Sam; and the mead then circu-
lated.
"Well," said Timothy Fairway, feeling demands upon his
praise in some form or other, " 'tis a worthy thing to be mar-
ried, Mr. Wildeve; and the woman you've got is a dimaiit, so
says I. Yes," he continued, to Grandfer Cantle, raising his
voice so as to be heard through the partition; "her father (in-
clining his head towards the inner room) was as good a feller
as ever lived. He always had his great indignation ready
against anything underhand."
"Is that very dangerous?" said Christian.
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 47

" And there were few in these parts that were upsides with
him," said Sam. " Whenever a club walked he'd play the
clarinet in the band that marched before 'em as if he'd never
touched anything but a clarinet all his life. And then, when
they got to church-door he'd throw down the clarinet, mount
the gallery, snatch up the bass-viol, and rozum 1 away as if
hed never played anything but a bass-viol. Folk would say
— folk that knowed what a true stave was Surely, surely
— '

that's never the same man that I zid handling the clarinet so
masterly by now
! '

*I can mind it," said the furze-cutter.

l
"'Twas a wonder-
ful thing that one body could hold it all and never mix the
fingering."
" There was Kingsbere church likewise," Fairway recom-
menced, as one opening a new vein of the same mine of in-
terest.
Wilde ve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and
glanced through the partition at the prisoners.
"He used to walk over there of a Sunday afternoon to visit
his old acquaintance Andrew Brown, the first clarinet there;
a good man enough, but rather screechy in his music, if you
can mind?"
"'A was."
"And neighbor Yeobright would take An drey's place for
some part of the service, to let Andrey have a bit of a nap,
as an;y friend would naturally do."
"As any friend would," said Grandfer Cantle, the other
listeners expressing the same accord by the shorter way of
nodding their heads.
"No sooner was Andrey asleep and the first whiff of neigh-
bor Yeobright's wind had got inside Andrey 's clarinet than
every one in church feeled in a moment there was a great
soul among 'em. All heads would turn, and they'd say, 'Ah,
I thought 'twas he !' One Sunday I can well mind a bass- —
viol day that time, and Yeobright had brought his own.
'Twas the Hundred-and-thirty-third to 'Lydia'; and when
they'd come to, 'Ran down his beard and o'er his robes its
costly moisture shed/ neighbor Yeobright, who had just
1 Resin.
48 THE RETUEN OF THE NATIVE
warmed to his work, drove his bow into them strings that
glorious grand that he e'en a'most sawed the bass-viol into
two pieces. Every winder in church rattled as if 'twere a
thunderstorm. Old Pa'son Gibbons lifted his hands in his
great holy surplice as natural as if he'd been in common
clothes, and seemed to say to hisself, 'Oh for such a man in
our parish ? But not a soul in Kingsbere could hold a can-
'

dle to Yeobright."
"Was it quite safe when the winder shook?" Christian in-
quired.
He received no answer; all for the moment sitting rapt in
admiration of the performance described. As with Farinelli's
singing before the princesses, Sheridan's renowned Begum
Speech, and other such examples, the fortunate condition of
its being for ever lost to the world invested the deceased Mr.
Yeobright's tour de force on that memorable afternoon with a
cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been
possible, might considerably have shorn down.
"He was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the
prime of life," said Humphrey.
"Ah, well: he was looking for the earth some months afore
he went. At that time women used to run for smocks and
gown-pieces at Greenhill Fair, and my wife that is now,
being a long-legged slittering 1 maid, hardly husband-high,
went with the rest of the maidens, for 'a was a good runner
afore she got so heavy. When she came home I said we
— —
were then just beginning to walk together 'What have ye
got, my honey?' 'I've won —
well, I've won —
a gown-piece/
says she, her colors coming up in a moment. 'Tis a smock
for a crown, I thought; and so it turned out. Ay, when I
think what she'll say to me now without a mossel 2 of red in
her face, it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little
thing then. . However, then she went on, and that's
. .

what made me bring up the story, 'Well, whatever clothes

I've won, white or figured, for eyes to see or for eyes not to
see' ('a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in those days),
'I'd sooner have lost it than have seen what I have. Poor
Mr. Yeobright was took bad directly he reached the fair
* Skipping aimlessly about. 2 Morsel.
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 49

ground, and was forced to go home again/ That was the

last time he ever went out of the parish."
"'A faltered on from one day to another, and then we
heard he was gone."
"D'ye think he had great pain when 'a died?" said Chris-
tian.
"0 no: quite different. Nor any pain of mind. He was
lucky enough to be God A' mighty' s own man."
"And other folk — d'ye think 'twill be much pain to 'em,
Master Fairway?"
"That depends on whether they be afeard."
"I bain't afeard at all, I thank God !" said Christian stren-
uousty.
rt
Fm glad I bain't, for then 'twon't pain me. . . .

I don't think I be afeard —

or if I be I can't help it, and I
don't deserve to suffer. I wish I was not afeard at all
!

There was a solemn silence, and looking from the window,

which was unshuttered and unblinded, Timothy said, "Well,
what a fess 1 little bonfire that one is, out by Cap'n Vye's!
Tis burning just the same now as ever, upon my life."
?

All glances went through the window, and nobody noticed

that Wildeve disguised a brief, tell-tale look. Far away up
the somber valley of heath, and to the right of Rainbarrow,
could indeed be seen the light, small, but steady and per-
sistent as before.
"It was lighted before ours was," Fairway continued;
?
"and yet every one in the countrv round is out afore n."
"Perhaps there's meaning in it!" murmureu Christian.
"How meaning?" said Wildeve sharply.
Christian was too scattered to rep v. and Timothy helped
1

him.
"He means, that the lonesome dark-eyed creature up
sir,

there that some sayis a witch —

ever I should call a fine
—
young woman such a name is always up to some odd con-
ceit or other; and so perhaps 'tis she."
"I'd be very glad to ask her in wedlock, if she'd hae me,
and take the risk of her wild dark eyes ill- wishing me," said
Grandfer Cantle stanchly.
"Don't ye say it, father !" implored Christian.
1
Livelv.
 "

50 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Well, be dazed if he who do marry the maid won't hae
an uncommon picture for his best parlor/' said Fairway in
a liquid tone, placing down the cup of mead at the end of a
good pull.
"Anc' a partner as deep as the North Star/' said Sam,
taking up the cup and finishing the little that remained.
"Well, really, now I think we must be moving," said
Humphrey, observing the emptiness of the vessel.
"But we'll gie 'em another song?" said Grandfer Cantle.
" I'm as full of notes as a bird !

"Thank you, Grandfer," said Wildeve. "But we will not

trouble you now. Some other day must do for that when —
I have a party."
"Be jown'd if I don't learn ten new songs for't, or I won't
learn a line!" said Grandfer Cantle. "And you may be
sure I won't disappoint ye by biding away, Mr. Wildeve."
"I quite believe you," said that gentleman.
All then took their leave, wishing their entertainer long
life and happiness as a married man, with recapitulations

which occupied some time. Wildeve attended them to the

door, beyond which the deep-dyed upward stretch of heath
stood awaiting them, an amplitude of darkness reigning from
their feet almost to the zenith, where a definite form first
became visible in the lowering forehead of Rainbarrow.
Diving into the dense obscurity in a line headed by Sam the
turf-cutter, they pursued their trackless way home.
When the scratching of the furze against their leggings
had fainted upon the ear, Wildeve returned to the room
where he had left Thomasin and her aunt. The women were
gone.
They could only have left the house in one way, by the
back window; and this was open.
Wildeve laughed to himself, remained a moment chinking,
and idly returned to the front room. Here his glance fell
upon a bottle of wine which stood on the mantelpiece. "Ah
— old Dowden!" he murmured; and going to the kitchen
door shouted, "Is anybody here who can take something to
old Dowden?"
There was no reply. The room was empty, the lad who
 !

THE THREE WOMEN 51

acted as his factotum having gone to bed. Wildeve came

back, put on his hat, took the bottle, and left the house,
turning the key in the door, for there was no guest at the
inn to-night. As soon as he was on the road the little bon-
fire on Mistover Knap again met his eye.
" Still wr aiting, are you, my lady?" he murmured.
However, he did not proceed that way just then; but leav-
ing the hill to the left of him, he stumbled over a rutted
road that brought him to a cottage which, like all other
habitations on the heath at this hour, was only saved from
being invisible by a faint shine from its bedroom window.
This house was the home of Oily Dowden, the besom-maker,
and he entered.
The lower room was in darkness; but by feeling His way he
found a table, whereon he placed the bottle, and a minute
later emerged again upon the heath. He stood and looked
—
north-east at the undying little fire high up above him,
though not so high as Rainbarrow.
We have been told what happens when a woman deliber-
ates; and the epigram is not always terminable with woman,
provided that one be in the case, and that a fair one. Wild-
eve stood, and stood longer, and breathed perplexedly, and
—
then said to himself with resignation, "Yes by Heaven, I
must go to her, I suppose "
Instead of turning in the direction of home, he pressed on
rapidly by a path under Rainbarrow towards what was^
evidently a signal light.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIGURE AGAINST THE SKY

When the whole Egdon concourse had left the site of the
bonfire to its accustomed loneliness, a closely wrapped female
figure approached the barrow from that quarter of the heath
in which the little fire lay. Had the reddleman been watch-
ing he might have recognized her as the woman who had
first stood there so singularly, and vanished at the approach
52 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
of strangers. She ascended to her old position at the top,
where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living
eyes in the corpse of day. There she stood still, around her
stretching the vast night atmosphere, whose incomplete dark-
ness in comparison with the total darkness of the heath below
it might have represented a venial beside a mortal sin.

That she was tall and straight in build, that she was lady-
like in her movements, was all that could be learnt of her
just now, her form being wrapped in a shawl folded in the
old cornerwise fashion, and her head in a large kerchief, a
protection not superfluous at this hour and place. Her back
was towards the wind, which blew from the north-west; but
whether she had avoided that aspect because of the chilly
gusts which played about her exceptional position, or because
her interest lay in the south-east, did not at first appear.
Her reason for standing so dead still as the pivot of this
circle of heath-country was just as obscure. Her extraordi-
nary fixity, her conspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of
night, betokened among other things an absence of fear. A
tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which
made Caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms
\

before the, autumnal equinox! a kind of landscape and weather

which leads travelers from the South to describe our island
as Homer's Cimmerian land, was not, on the face of it,
friendly to women.
It might reasonably have been supposed that she was lis-
tening to the wind, which rose somewhat as the night ad-
vanced, and laid hold of the attention. The wind, indeed,
seemed made for the scene, as the scene seemed made for
the hour. Part of its tone was quite special; what was heard
there could be heard nowhere else. Gusts in innumerable
series followed each other from the north-west, and when
each one of them raced past the sound of its progress resolved
into three. Treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be found
therein. The general ricochet of the whole over pits and
prominences had the gravest pitch of the chime. Next there
could be heard the baritone buzz of a holly tree. Below these
in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voice strove hard
at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local sound alluded
 THE THREE WOMEN 53

to. Thinner and less immediately traceable than the other

two, it was far more impressive than either. In it lay what
may be called the linguistic peculiarity of the heath; and
being audible nowhere on earth off a heath, it afforded a
shadow of reason for the woman's tenseness, which continued
as unbroken as ever.
Throughout the blowing of these plaintive November winds
that note bore a great resemblance to the ruins of human
song which remain to the throat of fourscore and ten. It
was a worn whisper, dry and papery, and it brushed so dis-
tinctly across the ear that, by the accustomed, the material
minutiae in which it originated could be realized as by touch.
It was the united products of infinitesimal vegetable causes,
and these were neither stems, leaves, fruit, blades, prickles,
lichen, nor moss.
They were the mummied heath-bells of the past summer,
originally tender and purple, now washed colorless by
Michaelmas rains, and dried to dead skins by October suns.
So low was an individual sound from these that a combina-
tion of hundreds only just emerged from silence, and the
myriads of the whole declivity reached the woman's ear but
as a shriveled and intermittent recitative. Yet scarcely a
single accent among the many afloat to-night could have
such power to impress a listener with thoughts of its origin.
One inwardly saw the infinity of those combined multitudes;
and perceived that each of the tiny trumpets was seized on,
entered, scoured and emerged from by the wind as thor-
oughly as if it were as vast as a crater.
"The spirit moved them." A meaning of the phrase
forced itself upon the attention; and an emotional listener's
fetichistic mood might have ended in one of more advanced
quality. It was that the left-hand expanse of
not, after all,

old blooms spoke, or the right-hand, or those of the slope in

front; but it was the single person of something else speaking
through each in turn.
Suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild
rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally into
the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be dis-
tinguished. The bluffs, and the bushes, and the heather-
 as!&THE
54 V RETURN OF THE NATIVE
bells had broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her
articulation was but as another phrase of the same discourse
as theirs. Thrown out on the winds it became twined in
with them, and with them it flew away.
What she uttered was a lengthened sighing, apparently at
something in her mind which had led to her presence here.
There was a spasmodic abandonment about it as if, in allow-
ing herself to utter the sound, the woman's brain had author-
ized what it could not regulate. One point was evident in
this; that she had been existing in a §,upp£essed state, and
not in one of languor, or stagnation.
Far away down the valley the faint shine from the window
of the inn still lasted on; and a few additional moments

proved that the window, or what was within it, had more
to do with the woman's sigh than had either her own actions
or the scene immediately around. She lifted her left hand,
which held a closed telescope. This she rapidly extended,
as if she were well accustomed to the operation, and raising
it to her eye directed it towards the light beaming from the

inn.
The handkerchief which had hooded her head was now
a thrown back, her face being somewhat elevated. A
little
profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud
around her; and it was as though side shadows from the
features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had converged upwards
from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting
both. This, however, was mere superficiality. In respect of
character a face may make certain admissions by its outline;
but it fully confesses only in its changes. So much is this
the case that what is called the play of the features often helps
more in understanding a man or woman than the earnest
labors of all the other members together. Thus the night
revealed little of her whose form it was embracing, for the
mobile parts of her countenance could not be seen.
At last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the tele-
scope, and turned to the decaying embers. From these no
appreciable beams now radiated, except when a more than
usually smart gust brushed over their faces and raised a fitful
glow which came and went like the blush of a girl. She
 THE THREE WOMEN 55

stooped over the silent circle, and selecting from the brands
a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal at its end 7

brought it to where she had been standing before.

She held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal
with her mouth at the same time; till it faintly illuminated
the sod, and revealed a small object, which turned out to be
an hour-gl^ss, though she wore a watch. She blew long
enough k^show that the sand had all slipped through.
"Ah!" she said, as if surprised.
The light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a
momentary irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed
of her face. That consisted of two matchless lips and a
cheek only, her head being still enveloped. She threw away
the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under he*
arm, and moved on.
Along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady fol-
lowed. Those who knew it well called it a path; and, while
a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day,
the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at
midnight. The whole secret of following these incipient
paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to
show a turnpike road, lay in the development of the sense of
touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling
in little-trodden spots. To a walker practiced in such places
a difference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the
crippled stalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the
thickest boot or shoe.
The solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of
the windy tune still played on the dead heath-bells. She
did not turn her head to look at a group of dark creatures
further on, who fled from her presence as she skirted a ravine
where they fed. They were about a score of the smalloarild
^pom^s known as heath-croppers. They roamed at large on
the undulations of Egdon, out in numbers too few to detract
much from the solitude.
The pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to
her abstraction was afforded by a trivial incident. A bram-
ble caught hold of her skirt, and checked her progress. In-
stead of putting it off and hastening along, she yielded her-
56 THE RETUKN OF THE NATIVE
selfup to the pull, and stood passively still. When she be-
gan to extricate herself it was by turning round and round,
and so unwinding the prickly switch. She was in a despond-
ing reverie.
Her course was in the direction of the small undying fire
which had drawn the attention of the men on Hainbarrow
and of Wildeve in the valley below. A faint illumination
from its rays began to glow upon her face, and the fire soon
revealed itself to be lit, not on the level ground, but on a
salient corner or redan of earth, at the junction of two con-
verging bank fences. Outside was a ditch, dry except imme-
diately under the fire, where there was a large pool, bearded
all round by heather and rushes. In the smooth water of
the pool the fire appeared upside down.
The banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such
as was formed by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon
stems along the top, like impaled heads above a city wall.
A white mast, fitted up with spars and other nautical tackle,
could be seen rising against the dark clouds whenever the
flames played brightly enough to reach it. Altogether the
scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon which
had been kindled a beacon fire.
Nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something
moved above the bank from behind, and vanished again.
This was a small human hand, in the act of lifting pieces of
fuel into the fire; but for all that could be seen the hand,
like that which troubled Belshazzar, was there alone. Occa-
sionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped with a
hiss into the pool.
At one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled
any one who wished to do so to mount the bank; which the
woman did. Within was a paddock in an uncultivated state,
though bearing evidence of having once been tilled; but the
heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and were reasserting
their old supremacy. Further ahead were dimly visible an
irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings, backed by
a clump of firs.
—
The young lady for youth had revealed its presence in
—
her buoyant bound up the bank walked along the top in-
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 57

stead of descending inside, and came to the corner where the

fire was burning. One reason for the permanence of the
blaze was now manifest: the fuel consisted of hard pieces of
—
wood, cleft and sawn the knotty boles of old thorn trees
which grew in twos and threes about the hillsides. A
yet
unconsumed pile of these lay in the inner angle of the bank;
and from this corner the upturned face of a little boy greeted
her eyes. He was dilatorily throwing up a piece of wood
into the fire every now and then, a business which seemed
to have engaged him a considerable part of the evening, for
his face was somewhat weary.
"I am glad you have come, Miss Eustacia," he said, with
a sigh of relief. "I don't like biding by myself."
" Nonsense. I have only been a little way for a walk. I
7
have been gone only twenty minutes.'
"It seemed long," murmured the sad boy. "And you
have been so many times."
"Why, I thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire.
Are you not much obliged to me for making you one?"
"Yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me."
"I suppose nobody has come while I've been away?"
"Nobody except your grandfather: he looked out of doors
once for 'ee. I told him you were walking round upon the
hill to look at the other bonfires."
"A good boy."
"I think I hear him coming again, miss."
An old man came into the remoter light of the fire from
the direction of the homestead. He was the same who had
overtaken the reddleman on the road that afternoon. He
looked wistfully to the top of the bank at the woman who
stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired,
showed like parian from his parted lips.
"When are you coming indoors, Eustacia?" he asked.
"'Tis almost bedtime. I've been home these two hours,
and am tired out. Surely 'tis somewhat childish of you to
stay out playing at bonfires so long, and wasting such fuel.
My precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing, that I laid
—
by on purpose for Christmas you have burnt 'em nearly all !

"I promised Johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to

58 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
let it go out just yet," said Eustacia, in a way which told at
once that she was absolute queen here. " Grandfather, you
go in to bed. I shall follow you soon. You like the fire,
don't you, Johnny?"
The boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, "I
don't think I want it any longer."
Her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear
the boy's reply. As soon as the white-haired man had van-
ished she said in a tone of pique to the child, " Ungrateful
little boy, how can you contradict me ? Never shall you have
a bonfire again unless you keep it up now. Come, tell me
you like to do things for me, and don't deny it."
The repressed child said, "Yes, I do, miss," and continued
to stir the fire perfunctorily.
"Stay a longer and I will give you a crooked six-
little
pence," said Eustacia, more gently. "Put in one piece of
wood every two or three minutes, but not too much at once.
I am going to walk along the ridge a little longer, but I shall
keep on coming to you. And if you hear a frog jump into
the pond with a flounce, like a stone thrown in, be sure you
run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain."
"Yes, Eustacia."
"Miss Vye, sir."
"Miss Vy— stacia."
"That will do. Now put in one stick more."
The little slave went on feeding the fire as before. He
seemed a mere automaton, galvanized into moving and speak-
ing by the wayward Eustacia's will. He might have been
the brass statue which Albertus Magnus is said to have ani-
mated just so far as to make it chatter, and move, and be his
servant.
Before going on her walk again the young girl stood still
on the bank for a few instants and listened. It was to the
full as lonely a place as Rainbarrow, though at rather a
lower level; and it was more sheltered from wind and weather
on account of the few firs to the north. The bank which en-
closed the homestead, and protected it from the lawless state
of the world without, was formed of thick square clods, dug
from the ditch on the outside, and built ud with a slight bat-
 —

THE THREE WOMEN 59

which forms no slight defense where hedges will

ter or incline,
not grow because of the wind and the wilderness, and where
wall materials are unattainable. Otherwise the situation was
quite open, commanding the whole length of the valley
which reached to the river behind Wildeve's house. High
above this to the right, and much nearer thitherward than
the Quiet Woman Inn, the blurred contour of Rainbarrow
obstructed the sky.
After her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow
ravines a gesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She
vented petulant words every now and then; but there were
sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her
sighs. Descending from her perch she again sauntered off
towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did not go the
whole way.
Twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes, and
each time she said
"Not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?"
"No, Miss Eustacia," the child replied.
"Well," she said at last, "I shall soon be going in; and
then I will give you the crooked sixpence, and let you go
home."
"Thank'ee, Miss Eustacia," said the tired stoker, breath-
ing more easily. And Eustacia again strolled away "from the
fire, but this time not towards Rainbarrow. She skirted the
bank and went round to the wicket before the house, where
she stood motionless, looking at the scene.
Fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks,
with the fire upon it: within the bank, lifting up to the fire
one stick at a time, just as before, the figure of the little
child. She idly watched him as he occasionally climbed up
in the nook of the bank and stood beside the brands. The
wind blew the smoke, and the child's hair, and the corner
same direction: the breeze died,
of his pinafore, all in the
and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up
straight.
While Eustacia looked on from this distance the boy's
form visibly started: he slid down the bank and ran across
towards the white gate.
 "

60 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Well?"said Eustacia.
"A
hop-frog have jumped into the pond. Yes, I heard 'en
!

"Then it is going to rain, and you had better go home.

You will not be afraid ? " She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart
had leapt into her throat at the boy's words.
"No, because I shall hae the crooked sixpence."
—
"Yes, here it is. Now run as fast as you can not that
—
way through the garden here. No other boy in the heath
has had such a bonfire as yours."
The boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing,
marched away into the shadows with alacrity. When he was
gone Eustacia, leaving her telescope and hour-glass by the
gate, brushed forward from the wicket towards the angle of
the bank, under the fire.
Here, screened by the outwork, she waited. In a few
moments a splash was audible from the pond outside. Had
the child been there he would have said that a second frog
had jumped in; but by most people the sound would have
been likened to the fall of a stone into the water. Eustacia
stepped upon the bank.
"Yes?" she said, and held her breath.
Thereupon the contour of a man became dimly visible
against the low-reaching sky over the valley, beyond the
outer margin of the pool. He came round it and leapt upon
—
the bank beside her. A low laugh escaped her the third
utterance which the girl had indulged in to-night. The first,
when she stood upon Rainbarrow, had expressed anxiety; the
second, on the ridge, had expressed impatience; the present
was one of triumphant pleasure. She let her joyous eyes rest
upon him without speaking, as upon some wondrous thing
she had created out of chaos.
"I have come," said the man, who was Wildeve. "You
give me no peace. Why do you not leave me alone? I
have seen your bonfire all the evening.
7
The words were
'

not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a

careful equipoise between imminent extremes.
At this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl
seemed to repress herself also. "Of course you have seen
my fire," she answered with languid calmness, artificially
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 61

maintained. "Why shouldn't I have a bonfire on the Fifth-

of-November, like other denizens of the heath ?"
"I knew it was meant for me."
"How did you know it? I have had no word with you
since you —
you chose her, and walked about with her, and
deserted me entirely, as if I had never been yours body and
!
soul so irretrievably
"Eustacia! could autumn at this same
I forget that last
day of the month andsame place you lighted exactly
at this
such a fire as a signal for me to come and see you? Why
should there have been a bonfire again by Captain Vye's
house if not for the same purpose?"
—
"Yes, yes I own it," she cried under her breath, with a
drowsy fervor of manner and tone which was quite peculiar
to her. "Don't begin speaking to me as you did, Damon;
you will drive me to say words I would not wish to say to
you. I had given you up, and resolved not to think of you
any more; and then I heard the news, and I came out and
got the fire ready because I thought that you had been
faithful to me."
"What have you heard to make you think that?" said
Wildeve, astonished.
"That you did not marry her!" she murmured exultingly.
"And I knew it was because you loved me best, and couldn't
do it. . .Damon, you have been cruel to me to go away,
.

and I have said I would never forgive you. I do not think

I can forgive you entirely, even now —
it is too much for a

woman any spirit to quite overlook."

of
"If I had known you wished to call me up here only to
reproach me, I wouldn't have come."
"But I don't mind it, and I do forgive you now that you
have not married her, and have come back to me!"
"Who told you that I had not married her?"
"My grandfather. He took a long walk to-day, and as
he was coming home he overtook some person who told him
of a broken-off wedding: he thought it might be yours; and
I knew it was."
"Does anybody else know?"
"I suppose not. Now, Damon, do you see why I lit my
62 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
signal fire? You did not think I would have lit it if I had
imagined you to have become the husband of this woman.
It is insulting my pride to suppose that."
Wilde ve was silent: it was evident that he had supposed
as much.
"Did you indeed think I believed you were married?" she
again demanded earnestly. "Then you wronged me; and
upon my life and heart I can hardly bear to recognize that
you have such ill thoughts of me! Damon, you are not
worthy of me: I see it, and yet I love you. Never mind: let
it go —
I must bear your mean opinion as best I may. . . .

It is not," she added, with an ill-concealed anxiety,

true, is it

on his making no demonstration, "that you could not bring

yourself to give me up, and are still going to love me best of
all?"
why should I have come?" he said touchily.
"Yes; or
"Not that fidelity will be any great merit in me after your
kind speech about my unworthiness, which should have been
said by myself if by anybody, and comes with an ill grace
from you. However, the curse of inflammability is upon
me, and I must live under it, and take any snub from
a woman. It has brought me down from engineering
to innkeeping: what lower stage it has in store for me
I have yet to learn." He continued to look upon her
gloomily.
She seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so
that the firelight shone full upon her face and throat, said
with a smile, "Have you seen anything better than that in
your travels?"
Eustacia was not one to commit herself to such a position
without good ground. He said quietly, "No."
"Not even on the shoulders of Thomasin?"
"Thomasin is a pleasing and innocent woman."
"That's nothing to do with it," she cried with quick pas-
sionateness. "We will leave her out; there are only you and
me now to think of." After a long look at him she resumed
with the old quiescent warmth: "Must I go on weakly con-
fessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and own
that no words can express how gloomy I have been because
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 63

of that dreadful belief I held

77
till two hours ago —that you
had quite deserted me?
"I am sorry caused you that pain."
I
"But perhaps it is not wholly because of you that I get

gloomy/' she archly added. "It is in my nature to feel like

that. It was born in my blood, I suppose."
" Hypochondriasis."
"Or else it was coming into this wild heath. I was happy
anough at Budmouth. the times, the days at Bud*
mouth ! But Egdon will be brighter again now."
"I hope it will," said Wilde ve moodily. "Do you know
the consequence of this recall to me, my old darling? I shall
come to see you again as before, at Rainbarrow."
"Of course you will."
"And yet I declare that until I got here to-night I intended,
after this one good-bye, never to meet you again."
"I don't thank you for that," she said, turning away, while
indignation spread through her like subterranean heat. "You
may come again to Rainbarrow if you like, but you won't
see me; and you may call, but I shall not listen; and
you may tempt me, but I won't give myself to you any
more."
"You have said as much before, sweet; but such natures
as yours don't so easily adhere to their words. Neither, for
the matter of that, do such natures as mine."
"This is the pleasure I have won by my trouble," she whis-
pered bitterly. "Why did I try to recall you? Damon, a
strange warring takes place in my mind occasionally. I
think when I become calm after your woundings, 'Do I em-
brace a cloud of common fog after all?' You are a chame-
leon, and now you are at your worst color. Go home, or I
!
shall hate you
He looked absently towards Rainbarrow while one might
have counted twenty, and said, as if he did not much mind
all this, "Yes, I will go home. Do you mean to see me
again?"
"If you own to me that the wedding is broken off because
you love me best."
"I don't think it would be good policy," said Wildeve,
t)4 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
smiling. "You would get to know the extent of your power
v

too clearly."
"But tell me!"

"You know."
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know. I prefer not to speak of her to you. I
have not yet married her; I have come in obedience to your
call. That is enough."
"I merely lit that fire because I was dull, and thought I
would get a little excitement by calling you up and triumph-
ing over you as the Witch of Endor called up Samuel. I
determined you should come; and you have come! I have
shown my power. A mile and Jkalf hither, and a mile and
half back again to your home-l=three miles in the dark for
me. Have I not shown my power?"!
He shook his head at her. "L^khow you too well, my
Eustacia; I know you too well. There isn't a note in you
which I don't know; and that hot little bosom couldn't play
such a cold-blooded trick to save its life. I saw a woman
on Rainbarrow at dusk looking down towards my house. I
think I drew out you before you drew out me."
The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in
Wildeve now; and he leant forward as if about to put his
face towards her cheek.
"0 no," she said, intractably moving to the other side of
the decayed fire. "What did you mean by that?"
"Perhaps Imay kiss your hand?"
"No, you may not."
"Then I may shake your hand?"
"No."
"Then I wish you good-night without caring for either.
Good-bye, good-bye."
She returned no answer, and with the bow of a dancing-
master he vanished on the other side of the pool as he had
come.
Eustacia sighed: it was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh
which shook her like a shiver. Whenever a flash of reason
—
darted like an electric light upon her lover as it sometimes
would —and showed his imperfections, she shivered thus.
 THE THREE WOMEN 6&

But it was over in a second, and she loved on. She knevt
that he trifled with her; but she loved on. She scattered thg
half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and up to hei
bedroom without a light. Amid the rustles which denoted
her to be undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths fre-
quently came; and the same kind of shudder occasionally
moved through her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her
bed asleep.

^CHAPTER VII
\

,
"

QUEEN OF NIGHT
;

J
^
(Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a dignity. On
Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation.
She had the passions and instincts which make a model god-
dess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman.
Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely
in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the
spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world
would have noticed the change of government. There would
have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up
of favors here, of contumely there, the same generosity before
justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alter-
nation of caresses and blows that we endure now.)
She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; with-
out ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a
cloud. To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did
not contain darkness enough to form its shadow: it closed
over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western
glow.
Her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper
could always be softened by stroking them down. When her
hair was brushed she would instantly sink into stillness and
look like the Sphinx. If, in passing under one of the Egdon
banks, any of its thick skeins were caught, as they sometimes
—
were, by a prickly tuft of the large Ulex Europceus which
will act as a sort of hairbrush —
she would go back a few steps,
.and pass against it a second time.
 66 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
She had Pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries. Their
HghtJ as it came and wenL.,.and came again| was partially
hampered by their oppressive lids and lashes; and of these
the under lid was much fuller than it with English
usually is

women. This enabled her to indulge in reverie without seem-

ing to do so she might have been believed capable of sleeping
:

\ without closing them up. Assuming that the souls^ CiLiaeri F

|
-and women were visible essenc^s77T^cCT'3[ fancy the color
I
Ljpf Eiistacia's soul to be ftame-IIkeT The sparks from it that
*

!j ' rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.
* 3?he mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver,
less to quiver than to kiss. Some mignTEave added, less to
TasS^tfeaTrto"' curl. YiewecT sideways, the closing-line of her
lips formed, with almost geometric precision, the curve so
well known in the arts of design as the cima-recta, or ogee.
The sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim Egdon was
quite an apparition. It was felt at once that that mouth
did not come over from Sleswig with a band of Saxon pirates
whose lips met like the two halves of a muffin. One had
fancied that such lip-curves were mostly lurking underground
in the South as fragments of forgotten marbles. So fine were
the lines of her lips that, though full, each corner of her mouth
was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. This keenness of
corner was only blunted when she was given over to sudden
fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment

which she knew too well for her years.

Her presence brought memories of such things as Bour-
bon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled
lotus-eaters and the march in "Athalie"; her motions, the
ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. In a dim light,
and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure
might have stood for that of either of the higher female
deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon
it, a diadem of accidental dcwdrops round her brow, would

have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis,

Athena, or Hera respectively, with as close an approximation
to the antique as that which passes muster on many respected
canvases.
But celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervor had
 THE THREE WOMEN 67

proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon.

Her power was limited, and the consciousness of this limita-
tion had biased her development. Egdon was her Hades, and
since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark
in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled
thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering
rebelliousness, and the shady splendor of her beauty was the
real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her. A
true Tartarean dignity sat upon her brow, and not factitiously
or with marks of constraint, for it had grown in her with
years.
Across the upper part of her head she wore a thin fillet

of black velvet, restraining the luxuriance of her shady hair,

in a way which added much by irreg-
to this class of majesty
ularly clouding her forehead. "Nothing can embellish a
beautiful face more than a narrow band drawn over the
brow," says Richter. Some of the neighboring girls wore
colored ribbon for the same purpose, and sported metallic
ornaments elsewhere; but if any one suggested colored ribbon
and metallic ornaments to Eustacia Vye she laughed and
went on.
Why did a woman of this sort live on Egdon Heath ? Bud-
mouth was her native place, a fashionable seaside resort at
that date. She was the daughter of the bandmaster of a
regiment which had been quartered there a Corfiote by —
birth, and a fine musician —
who met his future wife during
her trip thither with her father the captain, a man of good
family. The marriage was scarcely in accord with the old
man's wishes, for the bandmaster's pockets were as light as
his occupation. But the musician did his best; adopted his
wife's name, made England permanently his home, took great
trouble with his child's education, the expenses of which
were defrayed by the grandfather, and throve as the chief
local musician till her mother's death, when he left off thriv-
ing, drank, and died also. The girl was left to the care of
her grandfather, who, since three of his ribs became broken
in a shipwreck, had lived in this airy perch on Egdon, a spot
which had taken his fancy because the house was to be had
for next to nothing, and because a remote blue tinge on the
 '

68 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

horizon between the hills, from the cottage aoor, was
visible

,
the change; she
Jorced to abide?"
——
traditionally believed to be the English Channel.
felt like
—
She hated
one banished; but here s he^gas

"Thus it happened that in Eustacia's brain were juxtaposed

the strangest assortment of ideas, from old time and from
new. There was no middle distance in her perspective: ro-
mantic recollections of sunny afternoons on an esplanade,
with military bands, officers, and gallants around, stood like
gilded letters upon the dark tablet of surrounding Egdon.
Every bizarre effect that could result from the random inter-
twining of watering-place glitter with the grand solemnity of
a heath, was to be found in her. Seeing nothing of human
life now, she imagined all the more of what she had seen.

/ Where did her dignity come from ? By a latent vein from

—
Alcinous' line, her father hailing from Phseacia's isle? -or
from Fitzalan and De Vere, her maternal grandfather having
had a cousin in the peerage? Perhaps it was the gift of
—
a happy convergence of natural laws. Among
Heaven
other things opportunity had of late years been denied her of
\\
v learning to be undignified, for she lived lonely. Isolation on
a heath renders vulgarity well-nigh impossible. It would
have been as easy for the heath-ponies, bats, and snakes to
be vulgar as for her. A narrow lifejii-£Tra!mouth might have
completely demeaned her.
r-—jrThe only way to look queenly without realms or hearts to
queen it over is to look as if you had lost them; and Eustacia
I

L^md that to a triumph. In the captain's cottage she could

suggest mansions she had never seen. Perhaps that was be-
cause she frequented a vaster mansion than any of them, the
open hills. Like the summer condition of the place around
her, she was an embodiment of the phrase "a populous soli-
—
tude" apparently so listless, void, and quiet, she was really
busy and full.
—
\£o b e loved to madness such was her great desire. Love
was to nerTEe one cordial which could 'drive* away the eat-
ing loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the
abstraction called passionate love more than for any par-
ticular lover.
 N
THE THREE WOMEN 69

She could show a most reproachful look au times, but it

was directed less against human beings than against certain
creatures of her mind, the chief of these being Destiny,
through whose interference she dimly fancied it arose that
—
love alighted only on gliding youth that any \o\ 3 she might
win would sink simultaneously with the sand in the glass.,
She thought of it with an ever-growing consciousness of
cruelty, which tended to breed actions of reckless unconven-
tionally, framed to snatch a year's, a week's 3ven an hour's
passion from anywhere while it could be won. Through
want of it she had sung without being merry, possessed with-
out enjoying, outshone without triumphing. Her loneliness
deepened her desire. On Egdon, coldest and meanest kisses
were at famine prices; and where was a mouth matching hers
to be found ?
Fidelity in love for fidelity's sake had less attraction for
her than for most women: because of love's grip had
fidelity
much. A blaze of love, and extinction, was better than a
lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.
On this head she knew by prevision what most women learn j

only by experience: she had mentally walked round love, told j

the towers thereof, considered its palaces; and concluded that

love was but a doleful joy. Yet she desired it, as one in a
desert would be thankful for brackish water.
She often repeated her prayers; not at particular times,
but, like the unaffectedly devout, when she desired to 3 pray. /
JSfit-prayer was always spontaneous, and often ran thus^ ;

( "0 deliver my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness: ')

y send me great love from somewhere, else I shall

\ die."
"Her high gods were William the Conqueror, Strafford and
~~

Napoleon Bonaparte, as they had appeared in the- Lady's

History used at the establishment in which she was educated.
Had she been a mother she would have christened her boys
such names as Saul or Sisera in preference to Jacob or David,
neither of whom she admired. At school she had used to
side with the Philistines in several battles, and had wondered
if Pontius Pilate were as handsome as he was frank and fair.

Thus she was a girl of some forwardness of mind, indeed,

weighed in relation to her situation among the very rearward
 V
'

'-:
:

,
?
l( Wv X. '

70 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

of thinkers, very original. Her instincts towards social non-
conformity were at the root of this. In the matter of holi-
days, her mood was that of horses who, when turned out
to grass, enjoy looking upon work on the high-
their kind at
way. She only valued rest to herself when it came in the
midst of other people's labor. Hence she hated Sundays
when all was and often said they would be the death
at rest,
of her. To heathmen in their Sunday condition,
see the
that is, with their hands in their pockets, their boots newly
oiled, and not laced up (a particularly Sunday sign), walking
leisurely among the turves and furze-faggots they had cut
during the week, and kicking them critically as if their use
were unknown was a fearful heaviness to her. To relieve the
7

tedium of this untimely day she would overhaul the cup-

boards containing her grandfather's old charts and other rub-
bish, humming Saturday-night ballads of the country people
the while. But on Saturday nights she would frequently sing
a psalm, and it was always on a week-day that she read the
Bible, that she might be unoppressed with a sense of doing
her duty.
Such views of life were to some extent the natural beget-
tings of her situation upon her nature. To dwell on a heath
without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner
without learning his tongue. ,The ^subtle beauties, of .the,
heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapors. |An
Environment which would have made a contented woman a
poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist,
even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman
saturnine.
{
|
Eustacia* had got beyond the vision of some marriage of
inexpressible glory; yet, though her emotions were in full
vigor, she cared for no meaner union. Thus we see her in
a strange state of isolation. To have lost the godlike con-
ceit that we may do what we will, and not to haveaxJqmred
iTnomely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of
temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it
denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears com-
promise. But, if congenial to philosophy, it is apt to be
dangerous to the commonwealth. In a worll where doing
 THE THREE WOMEN 71

means marrying, and the commonwealth is one of hearts and

hands, the same peril attends the condition.
—
And so we see our Eustacia for at times she was not
—
altogether unlovable arriving at that stage of enlighten- K
ment which feels that nothing is worth while, and filling up
the spare hours of her existence b y idealizing Wildaxe^W,,
j

want of a better object. This was xEe*sole reason of his

. (

a^cenolency: she knew it herself. At moments her pride re-

belled against her passion for him, and she even had longed
to be free. But there was only one circumstance which could
dislodge him, and that was the advent of a greater man.
For the rest, she suffered much from depression of spirits,
and took slow walks to recover them, in which she carried
her grandfather's telescope and her grandmother's hour-glass «

— the latter because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from

watching a material representation of time's gradual glide
away. She seldom schemed, but when she did scheme, her
plans showed rather the comprehensive strategy of a general
than the small arts called womanish, though she could utter
oracles of Delphian ambiguity when she did not choose to
be direct. In heaven she will probably sit between the
Heloises and the Cleopatras.

CHAPTER VIII

THOSE WHO ARE FOUND WHERE THERE IS SAID TO

BE NOBODY
As soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire
he clasped the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if
thereby to fortify his courage, and began to run. There
was really little danger in allowing a child to go home alone
on this part of Egdon Heath. The distance to the boy's
house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's
cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part
of the small hamlet of Mistover Knap: the third and only
remaining house was that of Captain Vye and Eustacia,
which stood quite av,ay from the small cottages, and was
72 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly populated
slopes.
He ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming
more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in an old
voice a little song about a sailor-boy and a fair one, and
bright gold in store. In the middle of this the child stopped:
from a under the hill ahead of him shone a light, whence
pit
proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise.
Only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy. The
shriveled voice of the heath did not alarm him, for that was
familiar. The thorn-bushes which arose in his path from
time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily,
and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of
jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples.
Lights were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of
all of them was different from this. Discretion rather than
terror prompted the boy to turn back instead of passing the
light, with a view of asking Miss Eustacia Vye to let her
servant accompany him home.
When the boy had reascended to the top of the valley he
found the fire to be still burning on the bank, though lower
than before. Beside it, instead of Eustacia's solitary form,
he saw two persons, the second being a man. The boy crept
along under the bank to ascertain from the nature of the
proceedings if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a
creature as Miss Eustacia on his poor trivial account.
After listening under the bank for some minutes to the
talk he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner and
began to withdraw as silently as he had come. That he did
not, upon the whole, think it advisable to interrupt her con-
versation with Wildeve, without being prepared to bear the
whole weight of her displeasure, was obvious.
Here was a Scyllseo-Charybdean position for a poor boy.
Pausing when again safe from discovery he finally decided
to face the pit phenomenon as the lesser evil. With a heavy
sigh he retraced the slope, and followed the path he had fol-
lowed before.
The light —
had gone, the rising dust had disappeared he
hoped for ever. He marched resolutely along, and found
 THE THREE WOMEN 73

nothing to alarm him till, coming within a few yards of the

sandpit, he heard a slight noise in front, which led him to
halt. The halt was but momentary, for the noise resolved
itself into the steady bites of two animals grazing.
"Two he'th-croppers down here," he said aloud. "I have
never known 'em come down so far afore."
The animals were in the direct line of his path, but that
the child thought little of; he had played round the fetlocks
of horses from his infancy. On coming nearer, however, the
boy was somewhat surprised to find that the little creatures
did not run off, and that each wore a clog, to prevent his
going astray; this signified that they had been broken in.
He could now see the interior of the pit, which, being in the
side of the had a level entrance. In the innermost cor-
hill,

ner the square outline of a van appeared, with its back

towards him. A light came from th^ interior, and threw a
moving shadow upon the vertical face of gravel at the further
side of the pit into which the vehicle faced.
The child assumed that this was the cart of a gypsy, and
his dread of those wanderers reached but to that mild pitch
which titillates rather than pains. Only a few inches of mud
wall kept him and his family from being gypsies themselves.
He skirted the gravel-pit at a respectful distance, ascending the
slope, and came forward upon the brow, in order to look into
the open door of the van and see the original of the shadow.
The picture alarmed the boy. By a little stove inside the
—
van sat a figure red from head to heels the man who had
been Thomasin's friend. He was darning a stocking, which
was red like the rest of him. Moreover, as he darned he
smoked a pipe, the stem and bowl of which were red also.
At this moment one of the heath-croppers feeding in the
outer shadows was audibly shaking off the clog attached to
its foot. Aroused by the sound, the reddleman laid down his
stocking, lit a lantern which hung beside him, and came out
from the van. In sticking up the candle he lifted the lantern
to his face, and the light shone into the whites of his eyes
and upon his ivory teeth, which, in contrast with the red
surrounding, lent him a startling aspect enough to the gaze
of a juvenile. The boy knew too well for his peace of mind
74 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
upon whose lair he had lighted. Uglier persons than gypsies
were known to cross Egdon at times, and a reddleman was
one of them.
"How I wish 'twas only a gypsy !" he murmured.
The man was by this time coming back from the horses.
In his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain
by nervous motion. The heather and peat stratum overhung
the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. The
boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now
gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of gray sand
to the very foot of the man.
The red man opened the lantern and turned it upon the
figure of the prostrate boy.
"Who be ye?" he said.
"Johnny Nunsuch, master!"
"What were you doing up there?"
"I don't know."
"Watching me, I suppose?"
"Yes, master."
"What did you watch me for?"
"Because I was coming home from Miss Vye's bonfire."
"Beesthurt?"
"No."
"Why, yes, you be: your hand is bleeding. Come ia<3er
my tilt and letme tie it up."
"Please let me look for my sixpence."
"How did you come by that?"
"Miss Vye gied it to me for keeping up her bonfire."
The sixpence was found, and the man went to tne van,
the boy behind, almost holding his breath.
The man took a piece of rag from a satchel containing sew-
ing materials, tore off a strip, which, like everything else,
was tinged red, and proceeded to bind up the wound.
—
"My eyes have got foggy-like please may 1 sit down,
master?" said the boy.
"To be sure, poor chap. 'Tis enough to make you feel
fainty. Sit on that bundle."
The man finished tying up the gash, a^4 the boy said, "I
think I'll go home now, master."
 THE THREE WOMEN 75

"You are rather afraid of me. Do you know what I

"
be? \

The child surveyed his vermilion figure up and down with

much misgiving, and finally said, "Yes."
"Well, what?"
"The reddleman!" he faltered.
"Yes, that's what I be. Though there's more than one.
You little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox,
one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of /

us all."
"Is there? You won't carry me off in your bags, will ye,
w J
master? 'Tis said that the reddleman will sometimes."
"Nonsense. All that reddlemen do is sell reddle. You
see all these bags at the back of my cart? They are not
full of little boys—only full of red stuff."
"Was you born a reddleman?" \
"No, I took to it. I should be as white as you if I were
>,

—
to give up the trade that is, I should be white in time per- —
haps six months: not at first, because 'tis grow'd into my skin
and won't wash out. Now, you'll never be afraid of a reddle-
man again, will ye?"
"No, never. Willy Orchard said he seed a red ghost here
—
t'other day perhaps that was you?"
"I was here t'other day."
"Were you making that dusty light I saw by now?"
"0 yes: I was beating out some bags. And have you had
a good bonfire up there? I saw the light. Why did Miss
Vye want a bonfire so bad that she should give you sixpence
to keep it up?"
"I don't know. I was tired, but she made me bide and
keep up the fire just the same, while she kept going up across
Rainbarrow way."
"And how long did that last?"
"Until a hop-frog jumped into the pond."
The reddleman suddenly ceased to talk idly. "A hop-
frog?" he inquired. "Hop-frogs don't jump into ponds this
time of year."
"They do, for I heard one."
"Certain-sure?"
 "

76 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Yes. She told me afore that I should hear'n;and so I
did. They say she's clever and deep, and perhaps she
charmed 'en to come."
"And what then?"
"Then I came down here, and I was afeard and
>
I went
back; but I didn't like to speak to her, because of the gentle-
man, and I came on here again."
—
"A gentleman ah What did she say to him, my man ?
!

"Told him she supposed he had not married the other

woman because he liked his old sweetheart best 5 and things
like that."
"What did the gentleman say to her, my sonny?"
"He only said he did like her best, and how he was coming
to see her again under Rainbarrow o' nights."
"Ha!" criod the reddleman, slapping his hand against the
side of his van so that the whole fabric shook under the blow.
"That's the secret o't!"
The boy jumped clean from the stool.
little
"Myman, don't you be afraid," said the dealer in red,
suddenly becoming gentle. " I forgot you were here. That's
only a curious way reddlemen have of going mad for a mo-
ment; but they don't hurt anybody. And what did the lady
say then?"
"I can't mind. Please, Master Reddleman, may I go
home-along now?"
"Ay, to be sure you may. I'll go a bit of ways with you."
He conducted the boy out of the gravel-pit and into the
path leading to his mother's cottage. When the little figure
had vanished in the darkness the reddleman returned, r^
sumed his seat by the fire, and proceeded to darn again.

CHAPTER IX
LOVE LEADS A SHREWD MAN INTO STRATEGY
Reddlemen of the old school are now but seldom seen.
Since the introduction of railways Wessex farmers have man-
aged to do without these Mephistophelian visitants, and the
bright pigment so largely used by shepherds in preparing
 THE THREE WOMEN 77

sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes. Even those

who yet survive are losing the poetry of existence which char-
acterized them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical
journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular
camping out from month to month, except in the depth of
winter, a peregrination among farms which could be counted
by the hundred, and in spite of this Arab existence the preser-
vation of that respectability which is insured by the never-
failing production of a well-lined purse.
Reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights
on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of Cain, any
person who has handled it half an hour.
#

A child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his

life. That blood-colored figure was a sublimation of all the
horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since
imagination began. "The reddleman is coming for you!"
had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers for many
generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at
the beginning of the present century, by Bonaparte; but as
process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffec-
tive the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And
now the reddleman has in his turn followed Bonaparte to the
land of worn-out bogies, and his place is filled by modern
inventions.
The reddleman lived like a gypsy; but gypsies he scorned.
He was about as thriving as traveling basket and mat makers;
but he had nothing to do with them. He was more decently
born and brought up than the cattle-drovers who passed and
repassed him in his wanderings; but they merely nodded to
him. His stock was more valuable than that of peddlers;
but they did not think so, and passed his cart with eyes
straight ahead. He was such an unnatural color to look at
that the men of round-abouts and wax-work shows seemed
gentlemen beside him; but he considered them low company,
and remained aloof. Among all these squatters and folks of
the road the reddleman continually found himself; yet he
was not o f them. His occupation tended to isolate him, and
isolated fie^raslhostly seen to be.
It was sometimes suggested that reddlemen were criminals
 —

78 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

for whose misdeeds other men had wrongfully suffered: that
in escaping the law they had not escaped their own con-
sciences, and had taken to the trade as a lifelong penance.
Else why should they have chosen it? In the present case
such a question would have been particularly apposite. The
reddleman who had entered Egdon that afternoon was an
instance of the pleasing being wasted to form th e ground-
work of t he sin gular when an ugly foundation would have
,

done^jusTas welTTbr that purpose. The one point that was

forbidding about this reddleman was his color. Freed from
that he would have been as agreeable a specimen of rustic
manhood as one would often see. A keen observer might
,

—
have been inclined to think which was, indeed, partly the
—
truth that he had relinquished his proper station in life for
want of interest in it. Moreover, after looking at him one
would have hazarded the guess that good-nature, and an
acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft,
formed the frame-work of his character.
While he darned the stocking his face became rigid with
thought. Softer expressions followed this, and then again
recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during
his drive along the highway that afternoon. Presently his
needle stopped. He laid down the stocking, arose from his
seat, and took a leathern pouch from a hook in the corner of
the van. This contained among other articles a brown-paper
packet, which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its
worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed
a good many times. He sat down on a three-legged milking-
stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his
packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and
spread it open. The writing had originally been traced on
white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge
from the accident of his situation; and the black strokes of
writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge
against a vermilion sunset. The letter bore a date some two
years previous to that time, and was signed "Thomasin
Yeobright." It ran as follows:

—
"Dear Diggory Venn, The question you put when you
overtookme coming home from Pond-close gave me such a
 THE THREE WOMEN 79

Surprise that I am afraid I did not make you exactly under-

stand what I meant. Of course, if my aunt had not met me
I could have explained all then at once, but as it was there
was no chance. I have been quite uneasy since, as you know
I do not wish to pain you, yet I fear I shall be doing so now
in contradicting what I seemed to say then. I cannot, Dig-
gory, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweet-
heart. I could not, indeed, Diggory. I hope you will not
much mind my saying this, and feel in a great pain. It makes
me very sad when I think it may, for I like you very much,
and I always put you next to my cousin Clym in my mind.
There are so many reasons why we cannot be married that
I can hardly name them all in a letter. I did not in the
least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing
when you followed me, because I had never thought of you
in the sense of a lover at all. You must not becall me for
laughing when you spoke; you mistook when you thought I
laughed at you as a foolish man. I laughed because the idea
was so odd, and not at you at all. The great reason with
my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that I
do not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents
to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife. It is
not as you think, that I have another in my mind, for I do
not encourage anybody, and never have in my life. Another
reason is my aunt. She would not, I know, agree to it, even
if I wished to have you. She likes you very well, but she
will want me to look a little higher than a small dairy-farmer,
and marry a professional man. I hope you will not set your
heart against me for writing plainly, but I felt you might
try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet.
I shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious
for your well-doing. I send this by Jane Orchard's little
—
maid, And remain, Diggory, your faithful friend,
"Thomasin Yeobright.
"To Mr. Venn, Dairy-farmer."

Since the arrival of that letter, on a certain autumn morn-

ing long ago, the reddleman and Thomasin had not met till
to-day. During the interval he had shifted his position even
further from hers than it had originally been, by adopting the
80 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
reddle trade; though he was really in very good circumstances
still. Indeed, seeing that his expenditure was only one-
fourth of his income, he might have been called a prosperous
man.
Rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived
bees; and the business to which he had cynically devoted him-
self was in many ways congenial to Venn. But his wander-
ings, by mere stress of old emotions, had frequently taken
an Egdon direction, though he never intruded upon her who
attracted him thither. To be in Thomasin's heath, and near
her, yet unseen, was the one ewe-lamb of pleasure left to him.
Then came the incident of that day, and the reddleman,
still loving her well, was excited by this accidental service

to her at a critical juncture to vow an active devotion to her

cause, instead of, as hitherto, sighing and holding aloof.
After what had happened it was impossible that he should
not doubt the honesty of Wildeve's intentions. But her hope
was apparently centered upon him; and dismissing his regrets
Venn determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen
way. That this way was, of all others, the most distressing
to himself, was awkward enough; but the reddleman's love
was generous.
His first active step in watching Thomasin's interests was
taken about seven o'clock the next evening, and was dictated
by the news which he had learnt from the sad boy. That
Eustacia was somehow the cause of Wildeve's carelessness in
relation to the marriage had at once been Venn's conclusion
on hearing of the secret meeting between them. It did not
occur to his mind that Eustacia's love-signal to Wildeve was
the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence
which her grandfather had brought home. His instinct was
to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an ante-
cedent obstacle to Thomasin's happiness.
During the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn
the condition of Thomasin but he did not venture to intrude
;

upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at

such an unpleasant moment as this. He had occupied his
time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the
heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected
 THE THREE WOMEN 81

a nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain r

which seemed to mean that his stay there was to be a com-
paratively extended one. After this he returned on foot
some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now
dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly-busb
on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from Rainbarrow.
He watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain.
Nobody except himself came near the spot that night.
But the loss of his labor produced little effect upon the
reddleman. He had stood in the shoes of Tantalus, and
seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the
natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they
would give cause for alarm.
The same hour the next evening found him again at the
same place; but Eustacia and Wilde ve, the expected trysters,
did not appear.
He pursued precisely the same course yet four nights
longer, and without success. But on the next, being the,
day- week of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape
floating along the ridge and the outline of a young man
ascending from the valley. They met in the little ditch encir-
cling the barrow — the original excavation from which it had
been thrown up by the ancient British people. j

The reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to Thom-

asin, was aroused to strategy in a moment. He instantly
left the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees.
When he had got as close as he might safely venture without,
discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conver-
sation of the try sting pair could not be overheard.
Near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas-
strewn with large turves, which lay edgeways and upside-
down awaiting removal by Timothy Fairway, previous to thea
winter weather. He took two of these as he lay, and dragged!
them over him till one covered his head and shoulders, the
other his back and legs. The reddleman would now have
been quite invisible, even by daylight; the turves, standing
upon him with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if
they were growing. He crept along again, and the turves
upon his back crept with him. Had he approached without
 —"

82 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

any covering the chances are that he would not have been
perceived in the dusk; approaching thus, it was as though he
burrowed underground. In this manner he came quite close
to where the two were standing.
"Wish to consult me on the matter?" reached his ears in
the rich, impetuous accents of Eustacia Vye. " Consult me?
It is an indignity to me to talk so I won't bear it any longer
!
:

She began weeping. "I have loved you, and have shown
you that I loved you, much to my regret; and yet you can
come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult
with me whether it would not be better to marry Thomasin.
—
Better of course it would be. Marry her: she is nearer to
your own position in life than lam!"
"Yes, yes; that's very well," said Wildeve peremptorily.
"But we must look at things as they are. Whatever blame
may attach to me for having brought it about, Thomasin's
position is at present much worse than yours. I simply tell
you that I am in a strait."
"But you shall not tell me You must see that it is only
!

harassing me. Damon, you have not acted well; you have
sunk in my opinion. You have not valued my courtesy
—
the courtesy of a lady in loving you who used to think of
far more ambitious things. But it was Thomasin's fault.
She won you away from me, and she deserves to suffer for it.
Where is she staying now?" NoOEat T care, nor where I
am myself. Ah, if I were dead and gone how glad she would
be Where is she, I ask?"
!

"Thomasin is now staying at her aunt's shut up in a bed-

room, and keeping out of everybody's sight," he said indiffer-
ently.
"I don't think you care much about her even now," said
Eustacia with sudden joyousness; "for if you did you wouldn't
talk so coolly about her. Do you talk so coolly to her aboutf
me ? Ah, I expect you do Why did you originally go away
!

from me? I don't think I can ever forgive you, except on

one condition, that whenever you desert me, you come back
again, sorry that you served me so."
"I never wish to desert you."
"I do not thank you for that. I should hate it to be all
smooth. Indeed, I think I like you to desert me a little once
 " " "
V
ityfi s
r^v*
THE THREE WOMEN 83

now and then. Love isthe dismalest thing where the lover
!"
is quite honest. O, it is a shame to say so; but it is true
She indulged in a little laugh. "My low spirits begin at the
very idea. Don't you offer me tame love, or away you go
!

"I wish Tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little

woman," said Wilde ve, "so that I could be faithful to you
without injuring a worthy person. It is I who am the sinner
after all; I am not worth the little ringer of either of you."
"But you must not sacrifice yourself to her from any sense
of justice," replied Eustacia quickly. "If you do not love
her it is the most merciful thing in the long run to leave her
as she is. That's always the best way. There, now I have
been unwomanly, I suppose. When you have left me, I am
always angry with myself for things that I have said to you."
Wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without-
replying. The pause was filled up by the intonation of a,
pollard thorn a little way to windward, the breezes filtering
through its unyielding twigs as through a strainer. It was
as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth.

She continued, half sorrowfully, "Since meeting you last,

it has occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not

for love of me you did not marry her. Tell me, Damon: I'll
try to bear it. Had I nothing whatever to do with the
matter?"
"Do you press me to tell?"
"Yes, I must know. I see I have been too ready to be-
lieve in my own power."
"Well, the immediate reason was that the license would
not do for the place, and before I could get another she ran
away. Up to that point you had nothing to do with it.
Since then her aunt has spoken to me in a tone which I don't
at all like."
—
"Yes, yes ! I am nothing in it I am nothing in it. You
only trifle with me. Heaven, what can I, Eustacia Vye, be
made of to think so much of you !

"Nonsense; do not be so passionate. Eustacia, how

. . .

we roved among these bushes last year, when the hot days
had got cool, and the shades of the hills kept us almost in-
!
visible in the hollows
She remained in moody silence till she said, "Yes; and how
 "

84 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

I used to laugh at you for daring to look up to me But you !

have well made me suffer for that since/

7

"Yes, you served me cruelly enough until I thought I had

found some one fairer than you. A blessed find for me,
Eustacia."
"Do you still think you found somebody fairer?"
"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. The scales are bal-
anced so nicely that a feather would turn them."
"But don't you really care whether I meet you or whether
I don't?" she said slowly.
"I care a but not enough to break my rest," replied
little,

the young man languidly.

" No, all that's past. I find there
are two flowers where I thought there was only one. Perhaps
there are three, or four, or any number as good as the first.
. . Mine is a curious fate. Who would have thought that
.

all thiscould happen to me?"

She interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love
or anger seemed an equally possible issue, "Do you love me
now?"
"Who can say?"
"Tell me; I will know it!"
"I do, and I do not," said he mischievously. "That is, I
have my times and my seasons. One moment you are too
tall, another moment you are too do-nothing, another too

melancholy, another too dark, another I don't know what,

—
except that you are not the whole world to me that you
used to be, my dear. But you are a pleasant lady to know,
and nice to meet, and I dare say as sweet as ever almost." —
Eustacia was silent, and she turned from him, till she said,
in a voice of suspended mightiness, "I am for a walk, and
this is my way."
"Well, I can do worse than follow you."
"You know you can't do otherwise, for all your moods
and changes !" she answered defiantly. "Say what you will;
try as you may; keep away from me all that you can you —
will never forget me. You will love me all your life long.
You would jump to marry me !

"So I would!" said Wilde ve. "Such strange thoughts as

I've had from time to time, Eustacia; and they come to me
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 85

this moment. You hate the heath as much as ever; that I

know."
"I do/' she murmured deeply. "'Tis my cross, my mis-
!"
ery, and will be my death
"I abhor it too," said he. "How mournfully the wind
blows round us now
!

She did not answer. Its tone was indeed solemn and per-
vasive. Compound utterances addressed themselves to their
senses, and was possible to view by ear the features of the
it

neighborhood. Acoustic pictures were returned from the

darkened scenery; they could hear where the tracts of heather
began and ended; where the furze was growing stalky and
tall; where it had been recently cut; in what direction the fir-
clump lay, and how near was the pit in which the hollies;
grew; for these differing features had their voices no less-,
than their shapes and colors.
"God, how lonely it is!" resumed Wildeve. "What are-
picturesque ravines and mists to us who see nothing else?
Why should we stay here ? Will you go with me to America ?'
I have kindred in Wisconsin."
"That wants consideration."
"It seems impossible to do well here, unless one were a
wild bird or a landscape-painter. Well?"
" Give me time," she softly said, taking his hand. "Amer-
ica is so far away. Are you going to walk with me a little
way?"
As Eustacia uttered the latter words she retired from the
base of the barrow, and Wildeve followed her, so that the
reddleman could hear no more.
He lifted the turves and arose. Their black figures sank
and disappeared from against the sky. They were as two
horns which the sluggish heath had put forth from its crown,
like a mollusc, and had now again drawn in.
The reddleman's walk across the vale, and over into the
next where his cart lay, was not sprightly for a slim young
fellow of twenty-four. His spirit was perturbed to aching.
The breezes that blew around his mouth in that walk carried
off in them the accents of a commination.
He entered the van, where there was a fire in a stove.
86 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Without lighting his candle he sat down at once on the three-
legged stool, and pondered on what he had seen and heard
touching that still loved-one of his. He uttered a sound
which was neither sigh nor sob, but was even more indicative
than either of a troubled mind.
"My Tamsie," he whispered heavily. "What can be
done? Yes, I will see that Eustacia Vye."

CHAPTER X
A DESPERATE ATTEMPT AT PERSUASION

The next morning, at the time when the height of the sun
appeared very insignificant from any part of the heath as
compared with the altitude of Rainbarrow, and when all the
little hills in the lower levels were like an archipelago in a
fog-formed iEgean, the reddleman came from the brambled
nook which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the
slopes of Mistover Knap.
Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary,
several keen round eyes were always ready on such a wintry
morning as this to converge upon a passer-by. Feathered
species sojourned here in hiding which would have created
wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard haunted the spot, and
not many years before this five and twenty might have been
seen in Egdon at one time. Marsh-harriers looked up from
the valley by Wildeve's. A cream-colored courser had used
to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen
have ever been seen in England; but a barbarian rested neither
night nor day till he had shot the African truant, and after
that event cream-colored coursers thought fit to enter Egdon
no more.
A traveler who should walk and observe any of these visi-
tants as Venn observed them now could feel himself to be in
direct communication with regions unknown to man. Here
in front of him was a wild mallard — just arrived from the
home of the north wind. The creature brought within him
 THE THREE WOMEN 87'

an amplitude of northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes,

snow-storm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the
zenith, Franklin underfoot, —the category of his common-
places was wonderful. But the bird, like many other phi-
losophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that
a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade
of memories.
Venn passed on through these towards the house of the
isolated beauty who lived up among them and despised them.
The day was Sunday; but as going to church, except to be
married or buried, was exceptional at Egdon, this made little
difference. He had determined upon the bold stroke of ask-
—
ing for an interview with Miss Vye to attack her position
as Thomasin's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein,
somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry character-
istic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings.
The great Frederick making war on the beautiful Archduch-
ess, Napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful Queen of Prus-
sia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the reddle-
man was, in his peculiar way, in planning the displacement
*of Eustacia.
To call at the captain's cottage was always more or less am
undertaking for the inferior inhabitants. Though occasion-
ally chatty, his moods were erratic, and nobody could be
certain how he would behave at any particular moment*
Eustacia was reserved, and lived very much to herself. Ex-
cept the daughter of one of the cotters, who was their ser-
vant, and a lad who worked in the garden and stable, scarcely
any one but themselves ever entered the house. They were
the only genteel people of the district except the Yeobrights,
and though far from rich, they did not feel that necessity for
preserving a friendly face towards every man, bird, and beast
which influenced their poorer neighbors.
When the reddleman entered the garden the old man was
looking through his glass at the stain of blue in the distant
landscape, the little anchors on his buttons twinkling in the
sun. He recognized Venn as his companion on the highway,
but made no remark on that circumstance, merely saying^
—
"Ah, reddleman you here? Have a glass of grog?"
SS THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Venn declined, on the plea of it being too early, and stated
that his business was with Miss Vye. The captain surveyed
him from cap to waistcoat and from waistcoat to leggings for
a few moments, and finally asked him to go indoors.
Miss Vye was not to be seen by anybody just then; and the
reddleman waited in the window-bench of the kitchen, his
hands hanging across his divergent knees, and his cap hang-
ing from his hands.
"I suppose the young lady is not up yet?" he presently
said to the servant.
"Not quite yet. Folks never call upon ladies at this time
of day."
"Then I'll step outside/' said Venn. "If she is willing to
see me, will she please send out word, and I'll come in."
The reddleman left the house and loitered on the hill ad-
joining. A considerable time elapsed, and no request for his
presence was brought. He was beginning to think that his
scheme had failed, when he beheld the form of Eustacia her-
self coming leisurely towards him. A sense of novelty in
giving audience to that singular figure had been sufficient to
draw her forth.
She seemed to feel, after a bare look at Diggory Venn, that
the man had come on a strange errand, and that he was not
so mean as she had thought him; for her close approach did
not cause him to writhe uneasily, or shift his feet, or show
any of those little signs which escape an ingenuous rustic at
the advent of the uncommon in womankind. On his inquir-
ing if he might have a conversation with her she replied,
"Yes, walk beside me"; and continued to move on.
Before they had gone far it occurred to the perspicacious
reddleman that he would have acted more wisely by appear-
ing less unimpressionable, and he resolved to correct the
error as soon as he could find opportunity.
"I have made so bold, miss, as to step across and tell you
some strange news which has come to my ears about that
man."
"Ah! whatman?"
He jerked his elbow to the south-east —the direction of the
Quiet Woman.
 THE THREE WOMEN 89

Eustacia turned quickly to him. "Do you mean Mr.

Wildeve?"
"Yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him,
and I have come to let you know of it, because I believe you
might have power to drive it away."
"I? What is the trouble?"
"It is quite a secret. It is that he may refuse to marry
Thomasin Yeobright after all."
Eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was
equal to her part in such a drama as this. She replied coldly,
"I do not wish to listen to this, and you must not expect me
to interfere."
"But, miss, you will hear one word?"
"I cannot. I am not interested in the marriage, and even
if I were I could not compel Mr. Wildeve to do my bidding."

"As the only lady on the heath I think you might," said
Venn with subtle indirectness. "This is how the case stands.
Mr. Wildeve would marry Thomasin at once, and make all
matters smooth, if so be there were not another woman in
the case. This other woman is some person he has picked
up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, I believe. He
will never marry her, and yet through her he may never
marry the woman who loves him dearly. Now, if you, miss,
who have so much sway over us men-folk, were to insist that
he should treat your young neighbor Tamsin with honorable
kindness and give up the other woman, he would perhaps do
it, and save her a good deal of misery."

"Ah, my life !" said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed

her lips, so that the sun shone into her mouth
as into a tulip,
and lent it a similar scarlet fire. "You
think too much of
my influence over men-folk indeed, reddleman. If I had
such a power as you imagine I would go straight and use it
for the good of anybody who has been kind to me which—
Thomasin Yeobright has not particularly, to my knowledge."
"Can it be that you really don't know of it how much—
she has always thought of you?"
"I have never heard a word of it. Although we live only
two miles apart I have never been inside her aunt's house
"
in my life
90 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Venn
that thus far he had utterly failed. He inwardly sighed and
felt itnecessary to unmask his second argument.
"Well, leaving that out of the question, 'tis in your power,
I assure you, Miss Vye, to do a great deal of good to another
woman."
. She shook her head.
"Your comeliness is law with Mr. Wildeve. It is law
with all men who see ye. They say, '
This well-favored lady
—
coming what's her name ? How handsome Handsomer !
'

than Thomasin Yeobright," the reddleman persisted, saying

to himself, "God forgive a rascal for^ljang!" And she was
handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so.
There was a certain obscurity in Eustacia's beauty, and
Venn's eye was not trained. In her winter dress, as now, she
was like the tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situa-
tions, seems to be of the quietest neutral color, but under a
full illumination blazes with dazzling splendor.
Eustacia could not help replying, though conscious that she
endangered her dignity thereby. "Many women are lovelier
than Thomasin," she said; "so not much attaches to that."
The reddleman suffered the wound and went on: "He is
a man who notices the looks of women, and you could twist
him to your will like withywind, 1 if you only had the mind."
"Surely what she cannot do who has been so much with
him I cannot do living up here away from him."
The reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. "Miss
Vye " he said.
!

—
"Why do you say that as if you doubted me?" She
spoke faintly, and her breathing was quick. "The idea of
your speaking in that tone to me!" she added, with a forced
smile of hauteur. "What could have been in your mind
to lead you to speak like that?"
"Miss Vye, why should you make-believe that you don't
—
know this man? I know why, certainly. He is beneath
you, and you are ashamed."
"You are mistaken. What do you mean?"
The reddleman had decided to play the card of truth. "I
1
Willow.
 "

THE THREE WOMEN 91

was at the meeting by Rainbarrow last night and heard

every word," he said. "The woman that stands between
Wilde ve and Thomasin is yourself."
It was a disconcerting lift of the curtain, and the morti-
fication of Candaules' wife glowed in her. The moment had
arrived when her lip would tremble in spite of herself, and
when the gasp could no longer be kept down.
"I am unwell," she said hurriedly. "No it is not that —
— I am not in a humor to hear you further. Leave me,
please."
"I must speak, Miss Vye, in spite of paining you. What
I would put before you is this. However it may come about
— —
whether she is to blame, or you her case is without doubt
worse than yours. Your giving up Mr. Wilde ve will be a
real advantage to you, for how could you marry him ? Now
—
she cannot get off so easily everybody will blame her if she
loses him. —
Then I ask you not because her right is best,
—
but because her situation is worst to give him up to her."
—
"No I won't, I won't!" she said impetuously, quite for-
getful of her previous manner towards the reddleman as an
underling. "Nobody has ever been served so It was going!

— —
on well I will not be beaten down by an inferior woman
like her. It is very well for you to come and plead for her,
but is she not herself the cause of all her own trouble ? Am
I not to show favor to any person I may choose without ask-
ing permission of a parcel of cottagers? She has come be-
tween me and my inclination, and now that she finds herself
!
rightly punished she gets you to plead for her
"Indeed," said Venn earnestly, "she knows nothing what-
ever about it. It is only I who ask you to give him up. It
will be better for her and you both. People will say bad
things if they find out that a lady secretly meets a man who
has ill-used another woman."
"I have not injured her: he was mine before he was hers!
— —
He came back because because he liked me best!" she
said wildly. "But I lose all self-respect in talking to you.
!"
What am I giving way to
"I can keep secrets," said Venn gently. "You need not
isar. I am the only man who knows of your meetings with
92 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
him. There but one thing more to speak of, and then I
is

will be gone. heard you say to him that you hated living
I
—
here that Egdon heath was a jail to you."
"I did say so. There is a sort of beauty in the scenery,
I know; but it is a jail for me. The man you mention does
not save me from that feeling, though he lives here. I should
have cared nothing for him had there been a better person
near."
The reddleman looked hopeful : after these words from her
his third attempt seemed promising. "As we have now
opened our minds a bit, miss/' he said, "I'll tell you what I
have got to propose. Since I have taken to the reddle trade
I travel a good deal, as you know."
She inclined her head, and swept round so that her eyes
rested in the misty vale beneath them.
"And in my travelsI go near Budmouth. Now Budmouth
is — —
a wonderful place wonderful a great salt sheening sea
—
bending into the land like a bow thousands of gentlepeople
—
walking up and down bands of music playing officers by —
—
sea and officers by land walking among the rest out of every
ten folk you meet nine of 'em in love."
"I know it," she said disdainfully. "I know Budmouth
better than you. I was born there. My
father came to be
a military musician there from abroad. Ah, my soul, Bud-
mouth I wish I was there now."
!

The reddleman was surprised to see how a slow fire could

blaze on occasion. "If you were, miss," he replied, "in a
week's time you would think no more of Wild eve than of
one of those he'th-croppers that we see yond. Now, I could
get you there."
"How?" said Eustacia, with intense curiosity in her heavy
eyes.
"My uncle has been for five and twenty years the trusty
man widow-lady who has a beautiful house facing
of a rich
the sea. This lady has become old and lame, and she wants
a young company-keeper to read and sing to her, but can't
get one to her mind to save her life, though she've adver-
tised in the papers, and tried half a dozen. She would jump
to get you, and uncle would make it all easy."
 THE THREE WOMEN 93

"I should have to work, perhaps?"

"No, not real work: you'd have a little to do, such as
reading and that. You would not be wanted till New Year's
Day.""
"I knew it meant work," she said, drooping to languor
again.
"I confess there would be a trifle to do in the way of
amusing her; but though idle people might call it work,
working people would call it play. Think of the company
and the life you'd lead, miss; the gaiety you'd see, and the
gentleman you'd marry. My uncle is to inquire for a trust-
worthy young lady from the country, as she don't like town
girls."
"It to wear myself out to please her! and I won't go.
is

O, if could live in a gay town as a lady should, and go my

I
own ways, and do my own doings, I'd give the wrinkled half
of my life Yes, reddleman, that would I."
!

"Help me to get Thomasin happy, miss, and the chance

shall be yours," urged her companion.
"Chance —
'tis no chance," she said proudly.
!
"What can
a poor man like you offer me, indeed? I am going indoors. —
T have nothing more to say. Don't your horses want feed-
ing, or your reddlebags want mending, or don't you want to
find buyers for your goods, that you stay idling here like
this?"
Venn spoke not another word. With his hands behind
him he turned away, that she might not see the hopeless
disappointment in his face. The mental clearness and power
he had found in this lonely girl had indeed filled his manner
with misgiving even from the first few minutes of close quar-
ters with her. Her youth and situation had led him to ex-
pect a simplicity quite at the beck of his method. But a
system of inducement which might have carried weaker
country lasses along with it had merely repelled Eustacia.
As a rule, the word Budmouth meant fascination on Egdon.
That rising port and watering-place, if truly mirrored in the
minds of the heath-folk, must have combined, in a charming
and indescribable manner, a Carthaginian bustle of building
with Tarentine luxuriousness and Baian health and beauty.
94 THE RETURN OP THE NATIVE
Eustacia felt little less extravagantly about the place; but
she would not sink her independence to get there.
When Diggory Venn had gone quite away, Eustacia walked
to the bank and looked down the wild and picturesque vale
towards the sun, which was also in the direction of Wildeve's.
The mist had now so far collapsed that the tips of the trees
and bushes around his house could just be discerned, as if
boring upwards through a vast white cobweb which cloaked
them from the day. There was no doubt that her mind was
inclined thitherward; indefinitely, fancifully—twining and un-
twining about him as the single object within her horizon on
which dreams might crystallize. The man who had begun
by being merely her amusement, and would never have been
more than her hobby but for his skill in deserting her at the
right moments, was now again her desire. Cessation in his
love-making had revivified her love. Such feeling as Eusta-
cia had idly given to Wildeve was dammed into a flood by
Thomasin. She had used to tease Wildeve, but that was
before another had favored him. Often a drop of irony into
an indifferent situation renders the whole piquant.
—
"I will never give him up never!" she said impetuously.
The reddleman's hint that rumor might show her to dis-
advantage had no permanent terror for Eustacia. She was
as unconcerned at that contingency as a goddess at a lack
of linen. This did not originate in inherent shamelessness,
but in her living too far from the world to feel the impact of
public opinion. Zenobia in the desert could hardly have
cared what was said about her at Rome. As far as social
ethics were concerned Eustacia approached the savage state,
though in emotion she was all the while an epicure. She had
advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, yet had
hardly crossed the threshold of conventionality.
 THE THREE WOMEN 95

CHAPTER XI
THE DISHONESTY OF AN HONEST WOMAN
The reddleman had left Eustacia's presence with despond-
ing views on Thomasin's future happiness; but he was awak-
ened to the fact that one other channel remained untried by
seeing, as he followed the way to his van, the form of Mrs.
Yeobright slowly walking towards the Quiet Woman. He
went across to her; and could almost perceive in her anxious
face that this journey of hers to Wilde ve was undertaken
with the same object as his own to Eustacia.
She did not conceal the fact. " Then," said the reddleman,
"you may as well leave it alone, Mrs. Yeobright."
"I half think so myself," she said. "But nothing else
remains to be done besides pressing the question upon
him."
"I should like to say a word first," said Venn, firmly.
"Mr. Wildeve is not the only man who has asked Thomasin
to marry him; and why should not another have a chance?
Mrs. Yeobright, I should be glad to marry your niece, and
would have done it any time these last two years. There,
now it is out, and I have never told anybody before but her-
self."
Mrs. Yeobright was not demonstrative, but her eyes in-
voluntarilyglanced towards his singular though shapely
figure.
"Looks are not everything," said the reddleman, noticing
the glance. "There's many a calling that don't bring in so
much as mine, if it comes to money; and perhaps I am not
so much worse off than Wildeve. There is nobody so poor
as these professional fellows who have failed; and if you
shouldn't like —
my redness well, I am not red by birth, you
know; I only took to this business for a freak; and I might
turn my hand to something else in good time."
"I am much obliged to you for your interest iD my niece;
but I fear there would be objections. More than that, she
is devoted to this man."
96 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"True; or I shouldn't have done what I have this morn-
7 '
ing.
" Otherwise there would be no pain in the case, and you
would not see me going to his house now. What was Thom-
asin's answer when you told her of your feelings?"
" She wrote that you would object to me; and other things."
"She was in a measure right. You must not take this
unkindly: I merely state it as a truth. You have been good
to her, and we do not forget it. But as she was unwilling on
her own account to be your wife, that settles the point with-
out my wishes being concerned."
"Yes. But there is a difference between then and now,
ma'am. She is distressed now, and I have thought that if
you were to talk to her about me, and think favorably of me
yourself, there might be a chance of winning her round, and
getting her quite independent of this Wildeve's backward
and forward play, and his not knowing whether he'll have
her or no."
Mrs. Yeobright shook her head. "Thomasin thinks, and
I think with her, that she ought to be Wildeve's wife, if she
means to appear before the world without a slur upon her
name. If they marry soon, everybody will believe that an
accident did really prevent the wedding. If not, it may cast
—
a shade upon her character at any rate make her ridiculous.
In short, if it is anyhow possible they must marry now."
"I thought that till half an hour ago. But, after all, why
should her going off with him to Anglebury for a few hours
do her any harm? Anybody who knows how pure she is
will feel any such thought to be quite unjust. I have been
trying this morning to help on this marriage with Wildeve
— yes, I, ma'am — in the belief that I ought to do it, because
she was so wrapped up in him. But I much question if I
was right, after all. However, nothing came of it. And
now I offer myself."
Mrs. Yeobright appeared disinclined to enter further into
the question. "I fear I must go on," she said. "I do not
see that anything else can be done."
And she went on. But though this conversation did not
divert Thomasin's aunt from her purposed interview with
 —

THE THREE WOMEN 97

Wildeve, it made a considerable difference in her mode of

conducting that interview. She thanked God for the weapon
which the reddleman had put into her hands.
Wildeve was at home when she reached the inn. He
showed her silently into the parlor, and closed the door.
Mrs. Yeobright began
"I have thought it my duty to call to-day. A new pro-
posal has been made to me, which has rather astonished me.
It will affect Thomasin greatly; and I have decided that it
should at least bo mentioned to you."
"Yes? What is it?" he said civilly.
"It is, of course, in reference to her future. You may not
be aware that another man has shown himself anxious to
marry Thomasin. Now, though I have not encouraged him
yet, I cannot conscientiously refuse him a chance any longer.
I don't wish to be short with you; but I must be fair to him
and to her."
"Who is the man?" said Wildeve with surprise.
"One who has been in love with her longer than she has
with you. He proposed to her two years ago. At that time
she refused him."
"Well?"
"He has seen her lately, and has asked me for permission
to pay his addresses to her. She may not refuse him twice."
"What is his name?"
Mrs. Yeobright declined to say. "He is a man Thomasin
likes," she added, "and one whose constancy she respects at
least. It seems to me that what she refused then she would
be glad to get now. She is much annoyed at her awkward
position."
"She never once told me of this old lover."
"The gentlest women are not such fools as to show every
card."
"Well, if she wants him I suppose she must have him."
"It is easy enough to say that; but you don't see the diffi-
culty. He wants her much more than she wants him; and
before I can encourage anything of the sort I must have a
clear understanding from you that you will not interfere to
injure an arrangement which I promote in the belief that it
98 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
isfor the best. Suppose, when they are engaged, and every-
thing is smoothly arranged for their marriage, that you
should step between them and renew your suit ? You might
not win her back, but you might cause much unhappi-
ness."
"Of course I should do no such thing," said Wildeve.
"But they are not engaged yet. How do you know that
Thomasin would accept him?"
"That's a question I have carefully put to myself; and
upon the whole the probabilities are in favor of her accepting
him in time. I flatter myself that I have some influence over
her. She is pliable, and I can be strong in my recommenda-
tions of him."
"And your disparagement of me at the same time."
in
"Well, you may depend upon my not praising you," she
said dryly. "And if this seems like maneuvering, you must
remember that her position is peculiar, and that she has been
hardly used. I shall also be helped in making the match by
her own desire to escape from the humiliation of her present
state; and a woman's pride in these cases will lead her a very
great way. A little managing may be required to bring her
round; but I am equal to that, provided that you agree to the
one thing indispensable; that is, to make a distinct declaration
that she is to think no more of you as a possible husband.
That will pique her into accepting him."
"I can hardly say that just now, Mrs. Yeobright. It is
so sudden."
"And so my whole plan is interfered with! It is very in-
convenient that you refuse to help my family even to the
small extent of saying distinctly you will have nothing to do
with us."
Wildeve reflected uncomfortably. "I confess I was not
prepared for this," he said. "Of course I'll give her up if
you wish, if it is necessary. But I thought I might be her
husband."
"We have heard that before."
"Now, Mrs. Yeobright, don't let us disagree. Give me a
fair time. I don't want to stand in the way of any better
chance she may have; only I wish you had let me know
 '

THE THREE WOMEN 99

earlier. I will write to you or call in a day or two. Will

that suffice ?"
"Yes," she replied, "provided you promise not to com-
municate with Thomasin without my knowledge.'
"I promise that," he said. And the interview then ter-
minated, Mrs. Yeobright returning homeward as she had
come.
By far the greatest effect of her simple strategy on that
day was, as often happens, in a quarter quite outside her
view when arranging it. In the first place, her visit sent
Wildeve the same evening after dark to Eustacia's house at
Mistover.
At this hour the lonely dwelling was closely blinded and
shuttered from the chill and darkness without. Wildeve's
clandestine plan with her was to take a little gravel in his
hand and hold it to the crevice at the top of the window-
shutter, which was on the outside, so that it should fall with
a gentle rustle, resembling that of a mouse, between shutter
and glass. This precaution in attracting her attention was
to avoid arousing the suspicions of her grandfather.
The soft words, "I hear; wait for me," in Eustacia's voice
from within told him that she was alone.
He waited in his customary manner by walking round the
enclosure and idling by the pool, for Wildeve was never
asked into the house by his proud though condescending
mistress. She showed no sign of coming out in a hurry.
The time wore on, and he began to grow impatient. In the
course of twenty minutes she appeared from round the cor-
ner, and advanced as if merely taking an airing.
"You would not have kept me so long had you known
what I come about," he said with bitterness. "Still, you
are worth waiting for."
"What has happened?" said Eustacia. "I did not know
you were in trouble.I too am gloomy enough."
"I am not in trouble," said he. "It is merely that affairs
have come to a head, and I must take a clear course."
"What course is that?" she asked with attentive inter-
est. :

"And can you forget so soon what I proposed to you the •

 100 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
other night ? Why, take you from this place, and carry you
away with me abroad."
"I have not forgotten. But why have you come so unex-
pectedly to repeat the question, when you only promised to
come next Saturday? I thought I was to have plenty of
time to consider."
"Yes, but the situation is different now."
"Explain to me."
"I don't want to explain, for I may pain you."
"But I must know the reason of this hurry."
"It is simply my ardor, dear Eustacia. Everything is
smooth now."
"Then why are you so ruffled?"
"I am not aware of it. All is as it should be. Mrs. Yeo-
—
bright but she is nothing to us."
"Ah, I knew she had something to do with it! Come, I
don't like reserve."
—
"No she has nothing. She only says she wishes me to
give up Thomasin because another man is anxious to marry
her. The woman, now she no longer needs me, actually
shows off!" Wildeve's vexation had escaped him in spite
of himself.
Eustacia was silent a long while. "You are in the awk-
ward position of an official who is no longer wanted," she
said in a changed tone.
"It seems so. But I have not yet seen Thomasin."
"And that irritates you. Don't deny it, Damon. You
are actually nettled by this slight from an unexpected
quarter."
"Well?"
"And you come to get me because you cannot get her.
This is certainly a new position altogether. I am to be a
stop-gap."
"Please remember that I proposed the same thing the
other day."
Eustacia again remained in a sort of stupefied silence.
What curious feeling was this coming over her? Was it
J really possible that her interest in Wildeye had been so en-
; tirely the result of antagonism that the glory and the dream
 . —

THE THREE WOMEN 5bi

departed from the man with the first sound that he was no
longer coveted by her rival? She was, then, secure of him
at last. Thomasin no longer required him. What a humili-
ating victory! He loved her best, she thought; and yet
dared she to murmur such treacherous criticism ever so
softly? — what was the man worth whom a woman inferior
to herself did not value? The sentiment which lurks more
—
or less in all animate nature that of not desiring the unde-
sired of others — was lively as a passion in the supersubtle,
epicurean heart of Eustacia. Her social superiority over him,
which hitherto had scarcely ever impressed her, became un-
pleasantly insistent, and for the first time she felt that she
had stooped in loving him.
"Well, darling, you agree?" said Wildeve.
"If it could be London, or even Budmouth, instead of
America," she murmured languidly. "Well, I will think.
It is too great a thing for me to decide off-hand. I wish I
—
hated the heath less or loved you more."
"You can be painfully frank. You loved me a month ago
warmly enough to go anywhere with me."
"And you loved Thomasin."
"Yes, perhaps that was where the reason lay," he returned,
with almost a sneer. "I don't hate her now."
"Exactly. The only thing is that you can no longer get
her."
—
"Come no taunts, Eustacia, or we shall quarrel. If you
don't agree to go with me, and agree shortly, I shall go by
myself."
"Or try Thomasin again. Damon, how strange it seems
that you could have married her or me indifferently, and only
—
have come to me because I am cheapest ! —
Yes, yes it is
true. There was a time when I should have exclaimed against
a man of that sort, and been quite wild; but it is all past now."
"Will you go, dearest? Come secretly with me to Bristol,
marry me, and turn our backs upon this dog-hole of England
' '
f ob ever ? Say Yes
X l want t o get away Jrpjn Jxere at almost any cost," she
rT
said with weannels7" but I don't like to go with you. Give
me more time to decide."
 102 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"I have already/ said Wilde ve.
' "Well, I give you one
more week."
"A little longer, so that I maytell you decisively. I have
to consider so many things. Fancy Thomasin being anxious
you
to get rid of ! I cannot forget it."
"Never mind tjiat. Say Monday week. I will be here
precisely at this time."
"Let it be at Rainbarrow," said she. "This is too near
home; my grandfather may be walking out."
"Thank you, dear. On Monday week at this time I will
be at the Barrow. Till then good-bye."
"Good-bye. No, no, you must not touch me now. Shak-
ing hands is enough till I have made up my mind."
Eustacia watched his shadowy form till it had disappeared.
She placed her hand to her forehead and breathed heavily;
and then her rich, romantic lips parted under that homely
><*
—
impulse a yawn. She was immediately angry at having
betrayed even to herself the possible evanescence of her pas-
sion for him. She could not admit at once that she might
have over-estimated Wildeve, for to perceive his mediocrity
now was to admit her own great folly heretofore. And the
discovery that she was the owner of a disposition so purely
that of the dog in the manger, had something in it which at
first made her ashamed.
The fruit of Mrs. Yeobright's diplomacy was indeed re-
markable, though not as yet of the kind she had anticipated.
It had appreciably influenced Wildeve, but it was influencing
Eustacia far more. Her lover was no longer to her an excit-
ing man whom many women strove for, and herself could
only retain by striving with them. He was a superfluity.
She went indoors in that peculiar state of misery which
is not exactly grief, and which especially attends the dawn-

ings of reason in the latter days of an ill-judged, transient

love. To be conscious that the end of the dream is approach-
ing, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most
wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course
between the beginning of a passion and its end.
Her grandfather had returned, and was busily engaged in
Douring some gallons of newly arrived rum into the square
 THE THREE WOMEN 103

bottles of his square cellaret. Whenever these home sup-

plies were exhausted he would go to the Quiet Woman, and,
standing with his back to the fire, grog in hand, tell remark-
able stories of how he had lived seven years under the water-
line of his ship, and other naval wonders, to the natives, who
hoped too earnestly for a treat of ale from the teller to exhibit
any doubts of his truth.
He had been there this evening. "I suppose you have
heard the Egdon news, Eustaeia?" he said, without looking
up from the bottles. "The men have been talking about it
at the Woman as if it were of national importance."
"I have heard none," she said.
" Young Clym Yeobright, as they call him, is coming home
next week to spend Christmas with his mother. He is a fine
fellow by this time, it seems. I suppose you remember him ?
"
"I never saw him in my life."
"Ah, true; he left before you came here. I well remem-
ber him as a promising boy."
"Where has he been living all these years?"
" In that rookery of pomp and vanity, Paris, I believe,"

<0 N/f
BOOK SECOND
THE ARRIVAL
 CHAPTER I

TIDINGS OF THE COMER

On fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certain

ephemeral operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling
way, the majestic calm of Egdon Heath. They were activi-
ties which, beside those of a town, a village, or even a farm,
would have appeared as the ferment of stagnation merely, a
creeping of the flesh of somnolence. But here, away from
comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which mere
walking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man
could imagine himself to be Adam without the least difficulty,
they attracted the attention of every bird within eyeshot,
every reptile not yet asleep, and set the surrounding rabbits
curiously watching from hillocks at a safe distance.
The performance was that of bringing together and build-
ing into a stack the furze-faggots which Humphrey had been
cutting for the captain's use during the foregoing fine days.
The stack was at the end of the dwelling, and the men en-
gaged in building it were Humphrey and Sam, the old man

looking on.
It was a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but
the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of
the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was,
there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must
unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. In the
course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its
,

quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset had receded

from north-west to south-west; but Edgon had hardly heeded
the change.
Eustacia was indoors in the dining-room, which was really
more like a kitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chim-
ney-corner. The air was still, and while she lingered a
moment here alone sounds of voices in conversation came to
107
108 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
her ears directly down the chimney. She entered the re-
cess, and, listening, looked up the old irregular shaft, with
its cavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on
its way to the square bit of sky at the top, from which the
daylight struck down with a pallid glare upon the tatters of
soot draping the flue as sea-weed drapes a rocky fissure.
She remembered: the furze-stack was not far from the
chimney, and the voices were those of the workers.
Her grandfather joined in the conversation. "That lad
ought never to have left home. His father's occupation
would have suited him best, and the boy should have fol-
lowed on. I don't believe in these new moves in families.
My father was a sailor, so was I, and so should my son have
been if I had had one."
"The place he's been living at is Paris," said Humphrey,
"and they tell me 'tis where the king's head was cut off years

ago. My poor mother used to tell me about that business.

1
Hummy,' she used to say, I was a young maid then, and as
'

I was at home ironing mother's caps one afternoon the par-

son came in and said, "They've cut the king's head off, Jane;
and what 'twill be next God knows."'"
"A good many of us knew as well as He before long," said
the captain, chuckling. "I lived seven years under water on
—
account of it in my boyhood in that damned surgery of the
Triumph, seeing men brought down to the cockpit with their
legs and arms blown to Jericho. .And so the young man
. .

has settled in Paris. Manager to a diamond merchant, or

some such thing, is he not?"
"Yes, sir, that's it. 'Tis a blazing great business that he
—
belongs to, so I've heard his mother say like a king's palace,
as far as diments go."
"I can well mind when he left home," said Sam.
"'Tis a good thing for the feller," said Humphrey. "A
sight of times better to be selling diments than nobbling
about here."
"It must cost a good few shillings to deal at such a place."
"A good few indeed, my man," replied the captain. "Yes,
you may make away with a deal of money and be neither
drunkard nor glutton."
 THE ARRIVAL 109

"They say, too, that Clym Yeobright is become a real

perusing man, with the strangest notions about things.
There, that's because he went to school early, such as the
school was."
Strange notions, has he ? " said the old man. "Ah, there's
1
'

too much of that sending to school in these days ! It only does

harm. Every gatepost and barn's door you come to is sure to
have some bad word or other chalked upon it by the young
rascals: a woman can hardly pass for shame sometimes. If
they'd never been taught how to write they wouldn't have
been able to scribble such villainy. Their fathers couldn't
do it, and the country was all the better for it."
"Now, I should think, cap'n, that Miss Eustacia had about
as much in her head that comes from books as anybody about
here?"
"Perhaps if Miss Eustacia, too, had less romantic non-
sense in her head it would be better for her," said the cap-

tain shortly; after which he walked away.

"I say, Sam," observed Humphrey when the old man was
gone, "she and Clym Yeobright would make a very pretty
—
pigeon pair hey? If they wouldn't I'll be dazed ! Both of
one mind about niceties for certain, and learned in print, and
—
always thinking about high doctrine there couldn't be a
better couple if they were made o' purpose. Clym's family
is as good as hers. His father was a farmer, that's true; but
his mother was a sort of lady, as we know. Nothing would
please me better than to see them two man and wife."
"They'd look very natty, arm-in-crook together, and their
best clothes on, whether or no, if he's at all the well-favored
fellow he used to be."
"They would, Humphrey. Well, I should like to see the
chap terrible much after so many years. If I knew for cer-
tain when he was coming I'd stroll out three or four miles to
meet him and help carry anything for'n; though I suppose
he's altered from the boy he was. They say he can talk
French as fast as a maid can eat blackberries; and if so, de-
pend upon it we who have stayed at home shall seem no
more than scroff x in his eyes." •

•
1
Kubbish.
 110 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Coming across the water to Budmouth by steamer, isn't
he?"
" Yes; but how he's coming from Budmouth I don't know."
" That's a bad trouble about his cousin Thomasin. I won-
der such a nice-notioned fellow as Clym likes to come home
into it. What a nunnywatch we were in, to be sure, when
we heard they weren't married at all, after singing to 'em
as man and wife that night! Be dazed if I should like a
relation of mine to have been made such a fool of by a man.
It makes the family look small."
"Yes. Poor maid, her heart has ached enough about it.
Her health is suffering from it, I hear, for she will bide en-
tirely indoors. We never see her out now, scampering over
the! furze with a face as red as a rose, as she used to do."
"I've heard she wouldn't have Wildeve now if he asked
her."
"You have? 'Tis news to me."
While the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus
Eustacia's face gradually bent to the hearth in a profound
reverie, her toe unconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay
burning at her feet.
The subject of their discourse had been keenly interesting
to her. A young and clever man was coming into that lonely
heath from, of all contrasting places in the world, Paris. It
was like a man coming from heaven. More singular still,
the heathmen had instinctively coupled her and this man
together in their minds as a pair born for each other.
That five minutes of overhearing furnished Eustacia with
visions enough to fill the whole blank afternoon. Such sud-
den alternations from mental vacuity do sometimes occur
thus quietly. She could never have believed in the morning
that her colorless inner world would before night become as
animated as water under a microscope, and that without the
arrival of a single visitor. The words of Sam and Humphrey
on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her
mind the effect of the invading Bard's prelude in the "Castle
,of Indolence," atwhich myriads of imprisoned shapes arose
,where had previously appeared the stillness of a void.
*
Involved in these imaginings she knew nothing of time.
 THE ARRIVAL 111

When she became conscious of externals it was dusk. The

furze-rick was finished; the men had gone home. Eustacia
went upstairs, thinking that she would take a walk at this
her usual time; and she determined that her walk should be
in the direction of Blooms-End, the birthplace of young Yeo-
bright and the present home of his mother. She had no
reason for walking elsewhere, and why should she not go
that way? The scene of a day-dream is sufficient for a pil-
grimage at nineteen. To look at the palings before the Yeo-
brights' house had the dignity of a necessary performance.
Strange that such a piece of idling should have seemed an
important errand.
She put on her bonnet, and, leaving the house, descended
the hill on the side towards Blooms-End, where she walked
slowly along the valley for a distance of a mile and a half.
This brought her to a spot in which the green bottom of the
dale began to widen, the furze bushes to recede yet further
from the path on each side, till they were diminished to an
isolated one here and there by the increasing fertility of the
soil. Beyond the irregular carpet of grass was a row of white
palings, which marked the verge of the heath in this latitude.
They showed upon the dusky scene that they bordered as
distinctly as white lace on velvet. Behind the white palings
was a little garden; behind the garden an old, irregular,
thatched house, facing the heath, and commanding a full
view of the valley. This was the obscure, removed spot to
which was about to return a man whose latter life had been
—
passed in the French capital the center and vortex of the
fashionable world.

CHAPTER II

THE PEOPLE AT BLOOMS-END MAKE READY

All that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of
7
Eustacia s ruminations created a bustle of preparation at
Blooms-End. Thomasin had been persuaded by her aunt,
and by an instinctive impulse of loyalty towards her cousin
112 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Clym, to bestir herself on his account with an alacrity un-
usual in her during these most sorrowful days of her life.
At the time that Eustacia was listening to the rick-makers'
conversation on Clym's return, Thomasin was climbing into
a loft over her aunt's fuel-house, where the store-apples were
kept, to search out the best and largest of them for the com-
ing holiday-time.
The loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which
the pigeons crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters
of the premises; and from this hole the sun shone in a bright
yellow patch upon the figure of the maiden as she knelt and
plunged her naked arms into the soft brown fern, which,
from its abundance, was used on Egdon in packing away
stores of all kinds. The pigeons were flying about her head
with the greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was
just visible above the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes
of light, as she stood half-way up the ladder, looking at a
spot into which she was not climber enough to venture.
" Now a few russets, Tamsin. He used to like them almost
as well as ribstones."
Thomasin turned and rolled aside the fern from another
nook, where more mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell.
Before picking them out she stopped a moment.
"Dear Clym, I wonder how your face looks now?" she
said, gazing abstractedly at the pigeon-hole, which admitted
the sunlight so directly upon her brown hair and transparent
tissues that it almost seemed to shine through her.
"If he could have been dear to you in another way," said
Mrs. Yeobright from the ladder, "this might have been a
happy meeting."
"Is there any use in saying what can do no good, aunt?"
'
Yes, said her aunt, with some warmth.
'
'
' To thoroughly
'
'

fill the air with the past misfortune, so that other girls may

take warning and keep clear of it."

Thomasin lowered her face to the apples again. "I am a
warning to others, just as thieves and drunkards and gam-
low voice. "What a class to belong
blers are," she said in a
to! Do I really belong to them? 'Tis absurd! Yet why,
aunt, does everybody keep on making me think that I do,
 ~ THE ARRIVAL 113

by the way they behave towards me? Why don't people

judge me by my acts? Now, look at me as I kneel here,
—
picking up these apples do I look like a lost woman? . . .

I wish all good women were as good as I !" she added vehe-
mently.
" Strangers don't see you as I do," said Mrs. Yeobright;
"they judge from false report. Well, it is a silly job, and 1
am partly to blame."
"How quickly a rasli thing can be done !" replied the girl-,
Ker lips were quivering, and tears so crowded themselves
into her eyes that she could hardly distinguish apples from
fern as she continued industriously searching to hide her
weakness.
"As soon as you have finished getting the apples," her
aunt said, descending the ladder, "come down, and we'll go
for the holly. There is nobody on the heath this afternoon,
and you need not fear being stared at. We must get some
berries, or Clym will never believe in our preparations."
Thomasin came down when the apples were collected, and
together they went through the white palings to the heath
beyond. The open hills were airy and clear, and the remote
atmosphere appeared, as it often appears on a fine winter
day, in distinct planes of illumination independently toned,
the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming
visibly across those further off: a stratum of ensaffroned light
was imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay
still remoter scenes wrapped in frigid gray.

They reached the place where the hollies grew, which was
in a conical pit, so that the tops of the trees were not much
above the general level of the ground. Thomasin stepped
up into a fork of one of the bushes, as she had done under
happier circumstances on many similar occasions, and with
a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off
the heavily berried boughs.
"Don't scratch your face," said her aunt, who stood at the
edge of the pit, regarding the girl as she held on amid the
glistening green and scarlet masses of the tree. "Will you
walk with me to meet him this evening?"
" I should like to. Else it would seem as if I had forgotten
 "

114 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

him," said Thomasin, tossing out a bough. "Not that that
would matter much; I belong to one man; nothing can alter
that. And that man I must marry, for my pride's sake."
—
"I am afraid " began Mrs. Yeobright.
—
"Ah, you think, 'That weak girl how is she going to get
a man to marry her when she chooses ? ' But let me tell you
one thing, aunt: Mr. Wildeve is not a profligate man, any
more than I am an improper woman. He has an unfortu-
nate manner, and doesn't try to make people like him if they
don't wish to do it of their own accord."
"Thomasin," said Mrs. Yeobright quietly, fixing her eye
upon her niece, "do you think you deceive me in your de-
fense of Mr. Wildeve ?
"How do you mean?"
"I have long had a suspicion that your love for him has
changed its color since you have found him not to be the
saint you thought him, and that you act a part to me."
"He wished to marry me, and I wish to marry him."
"Now, I put it to you: would you at this present moment
agree to be his wife if that had not happened to entangle you
with him?"
Thomasin looked into the tree and appeared much dis-
turbed. "Aunt," she said presently, "I have, I think, a
right to refuse to answer that question."
"Yes, you have."
"You may think what you choose. I have never implied
to you by word or deed that I have grown to think otherwise
of him, and I never will. And I shall marry him."
"Well, wait till he repeats his offer. I think he may do
it, now that he knows — something I told him. I don't for
a moment dispute that it is the most proper thing for you to
marry him. Much as I have objected to him in bygone
days, I agree with you now, you may be sure. It is the only
way out of a false position, and a very galling one."
"What did you tell him?"
"That he was standing in the way of another lover of
yours."
"Aunt," said Thomasin, with round eyes, "what do you
mean?"
 THE ARRIVAL 115

"Don't be alarmed; it was my duty. I can say no more

about it now, but when it is over I will tell you exactly what
I said,and why I said it."
Thomasin was perforce content.
"And you will keep the secret of my would-be marriage
from Clym for the present?" she next asked.
"I have given my word to. But what is the use of it?
He must soon know what has happened. A mere look at
your face will show him that something is wrong."
Thomasin turned and regarded her aunt from the tree.
"Now, hearken to me," she said, her delicate voice expand-
ing into firmness by a force which was other than physical.
"Tell him nothing. If he finds out that I am not worthy to
be his cousin, let him. But, since he loved me once, we will
not pain him by telling him my trouble too soon. The air
is full ofthe story, I know; but gossips will not dare to speak
of it to him for the first few days. His closeness to me is the
very thing that will hinder the tale from reaching him early.
If I am not made safe from sneers in a week or two I will tell
him myself."
The earnestness with which Thomasin spoke prevented
further objections. Her aunt simply said, "Very well. He
should by rights have been told at the time that the wedding
was going to be. He will never forgive you for your secrecy."
"Yes, he will, when he knows it was because I wished to
spare him, and that I did not expect him home so soon. And
you must not let me stand in the way of your Christmas
party. Putting it off would only make matters worse." *>

"Of course I shall not. I do not wish to show myself

beaten before all Egdon, and the sport of a man like Wildeve.
We have enough berries now, I think, and we had better
take them' home. By the time we have decked the house
with this and hung up the mistletoe, we must think of starting
to meet him."
Thomasin came out of the tree, shook from her hair and
dress the loose berries which had and went
fallen thereon,
down the hill with her aunt, each woman bearing half the
gathered boughs. It was now nearly four o'clock, and the
sunlight was leaving the vales. When the west grew red
116 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
the two relatives came again from the house and plunged
from the first, towards
into the heath in a different direction
a point in the distant highway along which the expected man
was to return.

CHAPTER
f
III

HOW A LITTLE SOUND PRODUCED A GREAT DREAM

Eustacia stood just within the heath, straining her eyes
in the direction of Mrs. Yeobright's house and premises.
No light, sound, or movement was perceptible there. The
evening was was dark and lonely. She in-
chilly; the spot
ferred that the guest had not yet come; and after lingering
ten or fifteen minutes she turned again towards home.
She had not far retraced her steps when sounds in front
of her betokened the approach of persons in conversation
along the same path. Soon their heads became visible
against the sky. They were walking slowly; and though it
was too dark for much discovery of character from aspect,
the gait of them showed that they were not workers on the
heath. Eustacia stepped a little out of the foot-track to let
them pass. They were two women and a man; and the
voices of the women were those of Mrs. Yeobright and
Thomasin.
They went by her, and at the moment of passing appeared
to discern her dusky form. There came to her ears in a
masculine voice, "Good night!"
She murmured a reply, glided by them, and turned round.
She could not, for a moment, believe that chance, unre-
quested, had brought into her presence the soul of the house
she had gone to inspect, the man without whom her inspec-
tion would not have been thought of.
She strained her eyes to see them, but was unable. Such
was her intentness, however, that it seemed as if her ears
were performing the functions of seeing as well as hearing.
This extension of power can almost be believed in at such
moments. The deaf Dr. Kitto was probably under the in-
fluence of a parallel fancy when he described his body as
 THE ARRIVAL 117

having become, by long endeavor, so sensitive to vibrations

that he had gained the power of perceiving by it as by ears.
She could follow every word that the ramblers uttered.
They were talking no secrets. They were merely indulging
in the ordinary vivacious chat of relatives who have long
been parted in person though not in soul. But it was not to
the words that Eustacia listened; she could not even have
recalled, a few minutes later, what the words were. It was
to the alternating voice that gave out about one-tenth of
—
them the voice that had wished her good night. Sometimes
this throat uttered Yes, sometimes it uttered No; sometimes
it made inquiries about a time worn denizen of the place.

Once it surprised her notions by remarking upon the friendli-

ness and geniality written in the faces of the hills around. {
The three voices passed on, and decayed and died out upon
her ear. Thus much had been granted her; and all besides
withheld. No event could have been more exciting. During
the greater part of the afternoon she had been entrancing
herself by imagining the fascination which must attend a
—
man come direct from beautiful Paris laden with its atmos-
phere, familiar with its charms. And this man had greeted
her.
With the departure of the figures the profuse articulations
of the women wasted away from her memory; but the ac-
cents of the other stayed on. Was there anything in the
voice of Mrs. Yeobright's son —
for Clym it was —
startling as
a sound? No : it was simply comprehensive. All emotional
things were possible to the speaker of that "good night."
Eustacia's imagination supplied the rest*—except the solution
to one riddle. What could the tastes of that man be who
saw friendliness and geniality in these shaggy hills ?
On such occasions as this a thousand ideas pass through
a highly charged woman's head; and they indicate them-
selves on her face; but the changes, though actual, are minute.
Eustacia's features went through a rhythmical succession of
them. She glowed; remembering the mendacity of the imag-
ination, she flagged; then she freshened; then she fired; then
she cooled again. It was a cycle of aspects, produced by a
cvcle of visions.
118 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Eustacia entered her own house; she was excited. Her
grandfather was enjoying himself over the fire, raking about
the ashes and exposing the red-hot surface of the turves, so
that their lurid glare irradiated the chimney-corner with the
hues of a furnace.
"Why is it that we are never friendly with the Yeo-
brights?" she said, coming forward and stretching her soft
hands over the warmth. "I wish we were. They seem to
be very nice people."
"Be hanged if I know why," said the captain. "I liked
the old man well enough, though he was as rough as a hedge.
But you would never have cared to go there, even if you
might have, I am well sure."
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Your town tastes would find them far too countrified.
They sit in the kitchen, drink mead and elder-wine, and
sand the floor to keep it clean. A sensible way of life; but
how would you like it?"
"I thought Mrs. Yeobright was a ladylike woman? A
curate's daughter, was she not?"
"Yes; but she was obliged to live as her husband did; and
I suppose she has taken kindly to it by this time. Ah, I
recollect that I once accidentally offended her, and I have
never seen her since." •

That night was an eventful one to Eustacia's brain, and

one which she hardly ever forgot. .She dreamt a dream; and
few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham
tinker, ever dreamed a more remarkable one. Such an elab-
orately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly
never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia' s situation before. It
had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many
fluctuations as the Northern Lights, as much color as a par-
terre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation.
To Queen Scheherazade the dream might have seemed not
far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just returned
from all the courts of Europe it might have seemed not more
than interesting. But amid the circumstances of Eustacia's
life it was as wonderful as a dream could be.

There was, however, gradually evolved from its transfor-

 THE ARRIVAL 119

mation scenes a less extravagant episode, in which the heath

dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action.
She was dancing to wondrous music, and her partner was the
man in silver armor, who had accompanied her through the
previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being
closed. The mazes of the dance were ecstatic. Soft whis-
pering came into her ear from under the radiant helmet, and
she felt like a woman in Paradise. Suddenly these two
wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one of the
pools of the heath, and came out somewhere beneath into an
iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows. "It must be here,"
said the voice by her side, and blushingly looking up she saw
him removing his casque to kiss her. At that moment there
was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into fragments like
a pack of cards.
!"
She cried aloud, "0 that I had seen his face
Eustacia awoke. The cracking had been that of the win-
dow-shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening
to let in the day, now slowly increasing to Nature's meager
allowance at this sickly time of the year. "0 that I had
seen his face!" she said again. "'Twas meant for Mr.
Yeobright!"
When she became cooler she perceived that many of the
phases of the dream had naturally arisen out of the images
and fancies of the day before. But this detracted little from
its interest, which lay in the excellent fuel it provided for
newly kindled fervor. She was at the modulating point be-^
tween indifference and love, at the stage called "having a/
fancy for." It occurs once in the history of the most gigan- ( /
tic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of "\
the weakest will.
The perfervid woman was by this time half in love with
a vision. The fantastic nature of her passion, which lowered
^
her as an intellect, raised her as a soul. If she had had a
little more self-control she would have attenuated the emo-

tion to nothing by sheer reasoning, and so have killed it off.

If she had had a little less pride she might have gone and
circumambulated the Yeobrights' premises at Blooms-End
at any maidenly sacrifice until she had seen him. But Eu-
120 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
stacia did neither of these things. She acted as the most
exemplary might have acted, being so influenced; she took
an airing twice or thrice a day upon the Egdon hills, and
kept her eyes employed.
The first occasion passed, and he did not come that way.
She promenaded a second time, and was again the sole
wanderer there.
The third time there was a dense fog: she looked around,
but without much hope. Even if he had been walking within
twenty yards of her she could not have seen him.
At the fourth attempt to encounter him it began to rain
in torrents, and she turned back.
The fifth sally was in the afternoon: it was fine, and she
remained out long, walking to the very top of the valley in
wirich Blooms-End lay. She saw the white paling about half
a mile off; but he did not appear. It was almost with heart-
sickness that she came home, and with a sense of shame at
her weakness. She resolved to look for the man from Paris
no more.
But Providence is nothing if not coquettish; and no sooner
had Eustacia formed this resolve than the opportunity came
which, while sought, had been entirely withholden.

CHAPTER IV

EUSTACIA IS LED ON TO AN ADVENTURE

In the evening of this last day of expectation, which was

the twenty-third of December, Eustacia was at home alone.
She had passed the recent hour in lamenting over a rumor
—
newly come to her ears that Yeobright's visit to his mother
was to be of short duration, and would end some time the
next week. "Naturally," she said to herself. A man in
the full swing of his activities in a gay city would not afford
to linger long on Egdon Heath. That she would behold face
to face the owner of the awakening voice within the limits of
such a holiday was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt
 THE ARRIVAL 121

the environs of his mother's house like a robin, to do which

was difficult and unseemly.
The customary expedient of provincial girls and men in
such circumstances is churchgoing. In an ordinary village
or country town one can safely calculate that, either on
Christmas-day or the Sunday contiguous, any native home
for che holidays, who has not through age or ennui lost th,- T

appetite for seeing and being seen, will turn up in some pew
or other, shining with hope, self-consciousness, and new
clothes. Thus the congregation on Christmas morning is
mostly a Tussaud collection of celebrities who have 'been born
in the neighborhood. Hither the mistress, left neglected at
home all the year, can steal and observe the development of
the returned lover who has forgotten her, and think as she
watches him over her prayer-book that he may throb with
a renewed fidelity when novelties have lost their charm. And
hither a comparatively recent settler like Eubtacia may be-
take herself to scrutinize the person of a native son who left
home before her advent upon the scene, and consider if the
friendship of his parents be worth cultivating during his next
absence in order to secure a knowledge of him on his next
return.
But these tender schemes were not feasible among the
Egdon Heath. In name they were
scattered inhabitants of
parishioners, but virtually they belonged to no parish at
all. People who came to these few isolated houses to keep
Christmas with their friends remained in their friends' chim-
ney-corners drinking mead and other comforting liquors till
they left again for good and all. Rain, snow, ice, mud every-
where around, they did not care to trudge two or three miles
to sit wet-footed and splashed to the nape of their necks
among those who, though in some measure neighbors, lived
close to the church, and entered it clean and dry. Eustacia
knew it was ten to one that Clym Yeobright would go to no
church at all during his few days of leave, and that it woulc7
be a waste of labor for her to go driving the pony and gig
over a bad road in hope to see him there.
It was dusk, and she was sitting by the fire in the dining-
room or hall, which they occupied at this time of the year irx
 "

122 THE KETURN OF THE NATIVE

preference to the parlor, because of its large hearth, con-
structed for turf -fires, a fuel the captain was partial to in
the winter season. The only visible articles in the room
were those on the window-sill, which showed their shapes
against the low sky: the middle article being the old hour-
glass, and the other two a pair of ancient British urns which
had been dug from a barrow near, and were used as flower-
pots for two razor-leaved cactuses. Somebody knocked at
the door. The servant was out; so was her grandfather.
The person, after waiting a minute, came in and tapped at
the door of the room.
7
" Who's there? said Eustacia.
'

"
"Please, Cap'n Vye, will you let us
Eustacia arose and went to the door. "I cannot alloTv-
you to come in so boldly. You should have waited."
"The cap'n said I might come in without any fuss/ was 7

answered in a lad's pleasant voice.

"Oh, did he?" said Eustacia, more gently. "What do
you want, Charley?"
"Please will your grandfather lend us his fuel-house to
try over our parts in, to-night at seven o'clock?"
"What, are you one of the Egdon mummers for this year ?
"Yes, miss. The cap'n used to let the old mummers prac-
tice here."
"1 know it. Yes, you may use the fuel-house if you like,"
said Eustacia languidly.
The choice of Captain Vye's fuel-house as the scene of
rehearsal was dictated by the fact that his dwelling was
nearly in the center of the heath. The fuel-house was as
roomy as a barn, and was a most desirable place for such a
purpose. The lads who formed the company of players lived
at different scattered points around, and by meeting in this
spot the distances to be traversed by all the comers would
be about equally proportioned.
Of mummers and mumming Eustacia had the greatest con-
tempt. The mummers themselves were not afflicted with
any such feeling for their art, though at the same time they
were not enthusiastic. A traditional pastime is to be distin-
guished from a mere revival in no more striking feature than
 THE ARRIVAL 123

in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and fervor,

the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of stir
which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so per-
functorily should be kept up at all. Like Balaam and other
unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner com-
pulsion to say and do their allotted parts whether they will
or no. This unweeting manner of performance is the true
ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival
may be known from a spurious reproduction.
The piece was the well-known play of " Saint George/' and
all who were behind the scenes assisted in the preparations,
including the women of each household. Without the co-
operation of sisters and sweethearts the dresses were likely
to be a failure; but on the other hand, .this class of assistance
was not without its drawbacks. The girls could never be
brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the
armor; they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk
and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. Gorget,
view
gusset, basinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the
of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to
sew scraps of fluttering color.
It might be that Joe, who fought on the side of Christen-
dom, had a sweetheart, and that Jim, who fought on the side
of the Moslem, had one likewise. During the making of the
costumes it would come to the knowledge of Joe's sweetheart
that Jim's was putting brilliant silk scallops at the bottom
of her lover's surcoat, in addition to the ribbons of the visor,
the bars of which, being invariably formed of colored strips
about half an inch wide hanging before the face, were mostly
of that material. Joe's sweetheart straightway placed bril-
liant silk on the scallops of the hem in question, and, going
a little further, added ribbon tufts to the shoulder-pieces.
Jim's, not to be outdone, would affix bows and rosettes every-
where.
The result was that in the end the Valiant Soldier, of the
Christian army, was distinguished by no peculiarity of ac-
couterment from the Turkish Knight; and what was worse,
on a casual view Saint George himself might be mistaken
for his deadly enemy, the Saracen. The guisers themselves,
m THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
though inwardly regretting this confusion of persons, could
not afford to offend those by whose assistance they so largely
profited, and the innovations were allowed to stand.
There was, it is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity.
The Leech or Doctor preserved his character intact: his
darker habiliments, peculiar hat, and the bottle of physic
slung under his arm, could never be mistaken. And the same
might be said of the conventional figure of Father Christmas,
with his gigantic club, an older man, who accompanied the
band as general protector in long night journeys from parish
to parish, and was bearer of the purse.
Seven o' clock, the hour of the rehearsal, came round, and
in a short time Eustacia could hear voices in the fuel-house.
To dissipate in some. trifling measure her abiding sense of
the murkiness of human life she went to the "linhay" or
lean-to shed, which formed the root-store of their dwelling
and abutted on the fuel-house. Here was a small rough hole
in the mud wall, originally made for pigeons, through which
the interior of the next shed could be viewed. A light came
from it now; and Eustacia stepped upon a stool to look in
upon the scene.
On a ledge in the fuel-house stood three tall rush-lights,
and by the light of them seven or eight lads were marching
about, haranguing, and confusing each other, in endeavors
to perfect themselves in the play. Humphrey and Sam, the
furze and turf cutters, were there looking on, so also was Tim-
othy Fairway, who leant against the wall and prompted the
boys from memory, interspersing among the set words re-
marks and anecdotes of the superior days when he and others
were the Egdon mummers-elect that these lads were now.
"Well, ye be as well up to it as ever ye will be/' he said.
"Not that such mumming would have passed in our time.
Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John
needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll
do. Have you got all your clothes ready?"
"We shall by Monday."
"Your first* outing will be Monday night, I suppose?"
"Yes. At Mrs, Yeobright's."
"Oh, Mrs. Yeobright's. What makes her want to see ye?
 —

THE ARRIVAL 125

I should think a middle-aged woman was tired of mum-

ming/'
" She's got up a bit of a party, because 'tis the first Christ-
mas that her son Clym has been home for a long time/'
"To be sure, to be sure —her party! I am going myself.
I almost forgot it, upon my life."
Eustacia's face flagged. There was to be a party at the
Yeobrights'; she, naturally, had nothing to do with it. She
was a stranger to such local gatherings, and had always held
them as scarcely appertaining to her sphere. But had she
been going, what an opportunity would have been afforded
her of seeing the man whose influence was penetrating her
like summer sun! To increase that influence was coveted
excitement; to cast it off might be to regain serenity; to leave
it as it stood was tantalizing.
The lads and men prepared to leave the premises, and Eu-
etacia returned to her fireside. She was immersed in thought,
but not for long. In a few minutes the lad Charley, who had
come to ask permission to use the place,- returned with the
key to the kitchen. Eustacia heard him, and opening the
door into the passage said, " Charley, come here."
The lad was surprised. He entered the front room, not
without blushing; for he, like many, had felt the power of this
girl's face and form.
She pointed to a seat by the fire, and entered the other
side of the chimney-corner herself. It could be seen in her
face that whatever motive she might have had in asking the
youth indoors would soon appear.
—
" Which part do you play, Charley the Turkish Knight,
do you not?" inquired the beauty, looking across the smoke
of the fire to him on the other side.
"Yes, miss, the Turkish Knight," he replied diffidently.
"Is yours a long part?"
"Nine speeches, about."
"Can you repeat them to me? If so I should like to hear
them."
The lad smiled into the glowing turf and began
"Here come I, a Turkish Knight,
Who learnt in Turkish land to fight,"
126 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
continuing the discourse throughout the scenes to the
concluding catastrophe of his fall by the hand of Saint
George.
Eustacia had occasionally heard the part recited before.
When the lad ended she began, precisely in the same words,
and ranted on without a hitch or divergence till she too
reached the end. It was the same thing, yet how different.
Like in form, it had the added softness and finish of a Raf-
faelle after Perugino, which, while faithfully reproducing the
original subject, entirely distances the original art.
Charley's eyes rounded with surprise. "Well, you be a
!

clever lady " he said, in admiration. " I've been three weeks
learning mine."
"I have heard it before/' she quietly observed. "Now,
would you do anything to please me, Charley?"
"I'd do a good deal, miss."
"Would you let me play your part for one night?"
—
"0, miss! But your woman's gown you couldn't."
—
"I can get boy's clothes at least all that would be wanted
besides the mumming dress. What should I have to give
you to lend me your things, to let me take your place for
an hour or two on Monday night, and on no account say
a word about who or what I am? You would, of course,
have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say
— —
that somebody a cousin of Miss Vye's would act for you.
The other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives,
so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, I should
not mind. Now, what must I give you to agree to this?
Half a crown?"
The youth shook his head.
"Five shillings?"
He shook his head again. "Money won't do it," he said,
brushing the iron head of the fire-dog with the hollow of his
hand.
"What will, then, Charley?" said Eustacia in a disap-
pointed tone.
"You know what you forbade me at the may-poling,
miss," murmured the lad, without looking at her, and still
stroking the fire-dog's head.
 THE ARRIVAL 127

"Yes," said Eustacia, with a little more hauteur. "You

wanted to join hands with me in the ring, if I recollect?"
"Half an hour of that, and I'll agree, miss."
Eustacia regarded the youth steadfastly. He was three
years younger than herself, but apparently not backward
for his age. "Half an hour of what?" she said, though she
guessed what.
"Holding your hand in mine."
She was silent. "Make it a quarter of an hour," she said.
—
"Yes, Miss Eustacia I will, if I may kiss it too. A
quarter of an hour. And I'll swear to do the best I can to
let you take my place without anybody knowing. Don't
you think somebody might know your tongue, miss?"
"It is possible. But I will put a pebble in my mouth to
make it less likely. Very well; you shall be allowed to have
my hand as soon as you bring the dress and your sword and
staff. I don't want you any longer now."
Charley departed, and Eustacia felt more and more inter-
est in life. Here was something to do: here was some one
to see, and a charmingly adventurous way to see him. "Ah,"
—
she said to herself, "want of an object to live for that's all
is the matter with me!"

Eustacia' s manner was as a rule of a slumberous sort, her

passions being of the massive rather than the vivacious kind.
But when aroused she would make a dash which, just for the
time, was not unlike the move of a naturally lively person.
On the question of recognition she was somewhat indiffer-
ent. By the acting lads themselves she was not likely to be
known. With the guests who might be assembled she was
hardly so secure. Yet detection, after all, would be no such
dreadful thing. The fact only could be detected, her true
motive never. It would be instantly set down as the pass-
ing freak of a girl whose ways were already considered singu-
lar. That she was doing for an earnest reason what would
most naturally be done in jest was at any rate a safe secret.
The next evening Eustacia stood punctually at the fuel-
house door, waiting for the dusk which was to bring Charley
with the trappings. Her grandfather was at home to-night,
and she would be unable to ask her confederate indoors.
 "

128 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

He appeared on the dark ridge of heathland, like a flyon
tinegro, bearing the articles with him, and came up breath-
less with his walk.
"Here are the things," he whispered, placing them upon
the threshold. "And now, Miss Eustacia —
"The payment. It is quite ready. I am as good as my
word."
She leant against the door-post, and gave him her hand.
Charley took it in both his own with a tenderness beyond
description, unless it was like that of a child holding a cap-
tured sparrow.
"Why, there's a glove on it
!
" he said in a deprecating way.
"I have been walking," she observed.
"But, miss!"
—
"Well it is hardly fair." She pulled off the glove, and
gave him her bare hand.
They stood together minuxe after minute, without further
speech, each looking at the blackening scene, and each think-
ing his or her own thoughts.
"I think up to-night," said Charley de-
I won't use it all
votedly, when minutes had been passed by him
six or eight
caressing her hand. "May I have the other few minutes
another time?"
"As you like," said she without the least emotion. "But
itmust be over in a week. Now, there is only one thing I
want you to do: to wait while I put on the dress, and then
to see if I do my part properly. But let me look first in-
doors."
She vanished for a minute or two, and went in. Her
grandfather was safely asleep in his chair. "Now, then,"
she said, on returning, "walk down the garden a little way,
and when I am ready I'll call you."
Charley walked and waited, and presently heard a soft
whistle. He returned to the fuel-house door.
"Did you whistle, Miss Vye?"
"Yes; come in," reached him in Eustacia's voice from a
back quarter. "I must not strike a light till the door is
shut, or it may be seen shining. Push your hat into the
hole through to the wash-house, if you can feel your way
across."
 THE ARRIVAL 129

Charley did as commanded, and she struck the light, re-

vealing herself to be changed in sex, brilliant in colors, and
armed from top to toe. Perhaps she quailed a little under
Charley's vigorous gaze, but whether any shyness at her
male attire appeared upon her countenance could not be
seen by reason of the strips of ribbon which used to cover
the face in mumming costumes, representing the barred visor
of the mediaeval helmet.
"It fits pretty well/' she said, looking down at the white
overalls, "except that the tunic, or whatever you call it, is
long in the sleeve. The bottom of the overalls I can turn
up inside. Now pay attention."
Eustacia then proceeded in her delivery, striking the sword
against the staff or lance at the minatory phrases, in the
orthodox mumming manner, and strutting up and down.
Charley seasoned his admiration with criticism of the gen-
tlest kind, for the touch of Eustacia's hand yet remained
with him.
"And now your excuse to the others," she said.
for
"Where do you meet before you go to Mrs. Yeobright's ? "
"We thought of meeting here, miss, if you have nothing
to say against it. At eight o'clock, so as to get there by
nine."
"Yes. Well, you
course must not appear. I will
of
march in about minutes late, ready-dressed, and tell
five
them that you can't come. I have decided that the best
plan will be for you to be sent somewhere by me, to make a
real thing of the excuse. Our two heath-croppers are in the
habit of straying into the meads, and to-morrow evening
you can go and see if they are gone there. I'll manage the
rest. Now you may leave me."
"Yes, miss. But I think I'll have one minute more of
what I am owed, if you don't mind."
Eustacia gave him her hand as before.
"One minute," she said, and counted on till she reached
seven or eight minutes. Hand and person she then with-
drew to a distance of several feet, and recovered some of her
old dignity. The contract completed, she raised between
them a barrier impenetrable as a wall.
130 THE EETURN OF THE NATIVE
"There, 'tis all gone; and I didn't mean quite all," he
said,with a sigh.
"You had good measure," said she, turning away.
"Yes, miss. Well, 'tis over, and now I'll get home-along."

CHAPTER V
THROUGH THE MOONLIGHT

The next evening the mummers were assembled in the

same Turkish Knight.
spot, awaiting the entrance of the
"Twenty minutes after eight by the Quiet Woman, and
Charley not come."
"Ten minutes past by Blooms-End."
"It wants ten minutes to, by Grandfer Cantle's watch."
"And 'tis five minutes past by the captain's clock."
On Egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. The
time at any moment was a number of varying doctrines pro-
fessed by the different hamlets, some of them having origi-
nally grown up from a common root, and then become divided
by secession, some having been alien from the beginning.
West Egdon believed in Blooms-End time, East Egdon in
the time of the Quiet Woman Inn. Grandfer Cantle's watch
had numbered many followers in years gone by, but since he
had grown older faiths were shaken. Thus, the mummers
having gathered hither from scattered points, each came
with his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a lit-
tle longer as a compromise.
Eustacia had watched the assemblage through the hole;
and seeing that now was the proper moment to enter, she
went from the "linhay" and boldly pulled the bobbin of the
fuel-house door. Her grandfather was safe at the Quiet
Woman.
"Here's Charley at last! How late you be, Charley."
"'Tis not Charley," said the Turkish Knight from within
his visor. "'Tis a cousin of Miss Vye's, come to take Char-
ley's place from curiosity. He was obliged to go and look
 THE ARRIVAL 131

for the heath-croppers that have got into the meads, and I
agreed to take his place, as he knew he couldn't come back
here again to-night. I know the part as well as he."
Her graceful gait, elegant figure, and dignified manner in
general won the mummers to the opinion that they had
gained by the exchange, if the new-comer were perfect in
his part.
—
"It don't matter if you be not too young," said Saint
George. Eustacia's voice had sounded somewhat more ju-
venile and fluty than Charley's.
"I know every word of it, I tell you," said Eustacia de-
cisively. Dash being all that was required to carry her tri-
umphantly through, she adopted as much as was necessary.
" Go ahead, lads, with the try-over. I'll challenge any of you
to find a mistake in me."
The play was hastily rehearsed, whereupon the other mum-
mers were delighted with the new knight. They extin-
guished the candles at half -past eight, and set out upon the
heath in the direction of Mrs. Yeobright's house at Blooms-
End.
There was a slight hoar-frost that night, and the moon,
though not more than half full, threw a spirited and enticing
brightness upon the fantastic figures of the mumming band,
whose plumes and ribbons rustled in their walk like autumn
leaves. Their path was not over Rainbarrow now, but down
a valley which left that ancient elevation a little to the east.
The bottom of the vale was green to a width of ten yards or
thereabouts, and the shining facets of frost upon the blades
of grass seemed to move on with the shadows of those they
surrounded. The masses of furze and heath to the right and
left were dark as ever; a mere half-moon was powerless to
silversuch sable features as theirs.
Half-an-hour of walking and talking brought them to the
spot in the valley where the grass riband widened and led
up to the front of the house. At sight of the place Eustacia,
who had felt a few passing doubts during her walk with the
youths, again was glad that the adventure had been under-
taken. She had come out to see a man who might possibly
have the power to deliver her soul from a most deadly op-
 132 THE, RETURN OF THE NATIVE
pression. What was Wildeve ? Interesting, bu I inadequate.
Perhaps she would see a sufficient hero to-night.
As they drew nearer to the front of the house the mum-
mers became aware that music and dancing were briskly
flourishing within. Every now and then a long, low note
from the serpent, which was the chief wind instrument played
at these times, advanced further into the heath than the thin
treble part, and reached their ears alone; and next a more
than usually loud tread from a dancer would come the same
way. With nearer approach these fragmentary sounds be-
came pieced together, and were found to be the salient points
of the tune called " Nancy's Fancy."
He was there, of course. Who was she that he danced
with? Perhaps some unknown woman, far beneath her in
culture, was by that most subtle of lures sealing his fate
thisvery instant. To dance with a man is to concentrate a
twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of
an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to
pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms
reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. She
would see how his heart lay by keen observation of them
all.

The enterprising lady followed the mumming company

through the gate in the white paling, and stood before the
open porch. The house was encrusted with heavy thatch-
ings, which dropped between the upper windows: the front,
upon which the moonbeams directly played, had originally
been white; but a huge pyracanth now darkened the greater
portion.
It became at once evident that the dance was proceeding
immediately within the surface of the door, no apartment
intervening. The brushing of skirts and elbows, sometimes
the bumping of shoulders, could be heard against the very
panels. Eustacia, though living within two miles of the
place, had never seen the interior of this quaint old habita-
tion. Between Captain Vye and the Yeobrights there had
never existed much acquaintance, the former having come
as a stranger and purchased the long-empty house at Mist-
%
over Knap not long before the death of Mrs. Yeobright's
 THE ARRIVAL 133

husband; and with that event and the departure of her son
such friendship as had grown up became quite broken off.
"Is there no passage inside the door, then?" asked Eusta-
cia as they stood within the porch.
"No," said the lad who played the Saracen. "The door
opens right upon the front sitting-room, where the spree's
going on."
"So that we cannot open the door without stopping the
dance."
"That's it. Here we must bide till they have done, for
they always bolt the back door after dark."
"They won't be much longer," said Father Christmas.
This assertion, however, was hardly borne out by the
event. Again the instruments ended the tune; again they
recommenced with as much fire and pathos as if it were the
first strain. The air was now that one without any particu-
lar beginning, middle, or end, which perhaps, among all the
dances which throng an inspired fiddler's fancy, best conveys
—
the idea of the interminable the celebrated " Devil's Dream."
The fury of personal movement that was kindled by the fury
of the notes could be approximately imagined by these out-
siders under the moon, from the occasional kicks of toes and
heels against the door, whenever the whirl round had been
of more than customary velocity.
The first five minutes of listening was interesting enough
to the mummers. The five minutes extended to ten minutes,
and these to a quarter of an hour; but no signs of ceasing
were audible in the lively Dream. The bumping against the
door, the laughter, the stamping, were all as vigorous as ever,
and the pleasure in being outside lessened considerably.
"Why does Mrs. Yeobright give parties of this sort?"
Eustacia asked, a little surprised to hear merriment so pro-
nounced.
"It is not one of her bettermost parlor parties. She's
asked the plain neighbors and workpeople without drawing
any lines, just to give 'em a good supper and such like. Her
son and she wait upon the folks."
"I see," said Eustacia.
"'Tis the last strain, I think," said Saint George, with his
134 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
ear to the panel. "A young man and woman have just
swung into this corner, and he's saying to her, Ah, the pity;
'

'tis over for us this time, my own/"

" Thank God," said the Turkish Knight, stamping, and
taking from the wall the conventional staff that each of the
mummers carried. Her boots being thinner than those of the
young men, the hoar had damped her feet and made them
cold.
"Upon my song 'tis another ten minutes for us/' said the
Valiant Soldier, looking through the keyhole as the tune
modulated into another without stopping. "Grandfer Can-
tie is standing in this corner, waiting his turn."
"'Twon't be long; 'tis a six-handed reel," said the Doctor.
"Why not go in, dancing or no? They sent for us," said
the Saracen.
"Certainly not," said Eustacia authoritatively, as she
paced smartly up and down from door to gate to warm her-
self. "We should burst into the middle of them and stop
the dance, and that would be unmannerly."
" He thinks himself somebody because he has had a bit
more schooling than we," said the Doctor.
"You may go to the deuce !" said Eustacia.
There was a whispered conversation between three or f out
of them, and one turned to her.
"Will you tell us one thing?" he said, not without gentle-
ness. "Be you Miss Vye? We think you must be."
"You may think what you like," said Eustacia slowly.
"But honorable lads will not tell tales upon a lady."
"We'll say nothing, miss. That's upon our honor."
"Thank you," she replied.
At this moment the riddles finished off with a screech, and
the serpent emitted a last note that nearly lifted the roof.
When, from the comparative quiet within, the mummers
judged that the dancers had taken their seats, Father Christ-
mas advanced, lifted the latch, and put his head inside the
door.
"Ah, the mummers, the mummers!" cried several guests
at once."Clear a space for the mummers."
Hump-backed Father Christmas then made a complete
 — —

THE ARRIVAL 135

entry, swinging his huge club, and in a general way clearing

the stage for the actors proper, while he informed the com-
pany in smart verse that he was come, welcome or welcome
not; concluding his speech with

"Make room, make room, my gallant boys,

And give us space to rhyme;
We've come to show Saint George's play,
Upon this Christmas time."

The guests were now arranging themselves at one end of the

room, the fiddler was mending a string, the serpent-player
was emptying his mouthpiece, and the play began. First of
those outside the Valiant Soldier entered, in the interest of
Saint George

"Here come I, the Valiant Soldier;

Slasher is my name;"

and so on. This speech concluded with a challenge to the

infidel, atthe end of which it was Eustacia's duty to enter
as the Turkish Knight. She, with the rest who were not yet
on, had hitherto remained in the moonlight which streamed
under the porch. With no apparent effort or backwardness
she came in, beginning

"Here come I, a Turkish Knight,

Who learnt in Turkish land to fight;
I'll fight this man with courage bold:
!"
If his blood's hot I'll make it cold

During her declamation Eustacia held her head erect, and

spoke as roughly as she could, feeling pretty secure from ob-
servation. But the concentration upon her part necessary to
prevent discovery, the newness of the scene, the shine of the
candles, and the confusing effect upon her vision of the rib-
boned visor which hid her features, left her absolutely unable
to perceive who were present as spectators. On the further
side of a table bearing candles she could faintly discern faces,
and that was all.
 — —

136 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Meanwhile Jim Starks as the Valiant Soldier had come
forward, and, with a glare upon the Turk, replied

"If, then, thou art that Turkish Knight,

Draw out thy sword, and let us fight !"

And fight they did; the issue of the combat being that the
Valiant Soldier was slain by a preternaturally inadequate
thrust from Eustacia, Jim, in his ardor for genuine histrionic
art, coming down like a log upon the stone floor with force
enough to dislocate his shoulder. Then, after more words
from the Turkish Knight, rather too faintly delivered, and
statements that he'd fight Saint George and all his crew,
Saint George himself magnificently entered with the well-
known flourish

"Here come I, Saint George, the valiant man,

With naked- sword and spear in hand,
Who fought the dragon and brought him to the slaughter,
And by this won fair Sabra, the King of Egypt's daughter;
What mortal man would dare to stand
Before me with my sword in hand?"

This was the lad who had first recognized Eustacia; and when
she now, as the Turk, replied with suitable defiance, and at
once began the combat, the young fellow took especial care
to use his sword as gently as possible. Being wounded, the
Knight fell upon one knee, according to the direction. The
Doctor now entered, restored the Knight by giving him a
draught from the bottle which he carried, and the fight was
again resumed, the Turk sinking by degrees until quite over-
—
come dying as hard in this venerable drama as he is said
to do at the present day.
This gradual sinking to the earth was, in fact, one reason
why Eustacia had thought that the part of the Turkish
Knight, though not the shortest, would suit her best. A
direct fall from upright to horizontal, which was the end of
the other fighting characters, was not an elegant or decorous
part for a girl. But it was easy to die like a Turk, by a
dogged decline.
 THE ARRIVAL 137

Eustacia was now among the number of the slain, though

not on the floor, for she had managed to retire into a sitting
position against the clock-case, so that her head was well
elevated. The play proceeded between Saint George, the
Saracen, the Doctor, and Father Christmas; and Eustacia,
having no more to do, for the first time found leisure to ob-
serve the scene around, and to search for the form that had
drawn her hither.

CHAPTER VI

THE TWO STAND FACE TO FACE

The room had been arranged with a view to the dancing,
the large oak table having been moved back till it stood as a
breastwork to the fireplace. At each end, behind, and in the
chimney-corner were grouped the guests, many of them being
warm-faced and panting, among whom Eustacia cursorily
recognized some well-to-do persons from beyond the heath.
Thomasin, as she had expected, was not visible, and Eustacia
recollected that a light had shone from an upper window
—
when they were outside the window, probably, of Thorn-
asin's room. A nose, chin, hands, knees, and toes projected
from the seat within the chimney opening, which members
she found to unite in the person of Grandfer Cantle, Mrs.
Yeobright's occasional assistant in the garden, and therefore
one of the invited. The smoke went up from an Etna of
turf in front of him, played round the notches of the chimney-
crook, struck against the salt-box, and got lost among the
flitches.
Another part of the room soon riveted her gaze. At the
other side of the chimney stood the settle, which is the neces-
sary supplement to a fire so open that nothing less than a
strong breeze will carry up the smoke. It is, to the hearths
of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces, what the east belt of
trees is to the exposed country estate, or the north wall to the
garden. Outside the settle candles gutter, locks of hair wave,
young women shiver, and old men sneeze. Inside is Para-
138 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
dise. Not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sit-
ters' backs are as warm
as their faces, and songs and old tales
are drawn from the occupants by the comfortable heat, like
fruit from melon-plants in a frame.
It was, however, not with those who sat in the settle that
Eustacia was concerned. A face showed itself with marked
distinctness against the dark-tanned wood of the upper part.
The owner, who was leaning against the settle's outer end,
was Clement Yeobright, or Clym, as he was called here; she
knew it could be nobody else. The spectacle constituted an
area of two feet in Rembrandt's intensest manner. A strange
power in the lounger's appearance lay in the fact that, though
his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware
of his face.
To one of middle age the countenance was that of a young
man, though a youth might hardly have seen any necessity
for the term of immaturity. But it was really one of those
faces which convey less the idea of so many years as its age
than of so much experience as its store. The number of their
years may have adequately summed up Jared, Mahalaleel,
and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern
man is to be measured by the intensity of his history.
The face was well shaped, even excellently. But the mind
within was beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon
to traceits idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. The
beauty here visible would in no long time be ruthlessly over-
run by its parasite, thought, which might just as well have
fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could
harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a wearing
habit of meditation, people would have said, "A handsome
man." Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they
would have said, "A thoughtful man." But an inner strenu-
ousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated
his look as singular.
Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perus-
ing him. His countenance was overlaid with legible mean-
ings. Without being thought- worn he yet had certain marks.
derived from a perception of his surroundings, such as are
not unfrequently found on men at the end of the four or five
years of endeavor which follow the close of placid pupilage*
 THE ARRIVAL 139

He already showed that thought is a disease of flesh, and

indirectly bore evidence that ideal physical beauty is incom-
patible with emotional development and arecognition of
full
the coil of things. Mental luminousness must be fed with
the oil of life, even though there is already a physical need
for it; and the pitiful sight of two demands on one supply
was just showing itself here.
When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets
that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perish-
able tissue has to think. Thus to deplore, each from his
point of view, the mutually destructive interdependence of
spirit and flesh would have been instinctive with these in
critically observing Yeobright.
As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against
depression from without, and not quite succeeding. The look
suggested isolation, but it revealed something more. As is
usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously
chained with an ephemeral human carcass shone out of him
like a ray.
The effect upon Eustacia was palpable. The extraordinary
pitch of excitement that she had reached beforehand would,
indeed, have caused her to be influenced by the most com-
monplace man. She was troubled at Yeobright's presence.
The remainder of the play ended: the Saracen's head was
cut off, and Saint George stood as victor. Nobody com-
mented, any more than they would have commented on the
fact of mushrooms coming in autumn or snowdrops in spring.
They took the piece as phlegmatically as did the actors them-
selves. It was a phase of cheerfulness which was, as a matter
of course, to be passed through every Christmas; and there
was no more to be said.
They sang the plaintive chant which follows the play, dur-
ing which the dead men rise to their feet in a silent and
all

awful manner, like the ghosts of Napoleon's soldiers in the

Midnight Review. Afterwards the door opened, and Fair-
way appeared on the threshold, accompanied by Christian
and another. They had been waiting outside for the con-
clusion of the play, as the players had waited for the conclu-
sion of the dance.
"Come in, come in/' said Mrs. Yeobright; and Clym went
140 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
forward to welcome them. "How is it you are so late?
Grandfer Cantle has been here ever so long, and we thought
you'd have come with him, as you live so near one another/'
"Well, I should have come earlier," Mr. Fairway said, and
paused to look along the beam of the ceiling for a nail to
hang his hat on; but, finding his accustomed one to be occu-
pied by the mistletoe, and all the nails in the walls to be
burdened with bunches of holly, he at last relieved himself
of the hat by ticklishly balancing it between the candle-box
and the head of the clock-case. "I should have come earlier,
ma'am," he resumed, with a more composed air, "but I know
what parties be, and how there's none too much room in
folks' nouses at such times, so I thought I wouldn't come till
you'd got settled a bit."
"And I thought so too, Mrs. Yeobright," said Christian
earnestly; "but father there was so eager that he had no
manners at all, and left home almost afore 'twas dark. I
told him 'twas barely decent in a' old man to come so over-
soon; but words be wind."
"Klk! I wasn't going to bide waiting about till half the
game was over ! I'm as light as a kite when anything' s going
on " crowed Grandfer Cantle from the chimney-seat.
!

Fairway had meanwhile concluded a critical gaze at Yeo-

bright. "Now, you may not believe it," he said to the rest
of the room, "but I should never have knowed this gentleman
ifI had met him anywhere off his own he'th: he's altered so
much."
"You too have altered, and for the better, I think, Tim-
othy," said Yeobright, surveying the firm figure of Fair-
way.
"Master Yeobright, look me over, too. I have altered
for the better, haven't I, hey?" said Grandfer Cantle, rising,

and placing himself something above half an inch from Clym's

eye, to induce the most searching criticism.
"To be sure we will," said Fairway, taking the candle and
moving it over the surface of the Grandfer's countenance,
the subject of his scrutiny irradiating himself with light and
pleasant smiles, and giving himself jerks of juvenility.
"You haven't changed much," said Yeobright.
 THE ARRIVAL 141

"If there's any difference, Grandfer is younger," appended

Fairway decisively.
" And yet not my own doing, and I feel no pride in it," said
the pleased ancient. "But I can't be Cured of my vagaries;
them I plead guilty to. Yes, Master Cantle always was that,
as we know. But I am nothing by the side of you, Mister
Clym."
"Nor any o' us," said Humphrey, in a low rich tone of
admiration, not intended to reach anybody's ears.
"Really, there would have been nobody here who could
have stood as decent second to him, or even third, if I hadn't
been a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called for our
smartness)," said Grandfer Cantle. "And even as 'tis we all
look a little scammish 1 beside him. But in the year four
'twas said there wasn't a finer figure in the whole South Wes-
sex than I, as I looked when dashing past the shop- winders
with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' Bud-
mouth because it was thoughted that Boney had landed
round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar,
wi'my firelock, and my bagnet, and my spatterdashes, and
2 3

my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening

like the seven stars ! Yes, neighbors, I was a pretty sight in
my soldiering days. You ought to have seen me in four!"
" 'Tis his mother's side where Master Clym's figure comes
from, bless ye," said Timothy. "I know'd her brothers well.
Longer coffins were never made in the whole county of Wes-
sex, and 'tis said that poor George's knees were crumpled up
a little e'en as 'twas."
"Coffins, where?" inquired Christian, drawing nearer.
"Have the ghost of one appeared to anybody, Master Fair-
way?"
"No, no. Don't let your mind so mislead your ears,
Christian; and be a man," said Timothy reproachfully.
"I will," said Christian. "But now I think o't my shad-
der last night seemed just the shape of a coffin. What is it a
sign of when your shade's like a coffin, neighbors? It can't
be nothing to be afeard of, I suppose?"
"Afeard, no!" said the Grandfer. "Faith, I was never
Awkward, rough. 2 Bayonet. 3 Long gaiters.
142 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
afeard of nothing except Boney, or I shouldn't ha' been the
soldier I was. Yes, 'tis a thousand pities you didn't see me
in four!"
By this time the mummers were preparing to leave; but
Mrs. Yeobright stopped them by asking them to sit down
and have a little supper. To this invitation Father Christ-
mas, in the name of them all, readily agreed.
Eustacia was happy in the opportunity of staying a little
longer. The cold and frosty night without was doubly frigid
to her. Butthe lingering was not without its difficulties.
Mrs. Yeobright, for want of room in the larger apartment,
placed a bench for the mummers immediately inside the
pantry -door, which opened from the sitting-room. Here they
seated themselves in a row, the door being left open: thus
they were still virtually in the same apartment. Mrs. Yeo-
bright now murmured a few words to her son, who crossed
the room to the pantry, striking his head against the mistletoe
as he passed, and brought the mummers beef and bread,
cake, pastry, mead, and elder-wine, the waiting being done
by him and his mother, that the little maid-servant might
sit as guest. The mummers doffed their helmets, and began
to eat and drink.
"But you will surely have some?" said Clym to the Turk-
ish Knight, as he stood before that warrior, tray in hand.
She had refused, and still sat covered, only the sparkle of her
eyes being visible between the ribbons which covered her
face.
"None, thank you," replied Eustacia.
"He's quite a youngster," said the Saracen apologetically,
"and you must excuse him. He's not one of the old set,
but have jined us because t'other couldn't come."
'
But he will take something ? persisted Yeobright.
'
'
' Try '
'

a glass of mead or elder- wine."

"Yes, you had better try that," said the Saracen. "It
will keep the cold out going home-along."
Though Eustacia could not eat without uncovering her face
she could drink easily enough beneath her disguise. The
elder-wine was accordingly accepted, and the glass vanished
inside the ribbons.
 THE ARRIVAL 143

At moments during this performance Eustacia was half in

doubt about the security had a fearful
of her position; yet it
joy. A and yet not to her
series of attentions paid to her,
but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever
been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescrib-
ably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional
in this scene, and partly because she had determined to love
him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving some-
body after wearying of Wildeve. Believing that she must
love him in spite of herself, she had been influenced after the
fashion of the second Lord Lyttleton and other persons, who
have dreamed that they were to die on a certain day, and by
stress of a morbid imagination have actually brought about
that event. Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her
being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and
place, and the thing is as good as done.
Did anything at this moment suggest to Yeobright the sex
v

of the creature whom that fantastic guise inclosed, how ex-

tended was her scope both in feeling and in making others
feel, and how far her compass transcended that of her com-
panions in the band? When the disguised Queen of Love
appeared before Aeneas a preternatural perfume accompanied
her presence and betrayed her quality. If such a mysterious
emanation ever was projected by the emotions of an earthly
woman upon their object, it must have signified Eustacia's
presence to Yeobright now. He looked at her wistfully, then
seemed to fall into a reverie, as if he were forgetting what he
observed. The momentary situation ended, he passed on,
and Eustacia sipped her wine without knowing what she
drank. The man for whom she had predetermined to nourish
a passion went into the small room, and across it to the further
extremity.
The mummers, as has been stated, were seated on a bench,
one end of which extended into the small apartment, or pan-
try, for want of space in the outer room. Eustacia, partly
from shyness, had chosen the innermost seat, which thus
commanded a view of the interior of the pantry as well as the
room containing the guests. When Clym passed down the
pantry her eyes followed him in the gloom which prevailed
144 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
there. At the remote end was a door which, just as he was
about to open it for himself, was opened by somebody within;
and light streamed forth.
The person was Thomasin, with a candle, looking anxious,
pale, and interesting. Yeobright appeared glad to see her,
and pressed her hand. " That's right, Tamsie," he said
heartily, as though recalled to himself by the sight of her:
''you have decided to come down. I am glad of it."
—
"Hush no, no," she said quickly. "I only came to speak
to you."
"But why not join us?"
"I cannot. At least I would rather not. I am not well
enough, and we shall have plenty of time together now you
are going to be home a good long holiday."
"It isn't nearly so pleasant without you. Are you really
ill?"
—
"Just a little, my old cousin here," she said, playfully
sweeping her hand across her heart.
"Ah, mother should have asked somebody else to be pres-
ent to-night, perhaps?"
"0 no, indeed. I merely stepped down, Clym, to ask
—
you " Here he followed her through the doorway into the
private room beyond, and, the door closing, Eustacia and
the mummer who sat next to her, the only other witness of
the performance, saw and heard no more.
The heat flew to Eustacia's head and cheeks. She in-
stantly guessed that Clym, having been home only these two
or three days, had not as yet been made acquainted with
Thomasin's painful situation with regard to Wildeve; and
seeing her living there just as she had been living before he
left home, he naturally suspected nothing. Eustacia felt a
wild jealousy of Thomasin on the instant. Though Thomasin
might possibly have tender sentiments towards another man
as yet, how long could they be expected to last when she was
shut up here with this interesting and traveled cousin of hers ?
There was no knowing what affection might not soon break
out between the two, so constantly in each other's society,
and not a distracting object near. Clym's boyish love for her
might have languished, but it might easily be revived again.
 THE ARRIVAL 145

Eustacia was nettled by her own contrivances. What a

sheer waste of herself to be dressed thus while another was
shining to advantage Had she known the full effect of the
!

encounter she would have moved heaven and earth to get

here in a natural manner. The power of her face all lost, the
charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her
coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her:
she had a sense of the doom of Echo. " Nobody here respects
me," she said. She had overlooked the fact that, in coming
as a boy among other boys, she would be treated as a boy.
The slight, though of her own causing, and self-explanatory,
she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so sensitive
had the situation made her.
Women have done much for themselves in histrionic dress.
To look far below those who, like a certain fair personator of
Polly Peachum early in the last century, and another Lydia
Languish early in this, have won not only love but ducal
coronets into the bargain, whole shoals of them have reached
to the initial satisfaction of getting love almost whence they
would. But the Turkish Knight was denied even the chance
of achieving this by the buttering ribbons which she dared
not brush aside. j

Yeobright returned to the room without his cousin. When

within two or three feet of Eustacia he stopped, as if again
arrested by a thought. He was gazing at her. She looked
another way, disconcerted, and wondered how long this pur-
gatory was to last. After lingering a few seconds he passe&
on again. 1

To court their own by love is a common in-

discomfiture
stinct with certain perfervid women. Conflicting sensations'
of love, fear, and shame reduced Eustacia to a state of the-
utmost uneasiness. To escape was her great and immediate
desire. The other mummers appeared to be in no hurry to
leave and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her that sher
;

preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to

the door as imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped
out.
The calm, lone scene reassured her. She went forward to
the palings and leant over them, looking at the moon. She
146 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
xiad stood thus but alittle time when the door again opened.
Expecting to see the remainder of the band Eustacia turned;
—
but no Clym Yeobright came out as softly as she had done,
and closed the door behind him.
He advanced and stood beside her. "I have an odd opin-
ion/ he said, "and should like to ask you a question. Are
'

—
you a woman or am I wrong ? "
"I am a woman."
His eyes lingered on her with great interest. "Do girls
often play as mummers now? They never used to."
"They don't now."
"Why did you?"
"To get excitement and shake off depression," she said in
low tones.
"What depressed you?"
"Life."
"That's a cause of depression a good many have to put
up with."
"Yes."
A long silence. "And do you find excitement?" asked
Clym at last.
"At this moment, perhaps."
"Then you are vexed at being discovered?"
"Yes; though I thought I might be."
"I would gladly have asked you to our party had I known
you wished to come. Have I ever been acquainted with
you in my youth?"
"Never."
"Won't you come in again, and stay as long as you like?"
"No. I wish not to be further recognized."
"Well, you are safe with me." After remaining in thought
a minute he added gently, "I will not intrude upon you
longer. It is a strange way of meeting, and I will not ask
why I find a cultivated woman playing such a part as this."
She did not volunteer the reason which he seemed to hope
for, and he wished her good night, going thence round to the
back of the house, where he walked up and down by himself
for some time before re-entering.
Eustacia, warmed with an inner fire, could not wait for
 THE ARRIVAL 147

her companions after this. She flung back the ribbons from
her face, opened the gate, and at once struck into the heath.
She did not hasten along. Her grandfather was in bed at
this hour, for she so frequently walked upon the hills on
moonlight nights that he took no notice of her comings and
goings, and, enjoying himself in his own way, left her to da
likewise. A more important subject than that of getting in-
doors now engrossed her. Yeobright, if he had the least
curiosity, would infallibly discover her name. What then?
She first felt a sort of exultation at the way in which the
adventure had terminated, even though at moments between
her exultations she was abashed and blushful. Then this
consideration recurred to chill her: What was the use of her
exploit? She was at present a total stranger to the Yeo-
bright family. The unreasonable nimbus of romance with
which she had encircled that man might be her misery. How
could she allow herself to become so infatuated with a
stranger? And to fill the cup of her sorrow there would be
Thomasin, living day after day in inflammable proximity to
him; for she had just learnt that, contrary to her first belief,
he was going to stay at home some considerable time.
She reached the wicket at Mistover Knap, but before
opening it she turned and faced the heath once more. The
form of Rainbarrow stood above the hills, and the moon
stood above Rainbarrow. The air was charged with silence
and frost. The scene reminded Eustacia of a circumstance
which till that moment she had totally forgotten. She had
promised to meet Wilde ve by the Barrow this very night at
eight, to give a final answer to his pleading for an elopement.
She herself had fixed the evening and the hour. He had
probably come to the spot, waited there in the cold, and been
greatly disappointed.
"Well, so much the better: it did not hurt him," she said
serenely. Wildeve had at present the rayless outline of the
sun through smoked glass, and she could say such things as
that with the greatest facility.
She remained deeply pondering; and Thomasin's winning
manner towards her cousin arose again upon Eustacia's mind.
a
O that she had been married to Damon before this!"
 "

146 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

she said. "And she would if it hadn't been for me! If I
—
had only known if I had only known !

Eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the

moonlight, and, sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was
so much like a shudder, entered the shadow of the roof.
She threw off her trappings in the out-house, rolled them up,
and went indoors to her chamber.

CHAPTER VII

A COALITION BETWEEN BEAUTY AND ODDNESS

The old captain's prevailing indifference to his grand-

daughter's movements left her free as a bird to follow her own
courses; but it so happened that he did take upon himself
the next morning to ask her why she had walked out so late.
"Only in search of events, grandfather," she said, looking
out of the window with that drowsy latency of manner which
discovered so much force behind it whenever the trigger was
pressed.
—
"Search of events one would think you were one of the
bucks I knew at one and twenty."
"It is so lonely here."
" So the better. If I were living in a town my whole
much
time would be taken up in looking after you. I fully ex-
pected you would have been home when I returned from the
Woman."
" I won't conceal what I did. I wanted an adventure, and
I went with the mummers. I played the part of the Turkish
Knight."
"No, never? Ha, ha! Good gad! I didn't expect it of
you, Eustacia."
"It was my first performance, and it certainly will be my
last. —
Now I have told you and remember it is a secret."
"Of course. But, Eustacia, you never did ha! ha! —
Dammy, how 'twould have pleased me forty years ago But !

^member, no more of it, my girl. You may walk on the

 THE ARRIVAL 149

heath night or day, as you choose, so that you don't bother

'
me; but no figuring in breeches again.'
"You need have no fear for me, grandpapa."
Here the conversation ceased, Eustacia's moral training
never exceeding in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if
it ever became profitable to good works, would be a result
not dear at the price. But her thoughts soon strayed far
from her own personality; and, full of a passionate and inde-
scribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name,
she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her,
restless as Ahasuerus the Jew. She was about half a mile
from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising;
—
from a ravine a little way in advance dull and lurid like a.
flame in sunlight, and she guessed it to signify Diggory Venm
When the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock
of reddle during the last month had inquired where Venn
was to be found, people replied, "On Egdon Heath." Day
after day the answer was the same. Now, since Egdon was-
populated with heath-croppers and furze-cutters rather than
with sheep and shepherds, and the downs where most of the
latter were to be found lay some to the north, some to the
west of Egdon, his reason for camping about there like IsraeL
in Zin was not apparent. The position was central and occa-
sionally desirable. But the sale of reddle was not Diggory's.
primary object in remaining on the heath, particularly at so
late a period of the year, when most travelers of his class had
gone into winter quarters.
Eustacia looked at the lonely man. Wilde ve had told her
at their last meeting that Venn had been thrust forward by
Mrs. Yeobright as one ready and anxious to take his place as
Thomasin's betrothed. His figure was perfect, his face young
and well outlined, his eye bright, his intelligence keen, and
his position one which he could readily better if he chose.
But in spite of possibilities it was not likely that Thomasin
would accept this Ishmaelitish creature while she had a cousin
like Yeobright at her elbow, and Wildeve at the same time
not absolutely indifferent. Eustacia was not long in guessing
that poor Mrs. Yeobright, in her anxiety for her niece's fu-
ture, had mentioned this lover to stimulate the zeal of the
150 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
other. Eustacia was on the side of the Yeobrights now, and
entered into the spirit of the aunt's desire.
" Good-morning, miss/' said the reddleman, taking off his
cap of hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill- will from
recollection of their last meeting.
"Good morning, reddleman," she said, hardly troubling
to lift her heavily shaded eyes to his. "I did not know you
were so near. Is your van here too?"
Venn moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense
brake of purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast
dimensions as almost to form a dell. Brambles, though
churlish when handled, are kindly shelter in early winter,
being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their leaves.
The roof and chimney of Venn's caravan showed behind the
tracery and tangles of the brake.
"You remain near this part ? " she asked with more interest.
"Yes, I have business here."
"Not altogether the selling of reddle?"
"It has nothing to do with that."
"It has to do with Miss Yeobright?"
Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he there-
fore said frankly, "Yes, miss; it is on account of her."
"On account of your approaching marriage with her?"
Venn flushed through his stain. "Don't make sport of
me, Miss Vye," he said.
"It isn't true?"
"Certainly not."
She was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere
pis aller in Mrs. Yeobright 's mind; one, moreover, who had
not even been informed of his promotion to that lowly stand-
ing. "It was a mere notion of mine," she said quietly; and
was about to pass by without further speech, when, looking
round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure
serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to
the top where she stood. Owing to the necessary windings
of his course his back was at present towards them. She
glanced quickly round; to escape that man there was only
one way. Turning to Venn, she said, "Would you allow
me to rest a few minutes in your van ? The banks are damp
for sittimr ^"
 THE ARRIVAL 151

"Certainly, miss; I'll make a place for you."

She followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled
dwelling, into which Venn mounted, placing the three-legged
stool just within the door.
"That is the best I can do for you/' he said, stepping down
and retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of
his pipe as he walked up and down.
Eustacia bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool,
ensconced from view on the side towards the trackway.
'Soon she heard the brushing of other feet than the reddle-
man's, a not very friendly "Good day" uttered by two men
in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the footfall
of one of them in a direction onwards. Eustacia stretched
her neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back
and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she
knew not why. It was the sickening feeling which, if the
changed heart has any generosity at all in its composition,
accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is
beloved no more.
When Eustacia descended to proceed on her way the red-
dleman came near. "That was Mr. Wildeve who passed,
miss," he said slowly, and expressed by his face that he ex-
pected her to feel vexed at having been sitting unseen.
"Yes, I saw him coming up the hill," replied Eustacia.
"Why should you tell me that?" It was a bold question,
considering the reddleman's knowledge of her past love; but
her undemonstrative manner had power to repress the opin-
ions of those she deemed remote from her.
"I am glad to hear that you can ask it," said the reddle-
man bluntly. "And, now I think of it, it agrees with what
I saw last night."
—
"Ah what was that?" Eustacia wished to leave him,
but wished to know.
"Mr. Wildeve stayed at Rainbarrow a long time waiting
for a lady who didn't come."
"You waited too, it seems?"
"Yes, I always do. I was glad to see him disappointed.
He will be there again to-night."
"To be again disappointed. The truth is, reddleman, that
that young lady, so far from wishing to stand in the way of
152 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Thomasin's marriage with Mr. Wildeve, would be very glad
to promote it."
Venn felt much astonishment at this avowal, though he did
not show it clearly; that exhibition may greet remarks which
are one remove from expectation, but it is usually withheld
in complicated cases of two removes and upwards. " In-
deed, miss," he replied.
"How do you know that Mr. Wildeve will come to Rain-
barrow again to-night?" she asked.
"I heard him say to himself that he would. He's in a
regular temper."
Eustacia looked for a moment what she felt, and she mur-
mured, lifting her deep dark eyes anxiously to his, "I wish
I knew what to do. I don't want to be uncivil to him; but
I don't wish to see him again; and I have some few little
things to return to him."
"If you choose to send 'em by me, miss, and a note to tell
him that you wish to say no more to him, I'll take it for
you quite privately. That would be the most straightfor-
ward way of letting him know your mind."
"Very well," said Eustacia. "Come towards my house,
and I will bring it out to you."
She went on, and as the path was an infinitely small part-
ing in the shaggy locks of the heath, the reddleman followed
exactly in her trail. She saw from a distance that the cap-
tain was on the bank sweeping the horizon with his telescope;
and bidding Venn to wait where he stood, she entered the
house alone.
In ten minutes she returned with a parcel and a note, and
said, in placing them in his hand, "Why are you so ready
"
to take these for me ?
"Can you ask that?"
"I suppose you think to serve Thomasin in some way by
it. Are you as anxious as ever to help on her marriage?"
Venn was a little moved. "I would sooner have married
her myself," he said in a low voice. "But what I feel is that
if she cannot be happy without him I will do my duty in help-

ing her to get him, as a man ought."

Eustacia looked curiously at the singular man who spoke
 —

THE ARRIVAL 153

thus. What a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from

that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief con-
stituent of the passion, and sometimes its only love! The
reddleman' s disinterestedness was so well deserving of re-
spect that it overshot respect by being barely comprehended;
and she almost thought it absurd.
"Then we are both of one mind at last," she said.
"Yes," replied Venn gloomily. "But if you would tell
me, miss, why youtake such an interest in her, I should be
easier. sudden and strange."
It is so
Eustacia appeared at a loss. "I cannot tell you that,
reddleman," she said coldly.
Venn said no more. He pocketed the letter, and, bowing
to Eustacia, went away.
Rainbarrow had again become blended with night when
Wildeve ascended the long acclivity at its base. On his
reaching the top a shape grew up from the earth immediately
behind him. It was that of Eustacia's emissary. He slapped
Wildeve on the shoulder. The feverish young innkeeper
and ex-engineer started like Satan at the touch of Ithuriel's
spear.
"The meeting is always at eight o'clock, at this place/'
said Venn, "and —
here we are we three."
"We three?" said Wildeve, looking quickly round.
"Yes; you and I, and she. This is she." He held up the
letter and parcel.
Wildeve took them wonderingly. "I don't quite see what
this means," he said. "How do you come here? There
must be some mistake."
"It will be cleared from your mind when you have read the
letter. Lanterns for one." The reddleman struck a light,
kindled an inch of tallow-candle which he had brought, and
sheltered it with his cap.
"Who are you?" said Wildeve, discerning by the candle-
lightan obscure rubicundity of person in his companion.
"You are the reddleman I saw on the hill this morning
"
why, you are the man who
"Please read the letter."
"If you had come from the other one I shouldn't have been
 ^
154 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
surprised/' murmured Wildeve as he opened the letter and
read. His face grew serious.

"To Mr. Wildeve:

"After some thought I have decided once and for all that
we must hold no further communication. The more I con-
sider the matter the more I am convinced that there must
be an end to our acquaintance. Had you been uniformly
faithful to me throughout these two years you might now
have some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if
you calmly consider what I bore during the period of your
desertion, and how I passively put up with your courtship of
another without once interfering, you will, I think, own that
I have a right to consult my own feeling when you come back
to me again. That these are not what they were towards
you may, perhaps, be a fault in me, but it is one which you
can scarcely reproach me for when you remember how you
left me for Thomasin.
"The you gave me in the early part of our
little articles

friendship are returned by the bearer of this letter. They

should rightly have been sent back when I first heard of
your engagement to her.
$ l
f
"ElJSTACIA."

By the time that Wildeve reached her name the blankness

with which he had read the first half of the letter intensified
to mortification. "I am made a great fool of, one way and
another/' he said pettishly. "Do you know what is in this
letter?"
The reddleman hummed a tune.
"Can't you answer me?" asked Wildeve warmly.
"Rum-um-tum-tum," sang the reddleman.
Wildeve stood looking on the ground beside Venn's feet,
tillhe allowed his eyes to travel upwards over Diggory's
form, as illuminated by the candle, to his head and face.
"Ha-ha! Well, I suppose I deserve it, considering how I
have played with them both," he said at last, as much to
himself as to Venn. "But of all the odd things that ever I
knew, the oddest is that you should so run counter to your
own interests as to bring this to me."
 4 A

THE ARRIVAL 155

"My interests?"
" Certainly. 'Twas your interest not to do anything which
would send me courting Thomasin again, now she has ac-
—
cepted you or something like it. Mrs. Yeobright says you
are to marry her. 'Tisn't true, then?"
"Good Lord !I heard of this before, but didn't believe it.
When did she say so?"
Wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done.
\ "I don't believe it now," cried Venn.
tJjJRfam-um-tum-tum," sang Wildeve.
—
"0 Lord how he can imitate!" said Venn contemptu-
ously. "I'll have this out. I'll go straight to her."

Diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, Wildeve' s eye

passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no
more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure
could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself descended and
plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale.
—
To lose the two women he who had been the well-beloved
—
of both was too ironical an issue to be endured. He could
only decently save himself by Thomasin; and once he became
her husband, Eustacia's repentance, he thought, would set
in for a long and bitter term. It was no wonder that Wild-
eve, ignorant of the new man at the back of the scene, should
have supposed Eustacia to be playing a part. To believe
that the letter was not the result of some momentary pique,
to infer that she really gave him up to Thomasin, would have
required previous knowledge of her transfiguration by that
man's influence. Who was to know that she had grown gen-
erous in the greediness of a new passion, that in coveting one
cousin she was dealing liberally with another, that in her
eagerness to appropriate she gave way?
Full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart
of the proud girl, Wildeve went his way.
Meanwhile Diggory Venn had returned to his van, where
he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove. A new vista
was opened up to him. But, however promising Mrs. Yeo-
bright's views of him might be as a candidate for her niece's
hand, one condition was indispensable to the favor of Thom-
asin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild
mode of life. In this he saw little difficulty.
loo THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
He could not afford to wait the next day before seeing
till

Thomasin and detailing his plan.He speedily plunged him-

self into toilet operations, pulled a suit of cloth clothes from
a box, and in about twenty minutes stood before the van-
lantern as a reddleman in nothing but his face, the vermilion
shades of which were not to be removed in a day. Closing
the door and fastening it with a padlock Venn set off towards
Blooms-End.
He had reached the white palings and laid his hand upon
the gate when
the door of the house opened, and quickly
closed again. A
female form had glided in. At the same
time a man, who had seemingly been standing with the
woman in the porch, came forward from the house till he
was face to face with Venn. It was Wildeve again.
"Man alive, you've been quick at it," said Diggory sar-
castically.
"And you slow, as you will find," said Wildeve. "And/'
lowering his voice, "you may as well go back again now.
I've claimed her, and got her. Good night, reddleman!"
Thereupon Wildeve walked away.
Venn's heart sank within him, though it had not risen un-

duly high. He stood leaning over the palings in an inde-

cisive mood for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then he went
up the garden-path, knocked, and asked for Mrs. Yeobright.
Instead of requesting him to enter, she came to the porch.
A discourse was carried on between them in low measured
tones for the space of ten minutes or more. At the end of
the time Mrs. Yeobright went in, and Venn sadly retraced
his steps into the heath. When he had again regained his
van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face at once
began to pull off his best clothes, till in the course of a few
minutes he reappeared as the confirmed and irretrievable
redd lo man that he had seemed before.
 THE ARRIVAL 157

CHAPTER VIII

FIRMNESS IS DISCOVERED IN A GENTLE HEART

On that evening the interior of Blooms-End, though cozy

and comfortable, had been rather silent. Clym Yeobright
was not at home. Since the Christmas party he had gone
on a few days' visit to a friend about ten miles off.
The shadowy form seen by Venn to part from Wildeve in
the porch, and quickly withdraw into the house, was Thom-
asin'"s. On entering she threw down a cloak which had been
carelessly wrapped round her, and came forward to the light,
where Mrs. Yeobright sat at her work-table, drawn up within
the settle, so that part of it projected into the chimney-
corner.
"I don't your going out after dark alone, Tamsin,"
like
said her aunt quietly, without looking up from her work.
"I have only been just outside the door."
"Well?" inquired Mrs. Yeobright, struck by a change in
the tone of Thomasin's voice, and observing her. Thom-
asin's cheek was flushed to a pitch far beyond that which it
had reached before her troubles, and her eyes glittered.
"It was he who knocked," she said.
"I thought as much."
"He wishes the marriage to be at once."
"Indeed! What — is he anxious?" Mrs. Yeobright dh
rected a searching look upon her niece. "Why did not Mr,
Wildeve come in?"
"He did not wish to. You are not friends with him, he
says. He would like the wedding to be the day after to-
morrow, quite privately; at the church of his parish not at —
ours."
" Oh "
! And what did you say ?
"I agreed to Thomasin answered firmly, "I- ^m a
it,"
practical woman now. (i don't believe in, hearts at all. I
would marry him under any ""circumstances since since —
Clym's letter."
 —

158 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

A letter was lying on Mrs. Yeobright's work-basket, and
at Thomasin's words her aunt reopened it, and silently read
for the tenth time that day:
"What is the meaning of this silly story that people are
circulating about Thomasin and Mr. Wilde ve ? I should call
such a scandal humiliating if there was the least chance of its
being true. How could such a gross falsehood have arisen?
It is said that one should go abroad to hear news of home,
and I appear to have done it. Of course I contradict the tale
everywhere; but it is very vexing, and I wonder how it could
have originated. It is too ridiculous that such a girl as
Thomasin could so mortify us as to get jilted on the wedding-
day. What has she done?"
"Yes/ Mrs. Yeobright said sadly, putting down the letter.
7

'"If you think you can marry him, do so. And since Mr.
Wilde ve wishes it to be unceremonious, let it be that too. I
can do nothing. It is all in your own hands now. My power
over your welfare came to an end when you left this house to
go with him to Budmouth." She continued, half in bitter-
ness, "I may almost ask, why do you consult me in the mat-
ter at all ? If you had gone and married him without saying
—
a word to me, I could hardly have been angry simply be-
cause, poor girl, you can't do a better thing."
"Don't say that and dishearten me."
"You are right: I will not."
"I do not plead for him, aunt. Human nature is weak,
and I am not a blind woman to insist that he is perfect. I
did think so, but I don't now. But I know my course, and
you know that I know it. I hope for the best."
"And so do I, and we will both continue to," said Mrs.
Yeobright, rising and kissing her. "Then the wedding, if it
comes off, will be on the morning of the very day Clym
comes home?"
"Yes. I decided that it ought to be over before he came.
After that you can look him in the face, and so can I. Our
concealments will matter nothing."
Mrs. Yeobright moved her head in thoughtful assent, and
presently said, "Do you wish me to give you away? I am
willing to undertake that, you know, if you wish, as I was
 THE ARRIVAL 159

last time. After once forbidding the banns, I think I can

do no less."
"I don't think I will ask you to come," said Thomasin
reluctantly, but with decision. "It would be unpleasant, I
am almost sure. Better let there be only strangers present,
and none of my relations at all. I would rather have it so.
I do not wish to do anything which may touch your credit,
and I feel that I should be uncomfortable if you were there,
after what has passed. I am only your niece, and there is no
necessity why you should concern yourself more about
me."
"Well, he has beaten us," her aunt said. "It really seems
as if he had been playing with you in this way in revenge for
my humbling him as I did by standing up against him at
first."
"O no, aunt," murmured Thomasin.
They said no more on the subject then. Diggory Venn's
knock came soon after; and Mrs. Yeobright on returning from
her interview with him in the porch carelessly observed,
" Another lover has come to ask for you."
"No?"
"Yes; that queer young man Venn."
"Asks to pay his addresses to me?"
"Yes; and I told him he was too late/'
Thomasin looked silently into the candle-flame. "Poor
!
Diggory " she said, and then aroused herself to other things.
The next day was passed in mere mechanical deeds of prep-
aration, both the women being anxious to immerse them-
selves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation.
Some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew
for Thomasin, and remarks on domestic details were fre-
quently made, so as to obscure any inner misgivings about
her future as Wildeve's wife.
The appointed morning came. The arrangement with
Wildeve was that he should meet her at the church to guard
against any unpleasant curiosity which might have affected
them had they been seen walking off together in the usual
country way.
Aunt and niece stood together in the bedroom where the
160 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
bride was dressing. The sun, where it could catch it, made
a mirror of Thomasin's hair, which she always wore braided.
It was braided according to a calendric system: the more
important the day the more numerous the strands in the
braid. On ordinary working-days she braided it in threes;
on ordinary Sundays in fours; at May-polings, gypsyings,
and the like, she braided it in fives. Years ago she had said
that when she married she would braid it in sevens. She had
braided it in sevens to-day.
"I have been thinking that I will wear my blue silk after
all," she said. "It is my wedding-day, even though there
may be something sad about the time. I mean," she added,
anxious to correct any wrong impression, "not sad in itself,
but in its having had great disappointment and trouble
before it."
Mrs. Yeobright breathed in a way which might have been
called a sigh. "I almost wish Clym had been at home," she
said. "Of course you chose the time because of his absence."
"Partly. I have felt that I acted unfairly to him in not
telling him all; but, as it was done not to grieve him, I thought
I would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story
when the sky was clear."
"You are a practical little woman," said Mrs. Yeobright,
smiling. —
"I wish you and he no, I don't wish anything.
There, it is nine o'clock," she interrupted, hearing a whizz
and a dinging downstairs.
"I told Damon I would leave at nine," said Thomasin,
hastening out of the room.
Her aunt followed. When Thomasin was going down the
little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, Mrs. Yeobright
looked reluctantly at her, and said, "It is a shame to let you
go alone."
"It is necessary," said Thomasin.
"At any rate," added her aunt with forced cheerfulness,
"I shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake
with me. If Clym has returned by that time he will perhaps
come too. I wish to show Mr. Wilde ve that I bear him no
ill-will. Let the past be forgotten. Well, God bless you!
There, I don't believe in old superstitions, but I'll do it."
 "

THE ARRIVAL 161

She threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who

turned, smiled, and went on again.
A few steps further, and she looked back. "Did you call
me, aunt ? " she tremulously inquired. " Good-bye
!

Moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon

Mrs. Yeobright's worn, wet face, she ran back, when her
aunt came forward, and they met again. " —
Tamsie," said
the elder, weeping, "I don't like to let you go."
— —
"I I am " Thomasin began, giving way likewise. But,
quelling her grief, she said " Good-bye!" again and went on.
Then Mrs. Yeobright saw a little figure wending its way
between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up
—
the valley a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown,
solitary and undefended, except by the power of her own
hope.
But the worst feature in the case was one which did not
appear in the landscape; it was the man.
The hour chosen for the ceremony by Thomasin and Wild-
eve had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awk-
wardness of meeting her cousin Clym, who was returning the
same morning. To own to the partial truth of what he had
heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position
resulting from the event was unimproved. It was only after
a second and successful journey to the altar that she could
lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a

pure accident.
She had not been gone from Blooms-End more than half
an hour when Yeobright came up the road from the other
direction and entered the house.
"I had an early breakfast," he said to his mother after
greeting her. "Now I could eat a little more."
They sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a
low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that Thomasin had
not yet come downstairs, "What's this I have heard about
Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve?"
"It is true in many points," said Mrs. Yeobright quietly;
"but it is all right now, I hope." She looked at the clock.
"True?"
"Thomasin is gone to him to-day."
 "

162 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Clym pushed away from his breakfast. "Then there 10 a,
scandal of some sort, and that's what's the matter with
Thomasin. Was it this that made her ill?"
"Yes. Not a scandal: a misfortune. I will tell you all
about it, Clym. You must not be angry, but you must
listen, and you'll find that what we have done has been for
the best."
She then told him the circumstances. All that he had
known of the affair before he had returned from Paris was
that there had existed an attachment between Thomasin and
Wildeve, which his mother had at first discountenanced, but
had since, owing to the arguments of Thomasin, looked upon
in a little more favorable light. When she, therefore, pro-
ceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled.
"And she determined that the wedding should be over
before you came back," said Mrs. Yeobright, "that there
might be no chance of her meeting you, and having a very
painful time of it. That's why she has gone to him; they
have arranged to be married this morning."
"But I can't understand it," said Yeobright, rising. "*Tis
so unlike her. I can see why you did not write to me after
her unfortunate return home. But why didn't you let me
—
know when the wedding was going to be the first time?"
"Well, I felt vexed with her just then. She seemed to me
to be obstinate; and when I found that you were nothing in
her mind I vowed that she should be nothing in yours. I
felt that she was only my niece after all; I told her she might
marry, but that I should take no interest in it, and should
not bother you about it either."
"It wouldn't have been bothering me. Mother, you did
wrong."
"I thought it might disturb you in your business, and that
you might throw up your situation, or injure your prospects
in some way because of it, so I said nothing. Of course, if
they had married at that time in a proper manner, I should
have told you at once."
!
"Tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here
"Yes. Unless some accident happens again, as it did the
nrst time. It may, considering he's the same man."
 THE ARRIVAL 163

"Yes, and I believe it will. Was it right to let her go?

Suppose Wildeve is really a bad fellow?"
"Then he won't come, and she'll come home again."
"You should have looked more into it."
"It is useless to say that," his mother answered, with an
impatient look of sorrow. "You don't know how hard it
has been here with us all these weeks, Clym. You don't
know what a mortification anything of that sort is to a
woman. You don't know the sleepless nights we've had in
this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed be-
tween us since that fifth of November. I hope never to pass
seven such weeks again. Tamsin has not gone outside the
door, and I have been ashamed to look anybody in the face;
and now you blame me for letting her do the only thing that
can be done to set that trouble straight."
"No," he said slowly. "Upon the whole I don't blame
you. But just consider how sudden it seems to me. Here
was I, knowing nothing; and then I am told all at once that
Tamsie is gone to be married. Well, I suppose there was
nothing better to do. Do you know, mother," he continued
after a moment oiitwp, looking suddenly interested in his
own pa§t history, fl once thought of Tamsin as a sweet-
—
heart? yYes, I did! How odd boys are ! And when I came
home a!nd saw her this time she seemed so much more affec-
tionate than usual, that I was quite reminded of those days,
particularly on the night of the party, when she was unwell.
—
We had the party just the same was not that rather cruel
to her?"
"It made no difference. I had arranged to give one, and
it was not worth while to make more gloom than necessary.
To begin by shutting ourselves up and telling you of Tam-
sin' s misfortunes would have been a poor sort of welcome."
Clym remained thinking. "I almost wish you had not
had that party," he said; "and for other reasons. But I
will tell you in a day or two. We must think of Tamsin
now."
They lapsed into silence. "I'll tell you what," said Yeo-
bright again, in a tone which showed some slumbering feel-
ing still, "I don't think it kind to Tamsin to let her be mar-
 "

164 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

and neither of us there to keep up her spirits or
ried like this,
care a bit about her. She hasn't disgraced herself, or done
anything to deserve that. It is bad enough that the wed-
ding should be so hurried and unceremonious, without our
keeping away from it in addition. Upon my soul, 'tis almost
a shame. I'll go."
"It is over by this time," said his mother with a sigh;
"
"unless they were late, or he
"Then I shall be soon enough to see them come out. I
don't quite like your keeping me in ignorance, mother, after
all. Really, I half hope he has failed to meet her.
"And ruined her character?"
"Nonsense: that wouldn't ruin Thomasin."
He took up his hat and hastily left the house. Mrs. Yeo-
bright looked rather unhappy, and sat still, deep in thought.
But she was not long left alone. A few minutes later Clym
came back again, and in his company came Diggory Venn.
"I find there isn't time for me to get there," said Clym.
" Is she married ? " Mrs. Yeobright inquired, turning to the
reddleman a face in which a strange strife of wishes, for and
against, was apparent.
Venn bowed. "She is, ma'am."
"How strange it sounds," murmured Clym.
"And he didn't disappoint her this time?" said Mrs. Yeo-
bright.
"He did not. And there is now no slight on her name.
I was hastening ath'art 1 to tell you at once, as I saw you
were not there."
"How came you to be there? How did you know it?"
she asked.
"I have been in that neighborhood for some time, and I
saw them go in," said the reddleman. " Wilde ve came up
to the door, punctual as the clock. I didn't expect it of
him." He did not add, as he might have added, that how
he came to be in that neighborhood was not by accident;
that, since Wilde ve's resumption of his right to Thomasin,
Venn, with the thoroughness which was part of his character,
had determined to see the end of the episode.
1
Across.
 THE ARRIVAL 165 ^..
n
"Who was there?" said Mrs. Yeobright. ^
"Nobody hardly. way, and she
I stood right out of the W\
did not see me." The reddleman spoke huskily, and looked *jv\

into the garden.

"
^
}^
' i
Who gave her away ? r (j^
w MissVye.^
: __.
^ H^w very remarkable ! Miss Vye ! It is to be consid-
ered an honor, I suppose."
"Who's Miss Vye?" said Clym.
"Captain Vye's granddaughter, of Mistover Knap."
"A proud girl from Budmouth," said Mrs. Yeobright.
" One not much to my liking. People say she's a witch, but
of course that's absurd."
The reddleman kept to himself his acquaintance with that
fair personage, and was there because he
also that Eustacia
went had pre-
to fetch her, in accordance wi:h a promise he
viously given as soon as he learnt that the marriage was to
take place. He merely said, in continuation of the story:
"I was sitting on the churchyard-wall when they came up,
one from one way, the other from tha other; and Miss Vye
was walking thereabouts, looking at the head-stones. As
soon as they had gone in I went to the door, feeling I should
like to seeit, as I knew her so well. I pulled off my boots
because they were so noisy, and went up into the gallery.
I saw then that the parson and clerk were already there."
"How came Miss Vye to have anything to do with it, if
she was only on a walk that way?"
"Because there was nobody else. She had gone into the
church just before me, not into the gaFery. The parson
looked round before beginning, and as she was the only one
near he beckoned to her, and she went up to the rails. After
that, when it came to signing the book, she pushed up her
veil and signed; and Tamsin seemed to thank her for her
kindness." The reddleman told the tale thoughtfully, for
there lingered upon his vision the changing color of Wildeve,
when Eustacia lifted the thick veil which had concealed her
from recognition and looked calmly into his face. "And
then," said Diggory sadly, "I came away, for her history as
Tamsin Yeobright was over."
 166 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"I offered to go," said Mrs. Yeobright regretfully, ".but
she said it was not necessary."
"Well, it is no matter," said the reddleman. "The thing
is done at last as it was meant to be at first, and God send
her happiness. Now Fll wish you good morning."
He placed his cap on his head and went out.
From that instant of leaving Mrs. Yeobright 's door, the
reddleman was seen no more in or about Egdon Heath for a
space of many months. He vanished entirely. The nook
"iHrlong'the brambles where his van had been standing was as
vacant as ever the next morning, and scarcely a sign remained
to show that he had been there, excepting a few straws, and
a little redness on the turf, which was washed away by the
next storm of rain.
The report that Diggory had brought of the wedding, cor-
rect as far as it went, was deficient in one significant particu-
lar, which had escaped him through his being at some dis-
tance back in the church. When Thomasin was tremblingly
engaged in signing her name Wildeve had flung towards
Eustacia a glance that said plainly, "I have punished you
—
now." She had replied in a low tone and he little thought
—
how truly "You mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to
see her your wife to-day."
 BOOK THIRD
THE FASCTNATION
 )

CHAPTER I

"MY MIND TO ME A KINGDOM IS"

/In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical

-countenance of the future.^) Should there be a classic period
to art hereafter, its Pheidias may produce such faces. (The
view of life as a thing to be put up with, replacing that zest
for existence which was so intense in early civilizations, must
ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution of the
advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted
as a new artistic departure. People already feel that a man
who lives without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a
mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far
removed Iron^modefrTperceptiveness to be a modern type.
—
Physically beautiful men the glory of the race when it was
—
young are almost an anachronism now; and we may won-
der whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful
women may not be an anachronism likewise.
The truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive cen-
turies has permanently displaced the Hellenic idea of life, or
whatever it may be called. What the Greeks only suspected
we know well; what their Aeschylus imagined our nursery
children feel. That old-fashioned reveling in the general sit-
uation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects
of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is in by their
operation.
The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based
upon this new recognition will probably be akin to those of
Yeobright. The observer's eye was arrested, not by his face
as a picture, but by his face as a page; not by what it was,
but by what it recorded. His features were attractive in the
light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically common become at-
tractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple be-
come interesting in writing.
169
 170 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
/ He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Be-
yond this all had been chaos. That he would be successful
in an original way, or that he would go to_the dogs in an
original way, seemed equally probable. (The only abs olute
Icertaintv about him was that he would noT3Ean3!^nrin""Sie
\^ciFcums£ances amid which he was born.
, )
Hence "when his name was casually mentioned by neigh-
"
boring yeomen, the listener said, Ah, Clym Yeobright: what
ishe doing now?" When the instinctive question about a
person is, What is he doing? it is felt that he will not be
found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular.
There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some
region of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that
he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a
mess of it. Half a dozen comfortable market-men, who were
habitual callers at the Quiet Woman as they passed by in
their carts, were partial to the topic. In fact, though they
were not Egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while they
sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through
the window. Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in
his boyhood that hardly anybody could look upon it without
thinking of him. So the subject recurred: if he were making
a fortune and a name, so much the better for him; if he were
making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for
a narrative.
The fact was that Yeobright's fame had spread to an awk-
ward extent before he left home. "It is bad when your
fame outruns your means," said the Spanish Jesuit, Gracian.
At the age of six he had asked a Scripture riddle: "Who was
the first man known to wear breeches?" and applause had
resounded from the very verge of the heath. At seven he
painted the Battle of Waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and
black-currant juice, in the absence of water- colors. By the
time he reached twelve he had in this manner been heard of
as artist and scholar for at least two miles round. An indi-
vidual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in
the time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to
travel six or eight hundred, must of necessity have something
in him. Possibly Clym's fame, like Homer's, owed some-
 THE FASCINATION $ 171

thing to the accidents of his situation; nevertheless famous

he was.
He grew up and was helped out in life. That waggery of
fate which started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-
draper, Keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thou-
sand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath
lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial sym-
bols of self-indulgence and vainglory.
The details of this choice of a business for him it is not
necessary to give. At the death of his father a neighboring
gentleman had kindly undertaken to give the boy a start;
and this assumed the form of sending him to Budmouth.
Yeobright did not wish to go there, but it was the only feasi-
ble opening. Thence he went to London; and thence, shortly
where he had remained till now.
after, to Paris,
Something being expected of him, he had not been at home
many days before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on
so long began to arise in the heath. The natural term of a
holiday had passed, yet he still remained. On the Sunday
morning following the week of Thomasin's marriage a discus-^
sion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cutting before
Fairway's house. Here the local barbering was always done
at this hour on this day; to be followed by the great Sunday
wash of the inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was fol-
lowed by the great Sunday dressing an hour later. On Egdon
Heath Sunday proper did not begin till dinner-time, and even
then it was a somewhat battered specimen of the day.
These Sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by
Fairway; the victim sitting on a chopping-block'in front of
the house, without a coat, and the neighbors gossiping around,
idly observing the locks of hair as they rose upon the wind
after the snip, flew away out of sight to the four quarters
and
of the heavens. Summer and winter the scene was the same,
unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the
stool was shifted a few feet round the corner. To complain
and coatless, while
of cold in sitting out of doors, hatless
Fairway told true stories between the cuts of the scissors,
would have been to pronounce yourself no man at once. To
flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face at the small
172 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or at
scarifications of the neck by the comb/ would have been
thought a gross breach of good manners, considering that
Fairway did it all for nothing. A bleeding about the poll on
Sunday afternoons was amply accounted for by the explana-
tion, "I have had my hair cut, you know."
The conversation on Yeobright had been started by a dis-
tant view of the young man rambling leisurely across the
heath before them.
"A man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here
two or three weeks for nothing," said Fairway. "He's got
some project in 's head —depend upon that."
"Well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here/' said Sam.
"I don' f see why he should have had them two heavy
boxes home if he had not been going to bide; and what there
is for him to do here the Lord in heaven knows."
Before many more surmises could be indulged in Yeobright
had come near; and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned
aside to join them. Marching up, and looking critically at
their faces for a moment, he said, without introduction,
"Now, folks, let me guess what you have been talking about."
"Ay, sure, if you will," said Sam.
"About me."
"Now, it is a thing I shouldn't have dreamed of doing,
otherwise," said Fairway in a tone of integrity; "but since
you have named it, Master Yeobright, I'll own that we was
talking about 'ee. We were wondering what could keep you
home here mollyhorning 1 about when you have made such a
world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade —now,
that's the truth o't."
"I'll tellyou," said Yeobright, with unexpected earnest-
ness. "I am
not sorry to have the opportunity. I've come
home because, all things considered, I can be a trifle less use-
less here than anywhere else. But I have only lately found
this out. When I first got away from home I thought this
place was not worth troubling about. I thought our life here
was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking

i Doing women's work about the house.

 THE FASCINATION 173

them, to dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush:

was there ever anything more ridiculous? I said."
"So 'tis; so 'tis!"
—
"No, no you are wrong; it isn't."
"Beg your pardon, we thought that was your maning."
"Well, this became very depressing as time went on. I
found that I was trying to be like people who had hardly
anything in common with myself. I was endeavoring to put
off one sort of life for another sort of life, which was not bet-
ter than the life I had known before. It was simply dif-
ferent."
"True; a sight different," said Fairway.
"Yes, Paris must be a taking place," said Humphrey.
"Grand shop- winders, trumpets, and drums; and here be we
"
out of doors in all winds and weathers
"But you mistake me," pleaded Clym. " All this was very
depressing. But not so depressing as something I next per-
—
ceived that my business was the idlest, vainest, most effem-
inate business that ever a man could be put to. That de-
cided me: I would give it up and try to follow some rational
occupation among the people I knew best, and to whom I
could be of most use. I have come home; and this is how
I mean to carry out my plan. fl shall keep a school as near
^oJEgd@i3b«fts*p,ossible, so as to bVdsJe^-wafl^^
have a night-school in my mother's house. But I must study
a little at first, to get properly qualified. Now, neighbors, I
must go."
And Clym resumed hiswalk across the heath.
"He'll never carry it out in the world," said Fairway. "In
a few weeks he'll learn to see things otherwise."
<fL
Tis good-hearted of the young man," said another.
"'But, for my part, I think he had better mind his business."
 174 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER II

THE NEW COURSE CAUSES DISAPPOINTMENT

Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the
want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings
wisdom rather than affluence. [He wished t o raise the class
l^atthe expense of individuals ratKer thaIT1n^viduds_at_££e
(expense of the class. What was more, he was ready at once
tcH^the first unit sacrificed.
In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the in-
termediate stages are usually two at least, frequently many
more; and one of these stages is almost sure to be worldly
advance. We can hardly imagine bucolic placidity quicken-
ing to intellectual aims without imagining social aims as the
transitional phase. Yeobright's local peculiarity was that in
—
striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living nay,
wild and meager living in many respects, and brotherliness
with clowns.
He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather
than repentance for his text. Mentally he was in a provin-
cial future, that is, he was in many points abreast with the
central town thinkers of his date. Much of this develop-
ment he may have owed to his studious life in Paris, where he
had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at the
time.
In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Yeo-
bright might have been called unfortunate. The rural world
was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before
his time: to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is
fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually
so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without blood-
shed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he
seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.
In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly
in the capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists
have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is
that which their listeners have for some time felt without
 r i.
L
J

THE FASCINATION 175

being able to shape. A man who

advocates aesthetic effort
and deprecates be understood by
social effort is only likely to
a class to which social effort has become a stale matter. To
argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the
bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to
disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accus-
tomed. Yeobright preaching to the Egdon eremites that
they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness without going
through the process of enriching themselves, was not unlike
arguing to ancient Chaldeans that in ascending from earth
to the pure empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into
the intervening heaven of ether.
Was Yeobright's mind well-proportioned? No. A well-
proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias;
one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its
owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or
crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it
will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered
as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are hap-
piness and mediocrity. It produces the poetry of Rogers, the
paintings of West, the statecraft of North, the spiritual gui-
dance of Sumner; enabling its possessors to find their way to
wealth, to wind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to
die comfortably in their beds, and to get the decent monu-
ment which, in many cases, they deserve. It never would
have allowed Yeobright to do such a ridiculous thing as throw
up his business to benefit his fellow-creatures.
He walked along towards home without attending to paths.
If any one knew the heath well, it was Clym. He was per-
meated with its scenes, with its substance, and with its odors.
He might be said to be its product. His eyes had first
opened thereon; with its appearance all the first images of
his memory were mingled; his estimate of life had been col-
ored by it; his toys had been the flint knives and arrow-heads
which he found there, wondering why stones should "grow"
to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and yellow
gorse; his animal kingdom, the snakes and croppers; his so-
human haunters. LTake all thejyarving hates felt
ciety, its

[_
by Eustacia Vye towards the heath,, and jransla^them into
 "if "} < > A, V
'"''

THE RETURN OF THE! NATIVE

Joyes, and you have jjuyi eart of Clym. He gazed upon the
w
wi3| groS pg gf^' g e walkecf, ancTwas "glad.
1

To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped

out of its century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth
object into this. It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to
study it. How could this be otherwise in the days of square
fields, plashed hedges, and meadows, watered on a plan so
rectangular that on a fine day they look like silver gridirons ?
The farmer, in his ride, who could smile at artificial grasses,
look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh with sad-
ness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant up-
land of heath nothing better than a frown. But as for Yeo-
bright, when he looked from the heights on his way he could
not help indulging in a barbarous satisfaction at observing
that, in some of the attempts at reclamation from the waste,
tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded again
in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting
themselves.
He descended into the valley, and soon reached his home
at Blooms-End. His mother was snipping dead leaves from
the window-plants. She looked up at him as if she did not
understand the meaning of his long stay with her; her face
had worn that look for several days. He could perceive that
the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting group
amounted in his mother to concern. But she had asked no
question with her lips, even when the arrival of his trunks
suggested that he was not going to leave her soon. Her
silence besought an explanation of him more loudly than
words.
"I am not going back to Paris again, mother," he said.
"At least, in my old capacity. I have given up the busi-
ness."
Mrs. Yeobright turned in pained surprise. "I thought
something was amiss, because of the boxes. I wonder you
did not tell me sooner."
"I ought to have done it. But I have been in doubt
whether you would be pleased with my plan. I was not quite
clear on a few points myself. I am going to take an entirely
new course."
 THE FASCINATION 177

I am astonished, Clym. How can you want to do better

tnau you've been doing ?"
"Very easily. But I shall not do better in the way you
mean; I suppose it will be called doing worse. But I "hate
that business of mine, and I want to do some worthy thing
—
before I die. As a schoolmaster I think to do it a school-
master to the poor and ignorant, to teach them what nobody
else will."
"After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a
start, and when there is nothing to do but to keep straight
on towards affluence, you say you will be a poor man's school-
master. vYour fancies will i>£ your ruin,. Clym."'
v
•

Mrs. YeoBnghT spoke calmly, but the force of feeling be-

hind the words was but too apparent to one who knew her
as well as her son did. He did not answer. There was in
his face that hopelessness of being understood which comes
when the objector is constitutionally beyond the reach of a
logic that, even under favoring conditions, is almost too
coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument.
No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner.
His mother then began, as if there had been no interval since
the morning. "It disturbs me, Clym, to find that you have
come home with such thoughts as those- I hadn't the least
idea that you meant to go backward m
the world by your
own free choice.Of course, I have always supposed you
were going to push straight on, as other men do all who —
—
deserve the name when they have been put in a good way
of doing well."
" I cannot help it," said Clym, in a troubled tone. " Mother,
I hate the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the
name, can any man deserving the name waste his time in
that effeminate way, when he sees half the world going to
ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach them how
to breast the misery they are born to ? I get up every morn-
ing and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in
pain, as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glit-
tering splendors with wealthy women and titled libertines,
—
and pandering to the meanest vanities I, who have health
and strength enough for anything. I have been troubled in
178 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
my mind about it all the year, and the end is that I cannot
do it any more."
"Why can't you do it as well as others?"
"I don't know, except that there are many things other
people care for which I don't; and that's partly why I think
I ought to do this. For one thing, my body does not re-
quire much of me. I cannot enjoy delicacies; good things
are wasted upon me. Well, I ought to turn that defect to
advantage, and by being able to do without what other peo-
ple require I can spend what such things cost upon anybody
else."
Now, Yeobright, having inherited some of these very in-
stincts from the woman before him, could not fail to awaken
a reciprocity in her through her feelings, if not by arguments,
disguise it as she might for his good. She spoke with less
assurance. "And yet you might have been a wealthy man
it you had only persevered. Manager to that large diamond
—
establishment what better can a man wish for? What a
post of trust and respect I suppose you will be like your
!

father; like him, you are getting weary of doing well."

"No," said her son; "I am not weary of that, though I
am weary of what you mean by it. Mother, what is doing
well?"
Mrs. Yeobright was far too thoughtful a woman to be con-
tent with ready definitions, and, like the "What is wisdom?"
of Plato's Socrates, and the "What is truth?" of Pontius
Pilate, Yeobright's burning question received no answer.
The silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a
tap at the door, and its opening. Christian Cantle appeared
in the room in his Sunday clothes.
It was the custom on Egdon to begin the preface to a
story before absolutely entering the house, so as to be well
in for the body of the narrative by the time visitor and vis-
ited stood face to face. Christian had been saying to them
while the door was leaving its latch, "To think that I, who
go from home but once in a while, and hardly then, should
!
have been there this morning
"'Tis news, you have brought us, then, Christian?" said
Mrs. Yeobright.
 THE FASCINATION 179

"Ay, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o'

sure,
day; for, I, 'I must go and tell 'em, though they won't
says
have half done dinner.' I assure ye it made me shake like a
"
driven leaf. Do ye think any harm will come o't?
"Well—what?"
"This morning at church we was all standing up, and the
pa'son said, 'Let us pray/ 'Well,' thinks I, 'one may as
well kneel as stand'; so down I went; and, more than that,
all the rest were as willing to oblige the man as I. We hadn't
been hard at it for more than a minute when a most terrible
screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just
gied up their heart's blood. All the folk jumped up, and
then we found that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye
with a long stocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as
soon as ever she could get the young lady to church, where
she don't come very often. She've waited for this chance
for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the be-
witching of Susan's children that has been carried on so long.
Sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon as
she could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my
lady's arm."
"Good heaven, how horrid!" said Mrs. Yeobright.
"Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away;
and as I was afeard there might be some tumult among us,
I got behind the bass-viol and didn't see no more. But they
carried her out into the air, 'tis said; but when they looked

round Sue she was gone. What a scream that girl gied,
for
poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surplice holding
up his hand and saying, 'Sit down, my good people, sit down P
But the deuce a bit would they sit down. 0, and what d'ye
think I found out, Mrs. Yeobright? The pa'son wears a
suit of clothes under his surplice! —
I could see his black
sleeve when he held up his arm."
'"Tis a cruel thing," said Yeobright.
"Yes," said his mother.
" The nation ought to look into it," said Christian. "Here's
Humphrey coming, I think."
In came Humphrey. "Well, have ye heard the news?
But I see you have. 'Tis a very strange thing that when-
 180 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
ever one of Egdon folk goes to church some rum job or other
is sure to go on. The last time one of us was there was when
neighbor Fairway went in the fall; and that was the day you
forbade the banns, Mrs. Yeobright."
"Has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?"
said Clym.
"They say she got better, and went home very well. And
now I've told it I must be moving homeward myself."
"And I," said Humphrey. "Truly now we shall see if

there's anything in what about her."

folks say
When they were gone into the heath again Yeobright said
quietly to his mother, "Do you think I have turned teacher
too soon?"
"It is right that there should be schoolmasters, and mis-
sionaries, and all such men," she replied. "But it is right,
too, that I should try to lift you out of this life into some-
thing richer, and that you should not come back again, and
be as if I had not tried at all."

Later in the day Sam, the turf-cutter, entered. "I've

come a-borrowing, Mrs. Yeobright. I suppose you have
heard what's been happening to the beauty on the hill?"
\Vi^ "Yes, Sam: half a dozen have been telling us."
K^£ I"Beauty?" said Clym.
& "Yes, tolerably well-favored," Sam replied. "Lord! all
the country owns that 'tis one of the strangest things in
the world that such a woman should have come to live up
there."
"Dark or fair?"
"Now, though I've seen her twenty times, that's a thing
I cannot call to mind."
"Darker than Tamsin," murmured Mrs. Yeobright.
"A woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you
may say."
"She is melancholy, then?" inquired Clym.
"She mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the
people."
"Is she a young lady inclined for adventures?"
"Not to my knowledge."
 "

THE FASCINATION 181

"Doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some

sort of excitement in this lonely place ?"
"No."
"Mumming, for instance?"
"No. Her notions be different. I should rather say her
thoughts were far away from here, with lords and ladies she'll
never know, and mansions shell never see again."
Observing that Clym appeared singularly interested, Mrs.
Yeobright said rather uneasily to Sam, "You see more in her
than most of us do. Miss Vye is to my mind too idle to be
charming. I have never heard that she is of any use to her-
selfor to other people. Good girls don't get treated as
witches even on Egdon."
—
"Nonsense that proves nothing either way," said Yeo-
bright.
"Well, of course I don't understand such niceties," said
Sam, withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument;
"and what she is we must wait for time to tell us. The busi-
ness that I have really called about is this, to borrow the
longest and strongest rope you have. The captain's bucket
has dropped into the well, and they are in want of water;
and as all the chaps are at home to-day we think we can get
it out for him. We have three cart-ropes already, but they
won't reach to the bottom."
Mrs. Yeobright told him that he might have whatever
ropes he could find in the outhouse, and Sam went out to
search. When he passed by the door Clym joined him, and
accompanied him to the gate.
?
"Is this young witch-lady going to stay long at Mistover
he asked.
"I should say so."
"What a cruel shame to ill-use her! She must have suf-
—
fered greatly more in mind than in body."
—
" 'Twas a graceless trick such a handsome girl, too. You
ought to see her, Mr. Yeobright, being a young man come
from far, and with a little more to show for your years than
most of us."
"Do you think she would like to teach children?" sdd
Clym.
 —

182 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Sam shook his head. " Quite a different sort of body from
that, I reckon."
"O, it was merely something which occurred to me. It
would of course be necessary to see her and talk it over
not an easy thing, by the way, for my family and hers are
not very friendly."
"I'll tell you how you mid see her, Mr. Yeobright," said
Sam. "We are going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock
to-night at her house, and you could lend a hand. There's
five or six coming, but the well is deep, and another might
be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape. She's
sure to be walking round."
"I'll think of it," said Yeobright; and they parted.
He thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said
about Eustacia inside the house at that time. Whether this
romantic martyr to superstition and the melancholy mummer
he had conversed with under the full moon were one and the
same person remained as yet a problem.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST ACT IN TIMEWORN DRAMA

The afternoon was fine, and Yeobright walked on the

heath for an hour with his mother. When they reached the
lofty ridge which divided the valley of Blooms-End from the
adjoining valley they stood still and looked round. The
Quiet Woman Inn was visible on the low margin of the heath
in one direction, and afar on the other hand rose Mistover
Knap.
"You mean to call on Thomasin?" he inquired.
"Yes. But you need not come this time," said his mother.
"In that case I'll branch off here, mother. I am going to
Mistover."
Mrs. Yeobright turned to him inquiringly.
"I am going to help them get the bucket out of the cap-
tain's well," he continued. "As it is so very deep I may be
 " "

THE FASCINATION 183

useful. —
And I should like to see this Miss Vye not so much
for her good looks as for another reason.
"Must you go?" his mother asked.
"I thought to."
And they parted. "There is no help for it," murmured
Clym's mother gloomily as he withdrew. "They are sure to
see each other. I wish Sam would carry his news to other
houses than mine."
Clym's retreating figure got smaller and smaller as it rose
and fell over the hillocks on his way. " He is tender-hearted,
*
'

said Mrs. Yeobright to herself while she watched him; " other-
wise it would matter little. How he's going on
!

He was, indeed, walking with a will over the furze, as

straight as a line, as if his life depended upon it. His mother
drew a long breath, and turned to go back by the way she
had come. The evening films began to make nebulous pic-
tures of the valleys, but the high lands still were raked by
the declining rays of the winter sun, which glanced on Clym
as he walked forward, eyed by every rabbit and field-fare
around, a long shadow advancing in front of him.
On drawing near to the furze-covered bank and ditch which
fortified the captain's dwelling he could hear voices within,
signifying that operations had been already begun. At the
side-entrance gate he stopped and looked over.
Half a dozen able-bodied men were standing in a line from
,the well-mouth, holding a rope which passed over the well-
roller into the depths below. Fairway, with a piece of smaller
rope round his body, made fast to one of the standards, to
guard against accidents, was leaning over the opening, his
right hand clasping the vertical rope that descended- into the
well.
"Now, silence, folks," said Fairway.
The talking ceased, and Fairway gave a circular motion
to the rope, as if he were stirring batter. At the end of a
minute a dull splashing reverberated from the bottom of the
well; the helical twist he had imparted to the rope had reached
the grapnel below.
"Haul!" said Fairway; and the men who held the rope
began to gather it over the wheel.
184 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"I think we've got sommat," said one of the haulers-in.
"Then pull steady," said Fairway.
They gathered up more and more, till a regular dripping

into the well could be heard below. It grew smarter with

the increasing height of the bucket, and presently a hxmdred
and fifty feet of rope had been pulled in.
Fairway then lit a lantern, tied it to another cord, and
began lowering it into the well beside the first. Clym came
forward and looked down. Strange humid leaves, which
knew nothing of the seasons of the year, and quaint-natured
moss were revealed on the well-side as the lantern descended;
till its rays fell upon a confused mass of rope and bucket

dangling in the dank, dark air.

—
"We've only gotten by the edge of the hoop steady, for
!
God's sake " said Fairway.
They pulled with the greatest gentleness, till the wet
bucket appeared about two yards below them, like a dead
friend come to earth again. Three or four hands were
stretched out, then jerk went the rope, whizz went the wheel,
the two foremost haulers fell backward, the beating of a fall-
ing body was heard, receding down the sides of the well, and
a thunderous uproar arose at the bottom. The bucket was
gone again.
"Damn the bucket !" said Fairway.
"Lower again," said Sam.
"I'm as stiff as a ram's horn stooping so long," said Fair-

way, standing up and stretching himself till his joints creaked.

"Rest a few minutes, Timothy," said Yeobright. "I'll
take your place."
The grapnel was again lowered. Its smart impact upon
the distant water reached their ears like a kiss, whereupon
Yeobright knelt down, and leaning over the well began
dragging the grapnel round and round as Fairway had
done.
—
"Tie a rope round him it is dangerous !" cried a soft and
anxious voice somewhere above them.
Everybody turned. The speaker was a woman gazing
down upon the group from an upper window, whose panes
blazed in the ruddy glare from the west. Her lips were
 THE FASCINATION 185

parted and she appeared for the moment to forget where she
was.
The rope was accordingly tied round his waist, and the
work proceeded. At the next haul the weight was not
heavy, and it was discovered that they had only secured a
coil of the rope detached from the bucket. The tangled
mass was thrown into the background; Humphrey took Yeo-
bright's place, and the grapnel was lowered again.
Yeobright retired to the heap of recovered rope in a medi-
tative mood. Of the identity between the lady's voice and
that of the melancholy mummer he had not a moment's
doubt. "How thoughtful of her !" he said to himself.
Eustacia, who had reddened when she perceived the effect
of her exclamation upon the group below, was no longer to
be seen at the window, though Yeobright scanned it wist-
fully. While he stood there the men at the well succeeded
in getting up the bucket without a mishap. One of them
then went to inquire for the captain, to learn what orders he
wished to give for mending the well-tackle. The captain
proved to be away from home; and Eustacia appeared at the
door and came out. She had lapsed into an easy and digni-
fied calm, far removed from the intensity of life in her words,
of solicitude for Clym's safety.
"Will it be possible to draw water here to-night?" she
inquired.
"No, miss; the bottom of the bucket is clean knocked out.
And as we can do no more now we'll leave off, and come again
to-morrow morning."
"No water," she murmured, turning away.
"I can send you up some from Blooms-End," said Clym,
coming forward and raising his hat as the men retired.
Yeobright and Eustacia looked at each other for one in-
stant, as if each had in mind those few moments during which
a certain moonlit scene was common to both. With the
glance the calm fixity of her features sublimed itself to an
expression of refinement and warmth: it was like garish noon
rising to the dignity of sunset in a couple of seconds.
"Thank you; it will hardly be necessary/ she replied.
1

"But if you have no water?"

186 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Well, it is what I call no water," she said, blushing, and
lifting her long-lashed eyelids as if to lift them were a work
requiring consideration. "But my grandfather calls it water
enough. That is what I mean."
She moved away a few yards, and Clym followed. When
she reached the corner of the enclosure, where the steps were
formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with
a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement
towards the well. It incidentally showed that her apparent
languor did not arise from lack of force.
Clym ascended behind her, and noticed a circular burnt
patch at the top of the bank. "Ashes?" he said. .

"Yes," said Eustacia. "We had a little bonfire here last

fifth of November, and those are the marks of it."
On that spot had stood the fire she had kindled to attract
Wildeve.
"That's the only kind of water we have," she continued,
tossing a stone into the pool, which lay on the outside of the
bank like the white of an eye without its pupil. The stone
fell with a flounce, but no Wildeve appeared on the other

side, as on a previous occasion there. "My grandfather says

he lived for more than twenty years at sea on water twice as
bad as that," she went on, "and considers it quite good
enough for us here on an emergency."
"Well, as a matter of fact there are no impurities in the
water of these pools at this time of the year. It has only
just rained into them."
She shook her head. "I am managing to exist in a wilder-
ness, but I cannot drink from a pond," she said.
Clym looked towards the well, which was now deserted,
the men having gone home. "It is a long way to send for
spring- water," he said, after a silence. "But since you don't
like this in the pond, I'll try to get you some myself." He
went back to the well. "Yes, I think I could do it by tying
on this pail."
"But, since I would not trouble the men to get it, I can-
not in conscience let you."
"I don't mind the trouble at all."
He made fast the pail to the long coil of rope, put it over
 ^
THE FASCINATION 187

the wheel, and allowed it to descend by letting the rope slip

through his hands. Before it had gone far, however, he
checked it.
"I must make fast the end first, or we may lose the whole,"
he said to Eustacia, who had drawn near. "Could you hold
this a moment, while I do it —
or shall I call your servant?"
"I can hold it," said Eustacia; and he placed the rope in
her hands, going then to search for the end.
"I suppose I may let it slip down?" she inquired.
"I would advise you not to let it go far," said Clym. "It
will get much heavier, you will find."
However, Eustacia had begun to pay out. While he was
!"
tying she cried, "I cannot stop it
Clym ran to her side, and found he could only check the
rope by twisting the loose part round the upright post, when
it stopped with a jerk. "Has it hurt you?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Very much?"
"No; I think not." She opened her hands. One of them
was bleeding; the rope had dragged off the skin. Eustacia
wrapped it in her handkerchief.
"You should have let go," said Yeobright. "Why didn't
you?"
"You said I was to hold on. This is the second time
. . .

I have been wounded to-day."

"Ah, yes; I have heard of it. I blush for my native Eg-
don. Was it a serious injury you received in church, Miss
Vye?"
There was such an abundance of sympathy in Clym's tone
that Eustacia slowly drew up her sleeve and disclosed her
round white arm. A bright red spot appeared on its smooth
surface, like a ruby on Parian marble.
"There it is," she said, putting her finger against the spot.
"It was dastardly of the woman," said Clym. "Will not
Captain Vye get her punished?"
"He is gone from home on that very business. I did not
know that I had such a magic reputation."
"And you fainted? " said Clym, looking at the scarlet little
puncture as if he would like to kiss it and make it well.
 "'^
"'
,
,:
''
i\l C ?i '. i- r '
:

' '" '

'
"'

188 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Yes, it frightened me. I had not been to church for a
long time. And now I shall not go again for ever so long
perhaps never. I cannot face their eyes after this. Don't
you think it dreadfully humiliating? I wished I was dead
for hours after, but I don't mind now."
"I have come to clean away these cobwebs," said Yeo-
bright. "Would you like to help me by high class teach- —
ing? We might benefit them much."
"I don't quite feel anxious to. I have not much love for
my fellow-creatures. Sometimes I quite hate them."
"Still I think that if you were to hear my scheme you
might take an interest in it. There is no use in hating peo-
—
ple if you hate anything, you should hate what produced
them."
"Do you mean Nature? I hate her already. But I shall
be glad to hear your scheme at any time."
The situation had now worked itself out, and the next
natural thing was for them to part. Clym knew this well
enough, and Eustacia made a move of conclusion; yet he
looked at her as if he had one word more to say. Perhaps if
he had not lived in Paris it would never have been uttered.
"We have met before," he said, regarding her with rather
more interest than was necessary.
"I do not own it," said Eustacia, with a repressed, still
look.
"But I may think what I like."
"Yes."
/"You are lonely here."
'

"I cannot endure the heath, except in its purple season.

The heath is a cruel taskmaster to me."
\J "Can you say so?" he asked. "To my mind it is most
exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. I would
rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world."
"It is well enough for artists; but I never would learn to
draw."
"And there is a very curious Druidical stone just out
there." He threw a pebble in the direction signified. "Do
you often go to see it?"
"I was not even aware that there existed any such curious
 THE FASCINATION 189

Druidical stone. I am aware that there are Boulevards in

Paris."
Yeobright looked thoughtfully on the ground. "That
means much/' he said.
"It does indeed, " said Eustacia.
"I remember when I had the same longing for town bustle.
Five years of a great city would be a perfect cure for that."
"Heaven send me such a cure! Now, Mr. Yeobright, I
will go indoors and plaster my wounded hand."
They separated, and Eustacia vanished in the increasing
shade. She seemed full of many things. Her past was a
blank, her life had begun. The effect upon Clym of this
meeting he did not fully discover till some time after. Dur-
ing his walk home his most intelligible sensation was that
his scheme had somehow become glorified, A beautiful
woman had been intertwined with it.
On reaching the house he went up to the room which was
to be made and occupied himself during the eve-
his study,
ning in unpacking his books from the boxes and arranging
them on shelves. From another box he drew a lamp and a
can of oil. He trimmed the lamp, arranged his table, and
said, "Now, I am ready to begin."

He rose early the next morning, read two hours before

—
breakfast by the light of his lamp read all the morning, all
the afternoon. Just when the sun was going down his eyes
felt weary, and he leant back in his chair.
His room overlooked the front of the premises and the
valley of the heath beyond. The lowest beams of the win-
ter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings,
across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale,
where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding
tree-tops stretched forth in long dark prongs. Having been
seated at work all day, he decided to take a turn upon the
hills before it got dark and, going out forthwith, he struck
across the heath towards Mistover.
It was an hour and a half later when he again appeared
at the garden gate. The shutters of the house were closed,
and Christian Cantle, who had been wheeling manure about
190 THE KETURN OF THE NATIVE
the garden all day, had gone home. On entering he found
that his mother, after waiting a long time for him, had fin-
ished her meal.
"Where have you been, Clym?" she immediately said.
"Why didn't you tell me that you were going away at this
time?"
"I have been on the heath."
"You'll meet Eustacia Vye if you go up there."
Clym paused a minute. "Yes, I met her this evening,"
he said, as though it were spoken under the sheer necessity
of preserving honesty.
"I wondered if you had."
"It was no appointment."
"No; such meetings never are."
"But you are not angry, mother?"
"I can hardly say that I am not. Angry? No. But
when I consider the usual nature of the drag which causes
men of promise to disappoint the world I feel uneasy."
"You deserve credit for the feeling, mother. But I can
assure you that you need not be disturbed by it on my ac-
count."
"When I think of you and your new crotchets," said Mrs.
Yeobright, with some emphasis, "I naturally don't feel so
comfortable as I did a twelvemonth ago. It is incredible to
me that a man accustomed to the attractive women of Paris
and elsewhere should be so easily worked upon by a girl
in a heath. You could just as well have walked another
way."
"I had been studying all day."
"Well, yes," she added more hopefully, "I have been think-
ing that you might get on as a schoolmaster, and rise that
way, since you really arc determined to hate the course you
were pursuing."
Yeobright was unwilling to disturb this idea, though his
scheme was far enough removed from one wherein the edu-
cation of youth should be made a mere channel of social
ascent. He had no desires of that sort. He had reached the
stage in a young man's life when the grimness of the general
human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of
 —

THE FASCINATION 191

this causes ambition to halt awhile. In France it is not un-

customary to commit suicide at this stage; in England we do
much better, or much worse, as the case may be.
The love between the young man and his mother was
strangely invisible now. Of love it may be said, the less
earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestruc-
tible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of
itself is painful. It was so with these. Had conversations
between them been overheard, people would have said, "How
!"
cold they are to each other
His theory and his wishes about devoting his future to
teaching had made an impression on Mrs. Yeobright. In-
deed, how could it be otherwise when he was a part of her
when their discourses were as if carried on between the right
and the left hands of the same body? He had despaired of
reaching her by argument; and it was almost as a discovery
to him that he could reach her by a magnetism which was
as superior to words as words are to yells.
Strangely enough he began to feel now that it would not
be so hard to persuade her who was his best friend that com-
parative poverty was essentially the higher course for him,
as to reconcile to his feelings the act of persuading her.
From every provident point of view his mother was so un-
doubtedly right, that he was not without a sickness of heart
in finding he could shake her.
She had a singular insight into life, considering that she
had never mixed with it. There are instances of persons
who, without clear ideas of the things they criticize, have
yet had clear ideas of the relations of those things. Black-
lock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects
with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind,
gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory
of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere
these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world
which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have
only heard. We call it intuition.
What was the great world to Mrs. Yeobright? A multi-
tude whose tendencies could be perceived, though not its
essences. Communities were seen by her as from a distance;
192 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
she saw them as we see the throngs which
cover the canvases
of Sallaert, Van Alsloot, and others of —
that school vast
masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in
definite directions, but whose features are indistinguishable
by the very comprehensiveness of the view.
One could see that, as far as it had gone, her life was
very complete on its reflective side. The philosophy of her
nature, and its limitation by circumstances, was almost
written in her movements. They had a majestic foundation,
though they were far from being majestic; and they had a
groundwork of assurance, but they were not assured. As
her once elastic walk had become deadened by time, so had
her natural pride of life been hindered in its blooming by
her necessities.
The next slight touch in the shaping of Clym's destiny
occurred a few days after. A barrow was opened on the
heath, and Yeobright attended the operation, remaining
away from his study during several hours. In the afternoon
Christian returned from a journey in the same direction,
and Mrs. Yeobright questioned him.
"They have dug a hole, and they have found things like
flower-pots upside down, Mis'ess Yeobright; and inside these
be real charnel bones. They have carried 'em off to men's
houses; but I shouldn't like to sleep where they will bide.
Dead folks have been known to come and claim their own.
Mr. Yeobright had got one pot of the bones, and was going
— —
to bring 'em home real skellington bones but 'twas or-
dered otherwise. You'll be relieved to hear that he gave
away his, pot and all, on second thoughts; and a blessed
thing for ye, Mis'ess Yeobright, considering the wind o'
nights."
"Gave it away?"
"Yes. To Miss Vye. She has a cannibal taste for such
churchyard furniture seemingly."
"Miss Vye was there too?"
"Ay, 'a b'lieve she was."
When Clym came home, which was shortly after, his
mother said, in a curious tone, "The urn you had meant for
me you gave away."
 THE FASCINATION 193

Yeobright made no reply; the current of her feeling was

too pronounced to admit it.
The early weeks of the year passed on. Yeobright cer-
tainly studied at home, but he also waited much abroad,
and the direction of his walk was always towards some point
of a line between Mistover and Rainbarrow.
The month of March arrived, and the heath showed its
first faint signs of awakening from winter trance. The
awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness. The pool
outside the bank by Eustacia's dwelling, which seemed as
dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and
made noises in his observation, would gradually disclose a
state of great animation when silently watched awhile. A
timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little
tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and
to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young
ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; over-
head, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening
light, their drone coming and going like the sound of a
gong.
On an evening such as this Yeobright descended into the
Blooms-End valley from beside that very pool, where he had
been standing with another person quite silently and quite
long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in na-
ture; yet he had not heard it. His walk was rapid as he
came down, and he went with a springy tread. Before en-
tering upon his mother's ^premises he stopped and breathed.
The light which shone forth on him from the window revealed
that his face was flushed and his eye bright. What it did
not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a
seal set there. The abiding presence of this impress was
so real that he hardly dared to enter the house, for it seemed
as if his mother might say, "What red spot is that glowing
upon your mouth so vividly?"
But he entered soon after. The tea was ready, and he
sat down opposite his mother. She did not speak many
words; and as for him, something had been just done and
some words had been just said on the hill which prevented
him from beginning a desultory chat. His mother's taci-
 —

194 THE KETUKN OF THE NATIVE"

turnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not
to care. He knew why little, but he could not
she said so
remove the cause toward him. These half-
of her bearing
silent sittings were far from uncommon with them now. At
last Yeobright made a beginning of what was intended to
strike at the whole root of the matter.
"Five days have we sat like this at meals with scarcely
a word. What's the use of it, mother?"
"None," said she, in a heart-swollen tone. "But there is
only too good a reason."
" Not when you know all. I have been wanting to speak
about this, and am
glad the subject is begun. The reason,
I
of course, is Eustacia Vye. Well, I confess I have seen her
lately, and have seen her a good many times."
"Yes, yes; and I know what that amounts to. It troubles
me, Clym. You are wasting your life here; and it is solely
on account of her. If it had not been for that woman you
would never have entertained this teaching scheme at all."
Clym looked hard at his mother. "You know that is not
it," he said.
"Yes, I know you had decided to attempt it before you
saw her; but that would have ended in intentions. It was
very well to talk of, but ridiculous to put in practice. I fully
expected that in the course of a month or two you would
have seen the folly of such self-sacrifice, and would have
been by this time back again to Paris in some business or
other. I can understand objections to the diamond trade
I really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life
of a man like you even though it might have made you a
millionaire. But now I see how mistaken you are about
this girl I doubt if you could be correct about other things."
"How am I mistaken in her?"
"She is lazy and dissatisfied. But that is not all of it.
Supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find,
which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect your-
self with anybody at present ?
"
"Well, there are practical reasons," Clym began, and then
almost broke off under an overpowering sense of the weight
of argument which could be brought against his statement.
 !

v-r. *>.
.
f .

THE FASCINATION (

^ 405 f

"If I take a school an educated woman would be invaluable

as a help to me."
"What! you really mean to marry her?"
"It would be premature to state that plainly. But con-
sider what obvious advantages there would be in doing it.
"
She
"Don't suppose she has any money. She hasn't a far-
thing."
"She is and would make a good
excellently educaced,
matron in a boarding-school. I candidly own that I have
modified my views a little, in deference to you; and it should
satisfy you. tj no longer adhere to my intention of jiving
jvjlh .jny^owiL mouth xu<hmen|ary e'SucationHEo TEe" lowest
,

class. I can do better. I_ c&n establish tt gffo'd"private"school

,
!PoT^arrners sons, and without stopping tlie~scEooTTl5afc
TMIage to" pass examinations. By this means, and by the
"
assistance of a wife like her
"0, Clym!"
"I shall ultimately, I hope, be at the head of one of the
best schools in the county."
Yeobright had enunciated the word "her" with a fervor
which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indis-
creet. Hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could,
in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that
ill-timed betrayal of feeling for a new woman.
"You are blinded, Clym," she said warmly. "It was a
bad day for you when you first set eyes on her. And your
scheme is merely a castle in the air built on purpose to jus-
tify this folly which has seized you, and to salve your con-
science on the irrational situation you are in."
"Mother, that's not true," he firmly answered.
"Can you maintain that I sit and tell untruths, when all
I wish to is to save you from sorrow?
do For shame, Clym
But through that woman a hussy
it is all —!"

Clym reddened like fire and rose. He placed his hand

upon his mother's shoulder and said, in a tone which hung
strangely between entreaty and command, "I won't hear it.
I may be led. to answer you in a way which we shall both
regret."
196 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
His mother parted her lips to begin some other vehement
truth, but on looking at him she saw that in his face which
led her to leave the words unsaid. Yeobright walked once
or twice across the room, and then suddenly went out of
the house. It was eleven o'clock when he came in, though
he had not been further than the precincts of the garden.
His mother was gone to bed. A light was left burning on
the table, and supper was spread. Without partaking of
any food he secured the doors and went upstairs.

CHAPTER IV

AN HOUR, OF BLISS AND MANY HOURS OF SADNESS

The next day was gloomy enough at Blooms-End. Yeo-
bright remained in his study, sitting over the open books;
but the work of those hours was miserably scant. Deter-
mined that there should be nothing in his conduct toward
his mother resembling sullenness, he had occasionally spoken
to her on passing matters, and would take no notice of the
brevity of her replies. With the same resolve to keep up
a show of conversation he-Bf&d, about seven o'clock in the
evening, "There's an ex&pgl) of the moon to-night. I am
going out to see it." A^a, putting on his overcoat, he left
her.
The low moon was not as yet visible from the front of
the house, and Yeobright climbed out of the valley until he
stood in the full flood of her light. But even now he walked
on, and his steps were in the direction of Rainbarrow.
In half an hour he stood at the top. The sky was clear
from verge to verge, and the moon flung her rays over the
whole heath, but without sensibly lighting it, except where
paths and water-courses had laid bare the white flints and
glistening quartz sand, which made streaks upon the gen-
eral shade. After standing awhile he stooped and felt the
heather. It was dry, and he flung himself down upon the
barrow, his face towards the moon, which depicted a small
image of herself in each of his eyes.
 —

THE FASCINATION 197

He had often come up here without stating his purpose to

his mother; but this was the first time that he had been
ostensibly frank as to his purpose while really concealing it.
It was a moral situation which, three months earlier, he
could have hardly credited of himself. In returning to
labor in this sequestered spot he had anticipated an escape
from the chafing of social necessities; yet behold they were
here also. More than ever he longed to be in some world
where personal ambition was not the only recognized form
of progress —
such, perhaps, as might have been the case at
some time or other in the silvery globe then shining upon
him. His eye traveled over the length and breadth of that
distant country— over the Bay of Rainbows, the somber Sea
of Crises, the Ocean of Storms, the Lake of Dreams, the
vast Walled Plains, and the wondrous Ring Mountains
till he almost felt himself to be voyaging bodily through

its wild scenes, standing on its hollow hills, traversing its

deserts, descending its vales and old sea bottoms, or mount-
ing to the edges of its craters.
While he watched the far-removed landscape a tawny
stain grew into being on the lower verge: the eclipse had
begun. This marked a preconcerted moment; for the re-
mote phenomenon had been pressed into sublunary
celestial
service as a lover's signal. Yeobright's mind flew back to
earth at the sight; he arose, shook himself, and listened.
Minute after minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed,
and the shadow on the moon perceptibly widened. He heard
a rustling on his left hand, a cloaked figure with an upturned
face appeared at the base of the Barrow, and Clym de-
scended. In a moment the figure was in his arms, and his
lips upon hers.
"MyEustacia!"
" Clym, dearest!"
Such a situation had less than three months brought
forth. •»

They remained long without a single utterance, for no

language could reach the level of their condition: words were
as the rusty implements of a by-gone barbarous epoch; and
only to be occasionally tolerated.
198 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"I began to wonder why you did not come/' said Yeo-
bright,when she had withdrawn a little from his embrace.
"You said ten minutes after the first mark of shade on
the edge of the moon; and that's what it is now."
"Well, let us only think that here we are."
Then holding each other's hand, they were again silent,
and the shadow on the moon's disc grew a little larger.
"Has it seemed long since you last saw me?" she asked.
"It has seemed sad."
"And not long? That's because you occupy yourself,
and so blind yourself to my absence. To me, who can do
nothing, it has been like living under stagnant water."
"I would rather bear tediousness, dear, than have time
made short by the means that mine has been shortened."
"In what way is that? You have been thinking you
wished you did not love me."
"How can a man wish that, and yet love on? No,
Eustacia."
"Men can, women cannot."
"Well, whatever I may have thought, one thing is certain
-^fcdo Jkge yQi3LrP^Jt^^SSS^B2;ss an d description. ^! love
voi; tp oppressjvegess—I, who have^h^veFtretoiTC" felt more""
than a pleasanT^assing fancy for any woman I have ever
seen. Let me look right into your moonlit face, and dwell
on every line and curve in it! Only a few hair-breadths
make the difference between this face and faces I have seen
many times before I knew you; yet what a difference the —
difference between everything and nothing at all. One
touch on that mouth again! there, and there, and there.
Your eyes seem heavy, Eustacia."
"No, it is my general way of looking. I think it arises
from my feeling sometimes an agonizing pity for myself
that I ever was born."
"You don't feel it now?"
"No.* Yet I know that we shall not love like this always.
Nothing can insure the continuance of love. It will evap-
orate like a spirit, and so I feel full of fears."
"You need not."
"Ah, you don't know. You have seen more than I, and
 THE FASCINATION 199
s
have been into cities and among people that I have only
heard of, and have liveoUmore years than I; but yet I am
older at this than you. fl loved another man once, and now ,.

I love you A v
"In God^B mercy don't talk so, Eustacia!"
"But I do not think I shall be the one who wearies first.
It will, I fear, end in this way: your mother will find out
that you meet me, and she will influence you against
me!"
"That can never be. She knows of these meetings al-
ready."
"And she speaks against me?"
x
" I will not say ." \

^"Jhere, go away! Obey her. sh^Ujuin_ you\ It is

I
foolish of you to meeTmelike this. """Kiss me, an3~go away
for ever. —
For ever do you hear? for ever!"—
"Notl."
"It is your only chance. Many a man's love has been a
curse to him."
"You are desperate, full of fancies, and willful; and you
misunderstand. I have an additional reason for seeing you
to-night besides love of you. For though, unlike you, I
feel our affection may be eternal, I feel with you in this,
that our present mode of existence cannot last."
"0 'tis your mother. Yes, that's it I knew it."
! !

"Never mind what it is. Believe this, I cannot let my-

self lose you. I must have you always with me. This very
evening I do not like to let you go. There is only one cure
—
for this anxiety, dearest you must be my wife."
She started: then endeavored to say calmly, "Cynics say
that cures the anxiety by curing the love."
"But you must answer me. Shall I claim you some day
— I don't mean at once?"
"I must think," Eustacia murmured. "At present speak
of Paris to me. Is there any place like it on earth?"
"It is very beautiful. But will you be mine?"
"I will —
be nobody else's in the world does that satisfy
you?"
"Yes. for the nresent."
 •
c
200 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Now tell me of the Tuileries, and the Louvre," she con-
tinued evasively.
"I hate talking of Paris! Well, I remember one sunny
room in the Louvre which would make a fitting place for
—
you to live in the Galerie d'Apollon. Its windows are
mainly east; and in the early morning, when the sun is
bright, the whole apartment is in a perfect blaze of splendor.
The rays bristle and dart from the encrustations of gilding
to the magnificent inlaid coffers, from the coffers to the gold
and silver plate, from the plate to the jewels and precious
stones, from these to the enamels, till there is a perfect net-
work of light which quite dazzles the eyes. But now, about
"
our marriage
—
"And Versailles the King's Gallery is some such gor-
geous room, is it not?"
"Yes. But what's the use of talking of gorgeous rooms?
By the way, the Little Trianon would suit us beautifully to
live in, and you might walk in the gardens in the moonlight
and think you were in some English shrubbery; it is laid
out in English fashion."
"I should hate to think that!"
"Then you could keep to the lawn in front of the Grand
Palace. All about there you would doubtless feel in a world
of historical romance."
He went on, since it was all new to her, and described
Fontainebleau, St. Cloud, the Bois, and many other familiar
haunts of the Parisians; till she said:
"When used you to go to these places?"
"On Sundays."
"Ah, yes. I dislike English Sundays. How I should
chime in with their manners over there Dear Clym, you'll
!

go back again?"
Clym shook his head, and looked at the eclipse.
—
"If you'll go back again I'll be something," she said
tenderly, putting her head near his breast. "If you'll agree
I'll give my promise, without making you wait a minute

longer."
"How extraordinary that you and my mother should be
of one mind about this!" said Yeobright. "I have vowed
 '

THE FASCINATION 201

not to go back, Eustacia. It is not the place I dislike; it

is the occupation.'
"But you can go in some other capacity."
"No. Besides, it would interfere with my scheme. Don't
press that, Eustacia. Will you marry me?"
"I cannot tell."
—
"Now never mind Paris; it is no better than other spots.
Promise, sweet!"
'
Y
ou je dlLjagver adhere .io^ your education plan, I am
qjm^Tjure; and then it will be afl'rignT'ior'me; and so I
promise to be yours for ever and ever."
Clym brought her face towards his by a gentle pressure of
the hand, and kissed her.
"Ah! but you don't know what you have got in me," she
said % "Sometimes I think there is not that in Eustacia
Vye which will make a good homespun wife. Well, let it
—
go see how our time is slipping, slipping, slipping!" She
pointed towards the half eclipsed moon.
"You are too mournful."
"No. Only I dread to think of anything beyond the pres-
ent. What is, we know. We are together now, and it is
unknown how long we shall be so: the unknown always
fills my mind with terrible possibilities, even when I may

reasonably expect it to be cheerful. . . Clym, the eclipsed

.

moonlight shines upon your face with a strange foreign

color, and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold. That
means that you should be doing better things than this."
—
"You are ambitious, Eustacia no, not exactly ambitious,
luxurious. I ought to be of the same vein, to make you
happy, I suppose. And yet, far from that, I could live and
die in a hermitage here, with proper work to do."
There was that in his tone which implied distrust of his
position as a solicitous lover, a doubt if he were acting fairly
towards one whose tastes touched his own only at rare and
infrequent points. She saw his meaning, and whispered, in
a low, full accent of eager assurance, "Don't mistake me,
Clym: thoujgjiJM^ I love you for yourself
alone. To be your wife and live In" Paris" would be heaven
to me; but I would rather live with you in a hermitage here
 202 THE RETURN* OF THE NATIVE
^ than not be yours at all. It is gain to me either way and
very^gf^alr^atfi. There's my too candid confession."
"Spoken like a woman. And now I must soon leave you.
I'llwalk with you towards your house."
"But must you go home yet?" she asked. "Yes, the
sand has nearly slipped away, I see, and the eclipse is creep-
ing on more and more. Don't go yet Stop till the hour
!

has run itself out; then I will not press you any more. You
will go home and sleep well; I keep sighing in my sleep Do !

you ever dream of me?"

"I cannot recollect a clear dream of you."
"I see your face in every scene of my dreams, and hear
your voice in ever^usound. I wish I did not. It is too
much what I feel. | TJiey say such love never lasts.1 But it
must And yet once, I remember, I saw an officer pf the
!

Hussars ride down the street at Budmouth, and though he

was a total stranger and never spoke to me, I loved him
till I thought I should really die of love —
but I didn't die,
and at him. How terrible it would
last I left off caring for
be if a time should come when I could not love you, my
Clym!"
"Please don't say such reckless things. When we see
such a time at hand we will say, r I have oi jtlivp^ my faith
I

and purpose,' and die. There, the^olornbasexpired: now

letTis^wBhc^n/'
Hand in hand they went along the path towards Mistover.
When they were near the house he said, "It is too late for
me to see your grandfather to-night. Do you think he will
object fco it?"
"I will speak to him. I am so accustomed to be my own
mistress that it did not occur to me that we should have to
ask him."
Then they lingeringly separated, and Clym descended
towards Blooms-End.
And as he walked further and further from the charmed
atmosphere of his Olympian girl his face grew sad with a
new sort of sadness. A perception of the dilemma in which
his love had placed him came back
in full force. In spite
of Eustacia's apparent willingness to wait through the period
 !

THE FASCINATION 203

of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established

in his new pursuit, he could not but perceive at moments
that she loved him rather as a visitant from a gay world
to which she rightly belonged than as a man with a purpose
opposed to that recent past of his which so interested her.
Often at their meetings a word or a sigh escaped her. It
meant that, though she made no conditions as to his return
to the FrenctM&EpitEt; this was whar^he'^cretry loripd for
T!f"13ier event of marriage; and it robbed him of many an
otherwise pleasant hour. Along with that came the widen-
ing breach between himself and his mother. Whenever any
little occurrence had brought into more prominence than
usual the disappointment that he was causing her it had
sent him on lone and moody walks; or he was kept awake
a great part of the night by the turmoil of spirit which such
a recognition created. If Mrs. Yeobright could only have
been led to see what a sound and worthy purpose this pur-
pose of his was and how little it was being affected by his
devotion to Eustacia, how differently would she regard him
Thus as his sight grew accustomed to the first blinding
halo kindled about him by love and beauty, Yeobright be-
gan to perceive what a strait he was in. Sometimes he
wished that he had never known Eustacia, immediately to
retract the wish as brutal. \Three antagonistic growths had
to be^ kept- alive :| his mothe7s"'Tftrst'tjt-Ihotj jjhte "plan for
TBecoming a teacher^tencT^ happiness. TIisTefVid
nature "could not afToT^cTToHFeT^ of these, though
two of the three were as many as he could hope to preserve.
Though his love was as chaste as that of Petrarch for his
Laura, it had made fetters of what previously was only a
difficulty. A position which was not too simple when he
stood whole-hearted had become indescribably complicated
by the addition of Eustacia. Just when his mother was
beginning to tolerate one scheme he had introduced another
still bitterer than the first, and the combination was more

than she could bear.

 "

204 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER V
SHARP WORDS ARE SPOKEN AND A CRISIS ENSUES
When Yeobright was not with Eustacia he was sitting
when he was not reading he was
slavishly over his books;
meeting her. These meetings were carried on with the
greatest secrecy.
One afternoon his mother came home from a morning
visit to Thomasin. He could see from a disturbance in the
lines of her face that something had happened.
7
"I have been told an incomprehensible thing/ she said
mournfully. "The captain has let out at the Woman that
you and Eustacia Vye are engaged to be married.
"We are," said Yeobright. "But it may not be yet for
a very long time."
"I should hardly think it would be yet for a very long
time! You will take her to Paris, I suppose?" She spoke
with weary hopelessness.
"I am not going back to Paris."
"What will you do with a wife, then?"
"Keep a school in Budmouth, as I have told you."
"That's incredible! The place is overrun with school-
masters. You have no special qualifications. What possi-
ble chance is there for such as you?"
"There is no chance of getting rich. But with my sys-
tem of education, which is as new as it is true, I shall do a
great deal of good to my fellow-creatures."
"Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to
be invented they would have found it out at the universities
long before this time."
"Never, mother. They cannot find it out, because their
teachers don't come in contact with the class which demands
—
such a system that is, those who have had no preliminary
training. My plan is one for instilling high knowledge into
empty minds without first cramming them with what has
to be uncrammed again before true study begins."
 —

THE FASCINATION 205

"I might have believed you if you had kept yourself free
—
from entanglements; but this woman if she had been a
"
good girl it would have been bad enough; but being
"She is a good girl/'
"So you think. A foreign bandmaster's daughter What !

has her life been? Her surname even is not her true one."
"She is Captain Vye's grand-daughter, and her father
merely took her mother's name. And she is a lady by in-
stinct."
"They call him 'captain/ but anybody is captain."
"He was in the Royal Navy !"
" No doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. Why
doesn't he look after her? No lady would rove about the
heath at all hours of the day and night as she does. But
that's not all of it. There was something queer between
—
her and Thomasin's husband at one time I am as sure of
it as that I stand here."
"Eustacia has told me. He did pay her a little attention
a year ago; but there's no harm in that. I like her all the
better."
"Clym," said mother with firmness, "I have no proofs
his
against her, unfortunately. But if she makes you a good
wife, there has never been a bad one."
"Believe me, you are almost exasperating," said Yeo-
bright vehemently. "And this very day I had intended to
arrange a meeting between you. But you give me no peace;
you try to thwart my wishes in everything."
"I hate the thought of any son of mine marrying badly!
I wish I had never lived to see this; it is too much for me
it is more than I thought!" She turned to the window.
Her breath was coming quickly, and her lips were pale,
parted, and trembling.
"Mother," said Clym, "whatever you do, you will always
—
be dear to me that you know. But one thing I have a
right to say, which is, that at my age I am old enough to
know what is best for me."
Mrs. Yeobright remained for some time silent and shaken,
as if she could say no more. Then she replied, "Best? Is
it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous,
 " "

206 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

idle woman as that? Don't you see that by the very fact
of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what
is best for you? You give up your whole thought you set—
—
your whole soul to please a woman."
"I do. And that woman is you."
"How can you treat me so flippantly!" said his mother,
turning again to him with a tearful look. "You are un-
natural, Clym, and I did not expect it."
"Very likely," said he cheerlessly. "You did not know
the measure you were going to mete me, and therefore did
not know the measure that would be returned to you again."
"You answer me; you think only of her. You stick to her
in all things."
"That proves her to be worthy. I have never yet sup-
ported what is bad. And I do not care only for her. I care
for you and for myself, and for anything that is good. When
a woman once dislikes another she is merciless !

"0 Clym! please don't go setting down as my fault what

is your obstinate wrong-headedness. If you wished to con-
nect yourself with an unworthy person why did you come
home here to do it? Why didn't you do it in Paris? it is —
more the fashion there. You have come only to distress
me, a lonely woman, and shorten my days ! I wish that you
!
would bestow your presence where you bestow your love
Clym said huskily, "You are my mother. I will say no
—
more beyond this, that I beg your pardon for having
thought this my home. I will no longer inflict myself upon
you; I'll go." And he went out with tears in his eyes.
It was a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer,
and the moist hollows of the heath had passed from their
brown to their green stage. Yeobright walked to the edge
of the basin which extended down from Mistover and Rain-
barrow. By this time he was calm, and he looked over the
landscape. In the minor valleys, between the hillocks which
diversified the contour of the vale, the fresh young ferns
were luxuriantly growing up, ultimately to reach a height
of five or six feet. He descended a little way, flung him-
self down in a spot where a path emerged from one of the
small hollows, and waited. Hither it was that he had prom-
 THE FASCINATION 207

ised Eustacia to bring his mother this afternoon, that they

might meet and be friends. His attempt had utterly failed.
He was in a nest of vivid green. The ferny vegetation
round him, though so abundant, was quite uniform: it was
a grove of machine-made foliage, a world of green triangles
with saw-edges, and not a single flower. The air was warm
with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness was unbroken.
Lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living things
to be beheld. The scene seemed to belong to the ancient
world of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants
were few, and of the fern kind; when there was neither bud
nor blossom, nothing but a monotonous extent of leafage,
amid which no bird sang.
When he had reclined for some considerable time, gloom-
ily pondering, he discerned above the ferns a drawn bonnet
of white silk approaching from the left, and Yeobright knew
directly that it covered the head of her he loved. His heart
awoke from its apathy to a warm excitement and, jumping
to his feet, he said aloud, "I knew she was sure to come."
She vanished in a hollow for a few moments, and then
her whole form unfolded itself from the brake.
"Only you here?" she exclaimed, with a disappointed air,
whose hollowness was proved by her rising redness and her
half -guilty low laugh. "Where is Mrs. Yeobright?"
"She has not come," he replied in a subdued tone.
"I wish I had known that you would be here alone," she
said seriously, "and that we were going to have such an
idle, pleasant time as this. Pleasure not known beforehand
is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it. I have not
thought once to-day of having you all to myself this after-
noon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone."
"It is indeed."
"Poor Clym!" she continued, looking tenderly into his
face. "You are sad. Something has happened at your
—
home. Never mind what is let us only look at what
seems."
"But, darling, what shall we do?" said he.
"Still go on as we do now —
just live on from meeting to
meeting, never minding about another day. You, I know,
208 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
are always thinking of that — I can see you are. But you
must not — will you, dear Clym?"
"You are just like all women. They are ever content to
build their lives on any incidental position that offers itself;
whilst men would fain make a
globe to suit them. Listen
to this, Eustacia. There
a subject I have determined to
is

put off no longer. Your sentiment on the wisdom of Carpe

diem does not impress me to-day. Our present mode of
life must shortly be brought to an end."

"It is your mother!"

"It is. I love you none the less in telling you; it is only
right you should know."
"I have feared my bliss," she said, with the merest motion
of her lips. "It has been too intense and consuming."
"There is hope yet. There are forty years of work in me
yet, and why should you despair? I am only at an awk-
ward turning. I wish people wouldn't be so ready to think
that there is no progress without uniformity."
—
"Ah your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it.
Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one
sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the
cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in. I have heard of
people, who, upon coming suddenly into happiness, have
died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy it. I
felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but
I shall be spared it now. Let us walk on."
Clym took the hand which was already bared for him it —
was a favorite way with them to walk bare hand in bare
—
hand and led her through the ferns. They formed a very
comely picture of love at full flush, as they walked along the
valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down on their
right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as poplar
trees, far out across the furze and fern. Eustacia went with
her head thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and volup-
tuous air of triumph pervading her eyes at having won by
her own unaided self a man who was her perfect complement
in attainments, appearance, and age. On the young man's
part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him
from Paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought,
 THE FASCINATION 209

were less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful'

and energetic sturdiness which was his by nature having,
partially recovered its original proportions. They wandered
onward they reached the nether margin of the heatk,
till

where it became marshy, and merged in moorland.

"I must part from you here, Clym," said Eustacia.
They stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell.
Everything before them was on a perfect level. The sun,
resting on the horizon line, streamed across the ground from
between copper-colored and lilac clouds, stretched out in
flats beneath a sky of pale soft green. All dark objects on
the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread by a
purple haze, against which groups of wailing gnats shone out,
rising upwards and dancing about like sparks of fire.
"0! this leaving you is too hard to bear!" exclaimed
Eustacia in a sudden whisper of anguish. "Your mother
will influence you too much; I shall not be judged fairly, it
will get afloat that I am not a good girl, and the witch story
will be added to make me blacker!"
"They cannot. Nobody dares to speak disrespectfully of
you or of me."
"0 how I wish I was sure of never losing you that you —
could not be able to desert me anyhow!"
Clym stood silent a moment. His feelings were high,
the moment was passionate, and he cut the knot.
"You shall be sure of me, darling," he said, folding her
in his arms. "We will be married at once."
"OClym!"
"Do you agree to it?"
"If—if we can."
"We certainly can, both being of full age. And I have"
not followed my occupation all these years without having
accumulated money; and if you will agree to live in a tiny/
cottage somewhere on the heath, until I take a house ira
Budmouth for the school, we can do it at a very little ex-
pense."
"How long shall we have to live in the tiny cottage,
Clym?"
"About six months. At the end of that time I shall have
210 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
finished my —
reading yes, we will do it, and this heart-
aching be over. We shall, of course, live in absolute
will
seclusion, and our married life will only begin to outward
view when we take the house in Budmouth, where I have
already addressed a letfter on the matter. Would your
"
grandfather allow you ?
—
"I think he would on the understanding that it should
not last longer than six months."
tf
'I will guarantee that, if no misfortune happens."
*'
If no misfortune happens," she repeated slowly.
"Which is not likely. Dearest, fix the exact day."
And then they consulted on the question, and the day
was chosen. It was to be a fortnight from that time.
This was the end of their talk, and Eustacia left him.
Clym watched her as she retired towards the sun. The
luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance,
and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and
grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery
overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty
of that untarnished early summer green which was worn
for the nonce by the poorest blade. There was something
in its oppressive horizontality which too much reminded
him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare equality
with, and no superiority to, a single living thing under the
sun.
Eustacia was now no longer the goddess but the woman
to him, a being to fight for, support, help, be maligned for.
"Now that he had reached a cooler moment he would have
preferred a less hasty marriage; but the card was laid, and
he determined to abide by the game. Whether Eustacia
was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly
to love long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly
a ready way of proving.
 THE FASCINATION 211

CHAPTER. VI
YEOBRIGHT GOES, AND THE BREACH IS COMPLETE
All that evening smart sounds denoting an active packing
up came from Yeobright's room to the ears of his mother
downstairs.
Next morning he departed from the house and again
proceeded across the heath. A long day's march was be-
fore him, his object being to secure a dwelling to which he
might take Eustacia when she became his wife. Such a
house, small, secluded, and with its windows boarded up, he
had casually observed a month earlier, near a village about
five miles off; and thither he directed his steps to-day.
The weather was far different from that of the evening
before. The yellow and vapory sunset which had wrapped
up Eustacia from his parting gaze had presaged change.
It was one of those not infrequent days of an English June
which are as wet and boisterous as November. The cold
clouds hastened on in a body, as if painted on a moving
slide. Vapors from other continents arrived upon the wind,
which curled and parted round him as he walked on.
At length Clym reached the margin of a fir and beech
plantation that had been inclosed from heathland in the
year of his birth. Here the trees, laden heavily with their
new and humid leaves, were now suffering more damage
than during the highest winds of winter, when the boughs
are specially disencumbered to do battle with the storm-
The wet young beeches were undergoing amputations,
bruises, cripplings, and harsh lacerations, from which the
wasting sap would bleed for many a day to come, and would
leave scars visible till the day of their burning. Each stem
was wrenched at the root, where i% moved like a bone in its
socket, and at every onset of the gale convulsive sounds
came from the branches, as if pain were felt. In a neigh-
boring brake a finch was trying to sing; but the wind blew
under his feathers till they stood on end, twisted round his
little tail, and made him give up his song.
212 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Yet a few yards to Yeobright's left, on the open heath,
how ineffectively gnashed the storm! Those gusts which
tore the trees merely waved the furze and heather in a light
caress. Egdon was made for such times as these.
Yeobright reached the empty house about mid-day. It
was almost as lonely as that of Eustacia's grandfather, but
the fact that it stood near a heath was disguised by a belt
of firs which almost inclosed the premises. He journeyed
on about a mile further to the village in which the owner
lived, and, returning with him to the house, arrangements
were completed, and the man undertook that one room at
least should be ready for occupation the next day. Clym's
intention was to live there alone until Eustacia should join
him on their wedding-day.
Then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the
drizzle that had so greatly transformed the scene. The ferns
among which he had lain in comfort yesterday, were dripping
moisture from every frond, wetting his legs through as he
brushed past; and the fur of the rabbits leaping around him
was clotted into dark locks by the same watery surrounding.
He reached home damp and weary enough after his ten-
mile walk. It had hardly been a propitious beginning, but
he had chosen his course, and would show no swerving. The
evening and the following morning were spent in concluding
arrangements for his departure. To stay at home a minute
longer than necessary after having once come to his deter-
mination would be, he felt, only to give new pain to his
mother by some word, look, or deed.
He had hired a conveyance and sent off his goods by two
o'clock that day. The next step was to get some furniture,
which, after serving for temporary use in the cottage, would
be available for the house at Budmouth when increased by
goods of a better description. A mart extensive enough for
the purpose existed at Anglebury, some miles beyond the
•spot chosen for his residence, and there he resolved to pass
the coming night.
It now only remained to wish his mother good-bye. She
was sitting by the window as usual when he came down-
 THE FASCINATION 213

"Mother, I am going to leave you," he said, holding out

his hand.
"I thought you were, by your packing," replied Mrs. Yeo-
bright in a voice from which every particle of emotion was
painfully excluded.
"And you will part friends with me?"
"Certainly, Clym."
"I am going to be married on the twenty-fifth."
"I thought you were going to be married."
"And —
then and then you must come and see us. You
willunderstand me better after that, and our situation will
not be so wretched as it is now."
"I do not think it likely I shall come to see you."
"Then it will not be my fault or Eustacia's, mother.*
Good-bye!"
He kissed her cheek, and departed in great misery, which
was several hours in lessening itself to a controllable level..
The position had been such that nothing more could be said
without, in the first place, breaking down a barrier; and that
was not to be done.
No sooner had Yeobright gone from his mother's house
than her face changed its rigid aspect for one of blank de-
spair. After a while she wept, and her tears brought some
relief. During the rest of the day she did nothing but walk
up and down the garden path in a state bordering on stupe-
faction. Night came, and with it but little rest. The next
day, with an instinct to do something which should reduce
prostration to mournfulness, she went to her son's room,
and with her own hands arranged it in order, for an imagi-
nary time when he should return again. She gave some
attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed,
for theyno longer charmed her.
Itwas a great relief when, early in the afternoon, Thom-
asin paid her an unexpected visit. This was not the first
meeting between the relatives since Thomasin's marriage;
and past blunders having been in a rough way rectified, they
could always greet each other with pleasure and ease.
The oblique band of sunlight which followed her through
the door became the young wife well. It villuminated her
 —

214 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

as her presence illuminated the heath. In her movements,
in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered
creatures who lived around her home. All similes and alle-
gories concerning her began and ended with birds. There
was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. When
she was musing she was a kestrel which hangs in the air
by an invisible motion of its wings. When she was in a
high wind her light body was blown against trees and banks
like a heron's. When she was frightened she darted noise-
lessly like a kingfisher. When she was serene she skimmed
like a swallow, and that is how she was moving now.
"You are looking very blithe, upon my word, Tamsie,"
said Mrs. Yeobright, with a sad smile. "How is Damon? 7 '

"He is very well."

"Is he kind to you, Thomasin?" And Mrs. Yeobright
observed her narrowly.
"Pretty fairly."
"Is that honestly said?"
"Yes, aunt. I would tell you if he were unkind." She
—
added, blushing, and with hesitation, "He I don't know if
I ought to complain to you about this, but I am not quite
sure what to do. I want some money, you know, aunt
—
some to buy little things for myself -and he doesn't give
me any. I don't like to ask him; and yet, perhaps, he
doesn't give it me because he doesn't know. Ought I to
mention it to him, aunt?"
"Of course you ought. Have you never said a word on
the matter?"
"You see, I had some of my own," said Thomasin eva-
sively; "and I have not wanted any of his until lately. I
did just say something about it last week; but he seems
not to remember."
"He must be made to remember. You are aware that
I have a little box full of spade-guineas, which your uncle
put into my hands to divide between yourself and Clym
whenever I chose. Perhaps the time has come when it
should be done. They can be turned into sovereigns at
any moment."
"I think I should like to have my share —that is, if you
don't mind."
 THE FASCINATION ?I5

"You shall, if necessary. But it is only proper that you

should first tell your husband distinctly that you are with-
out any, and see what he will do."
"Very well, I will. . Aunt, I have heard about Clym.
. .

I know you are in trouble about him, and that's why I have
come."
Mrs. Yeobright turned away, and her features worked in
her attempt to conceal her feelings. Then she ceased to
make any attempt, and said, weeping, "0 Thomasin, do
you think he hates me? How can he bear to grieve me so,
when I have lived only for him through all these years?"
—
"Hate you no," said Thomasin soothingly. "It is only
—
that he loves her too well. Look at it quietly do. It is
not so very bad of him. Do you know, I thought it not
the worst match he could have made. Miss Vye's family
is a good one on her mother's side; and her father was a
—
romantic wanderer a sort of Greek Ulysses."
"It is no use, Ihomasin; it is no use. Your intention is ,

good; but I will not trouble you to argue. I have gone

through the whole that can be said on either side times, and
many times. Clym and I have not parted in anger; we
have parted in a worse way. It is not a passionate quarrel
that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposi-
tion and persistence in going wrong that he has shown. O
—
Thomasin, he was so good as a little boy so tender and
kind!"
"He was, I know."
"I did not think one whom I called mine would grow
up to treat me like this. He spoke to me as if I opposed
him to injure him. As though I could wish him ill !"
"There are worse women in the world than Eustacia Vye."
"There are too many better; that's the agony of it. It
was she, Thomasin, and she only, who led your husband to
!"
act as he did: I would swear it
"No," said Thomasin eagerly. "It was before he knew
me that he thought of her, and it was nothing but a mere
flirtation."
"Very well; we will let it be so. There is little use in
unraveling that now. Sons must be blind if they will. Why
is it that a woman can see from a distance wha,t a man can-
 "

216 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

—
not see close? Clym must do as he will he is nothing
—
more to me. And this is maternity to give one's best years
and best love to insure the fate of being despised
!

"You are too unyielding. Think how many mothers

there are whose sons have brought them to public shame
by real crimes before you feel so deeply a case like this."
—
"Thomasin, don't lecture me I can't have it. It is the
excess above what we expect that makes the force of the
blow, and that may not be greater in their case than in
mine: they may have foreseen the worst. . . I am wrongly
.

made, Thomasin," she added, with a mournful smile. "Some

widows can guard against the wounds their children give
them by turning their hearts to another husband and begin-
ning life again. But I always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd
—
creature I had not the compass of heart nor the enterprise
for that. Just as forlorn and stupefied as I was when my
—
husband's spirit flew away I have sat ever since never at-
tempting to mend matters at all. I was comparatively a
young woman then, and I might have had another family
by this time, and have been comforted by them for the fail-
ure of this one son."
"It is more noble in you that you did not."
"The more noble, the less wise."
" Forget it, and be soothed, dear aunt. And I shall not
leave you alone for long. I shall come and see you every
day."
And for one week Thomasin literally fulfilled her word.
She endeavored to make light of the wedding; and brought
news of the preparations, and that she was invited to be
present. The next week she was rather unwell, and did
not appear. Nothing had as yet been done about the
guineas, for Thomasin feared to address her husband again
on the subject, and Mrs. Yeobright had insisted upon this.

One day just before this time, Wildeve was standing at

the door of the Quiet Woman. In addition to the upward
path through the heath to Rainbarrow and Mistover, there
was a road which branched from the highway a short dis-
tance below the inn, and ascended to Mistover by a cir-
 THE FASCINATION 217

cuitous and easy incline. This was the only route on this
side for vehicles to the captain's retreat. A light cart from
the nearest town descended the road, and the lad who was
driving pulled up in front, of the inn for something to drink.
"You come from Mistover?" said Wildeve.
"Yes. They are taking in good things up there. Going
to be a wedding." And the driver buried his face in his mug.
Wildeve had not received an inkling of the fact before,
and a sudden expression of pain overspread his face. He
turned for a moment into the passage to hide it. Then he
came back again.
"Do you mean Miss Vye?" he said. "How is it that —
she can be married so soon?"
"By the will of God and a ready young man, I suppose."
"You don't mean Mr. Yeobright?"
"Yes. He has been creeping abort with her all the
spring."
—
"I suppose she was immensely taken with him?"
"She is crazy about him, so their general servant of all
work tells me. And that lad Charley that looks after the
horse is all in a daze about it. The stun-poll has got fond-
like of her."
"Is she lively — is she glad? Going to be married so soon
—well!"
"It isn't so very soon."
"No; not so very soon."
Wildeve went indoors to the empty room, a curious heart-
ache within him. He rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece
and his face upon his hand. When Thomasin entered the
room he did not tell her of what he had heard. The old
longing for Eustacia had reappeared in his soul: and it was
mainly because he had discovered that it was another man's
intention to possess her.
To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that of-
fered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was
Wildeve' s nature always. This is the true mark of the man
of sentiment. Though Wildeve's fevered feeling had not
been elaborated to real poetical compass, it was of the stand-
ard sort. He might have been calledfthe Rousseau of Egdon. \
218 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER VII

THE MORNING AND THE EVENING OF A DAY

The wedding morning came. Nobody would have imag-
ined from appearances that Blooms-End had any interest
in Mistover that day. A solemn stillness prevailed around
the house of Clym's mother and there was no more anima-
tion indoors. Mrs. Yeobright, who had declined to attend
the ceremony, sat by the breakfast-table in the old room
which communicated immediately with the porch, her eyes
listlessly directed towards the open door. It was the room
in which, six months earlier, the merry Christmas party had
met, to which Eustacia came secretly and as a stranger.
The only living thing that entered now was a sparrow; and
seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly
round the room, endeavored to go out by the window, and
fluttered among the pot-flowers. This roused the lonely
sitter, who got up, released the bird, and went to the door.
She was expecting Thomasin, who had written the night
before to state that the time had come when she would wish
to have the money, and that she would if possible call this
day.
Yet Thomasin occupied Mrs. Yeobright's thoughts but
slightly as she looked up the valley of the heath, alive with
butterflies, and with grasshoppers whose husky noises on
every side formed a whispered chorus. A domestic drama,
for which the preparations were now being made a mile or
two off, was but little less vividly present to her eyes than
if enacted before her. She tried to dismiss the vision, and
walked about the garden-plot; but her eyes ever and anon
sought out the direction of the parish church to which Mist-
over belonged, and her excited fancy clove the hills which
divided the building from her eyes. The morning wore
away. Eleven o'clock struck: could it be that the wedding
was then in progress? It must be so. She went on imagin-
ing the scene at the church to which he had by this time
taken his bride. She pictured the little group of children
 "

THE FASCINATION 219

by the gate as the pony-carriage drove up, in which, as

Thomasin had learnt, they were going to perform the short
journey. Then she saw them enter and proceed to the chan-
cel and kneel; and the service seemed to go on.
She covered her face with her hands. "0, it is a mis-
take!" she groaned. "And he will rue it some day, and
think of me!"
While she remained thus, overcome by her forebodings,
the old clock indoors whizzed forth twelve strokes. Soon
after, faint sounds floated to her ear from afar over the
hills. The breeze came from that quarter, and it had brought
with it the notes of distant bells, gaily starting off in a
peal: one, two, three, four, five. The ringers at East Egdon
were announcing the nuptials of Eustacia and her son.
"Then it is over," she murmured. "Well, well! and life
too will be over soon. And why should I go on scalding my
face like this? Cry about one thing in life, cry about all;
one thread runs through the whole piece. And yet we say,
! '
'
a time to laugh
Towards evening Wildeve came. Since Thomasin's mar-
riage Mrs. Yeobright had shown towards him that grim
friendliness which at last arises in all such cases of undesired
affinity. The vision of what ought to have been is thrown
aside in sheer weariness, and browbeaten human endeavor
makes the best of the fact that is. Wildeve, to
listlessly
do him justice, had behaved very courteously to his wife's
aunt; and it was with no surprise that she saw him enter
now.
"Thomasin has not been able to come, as she promised
to do," he replied to her inquiry, which had been anxious,
for she knew that her niece was badly in want of money.
"The captain came down last night and personally pressed
her to join them to-day. So, not to be unpleasant, she
determined to go. They fetched her in the pony-chaise,
and are going to bring her back."
"Then it is done," said Mrs. Yeobright. "Have they
gone to their new home?"
"I don't know. I have had no news from Mistover since
Thomasin left to go."
220 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"You did not go with her?" said she, as if there might
be good reasons why.
"I could not," said Wildeve, reddening slightly. "We
could not both leave the house; it was rather a busy morn-
ing, on account of Anglebury Great Market. I believe you
have something to give to Thomasin? If you like, I wilJ
take it."
Mrs. Yeobright hesitated, and wondered if Wildeve knew
what the something was. "Did she tell you of this?" she
inquired.
"Not particularly. She casually dropped a remark about
having arranged to fetch some article or other."
"It is hardly necessary to send it. She can have it when-
ever she chooses to come."
"That won't be yet. In the present state of her health
she must not go on walking so much as she has done." He
added, with a faint twang of sarcasm, "What wonderful
thing is it that I cannot be trusted to take?"
"Nothing worth troubling you with."
"One would think you doubted my honesty," he said,
with a laugh, though his color rose in a quick resentfulness
frequent with him.
"You need think no such thing," said she dryly. "It is
simply that I, in common with the rest of the world, feel
that there are certain things which had better be done by
certain people than by others."
"As you like, as you like," said Wildeve laconically. "It
is not worth arguing about. Well, I think I must turn
homeward again, as the inn must not be left long in charge
of the lad and the maid only."
He went his way, his farewell being scarcely so courteous
as his greeting. But Mrs. Yeobright knew him thoroughly
by this time, and took little notice of his manner, good or
bad.
When Wildeve was gone Mrs. Yeobright stood and con-
sidered what would be the best course to adopt with regard
to the guineas, which she had not liked to entrust to Wild-
eve. It was hardly credible that Thomasin had told him
to ask for them, when the necessity for them had arisen
 THE FASCINATION 221

from the difficulty of obtaining money at his hands. At the

same time Thomasin really wanted them, and might be
unable to come to Blooms-End for another week at least.
To take or send the money to her at the inn would be im-
politic, since Wilde ve would pretty surely be present, or
would discover the transaction; and if, as her aunt suspected,
he treated her less kindly than she deserved to be treated,
he might then get the whole sum out of her gentle hands.
But on this particular evening Thomasin was at Mistover,
and anything might be conveyed to her there without the
knowledge of her husband. Upon the whole the opportunity
was worth taking advantage of.
Her son, too, was there, and was now married. There
could be no more proper moment to render him his share
of the money than the present. And the chance that would
be afforded her, by sending him this gift, of showing how
far she was from bearing him ill-will, cheered the sad mother's
heart.
She went upstairs and took from a locked drawer a little
box, out of which she poured a hoard of broad unworn guineas
that had lain there many a year. There were a hundred in
all, and she divided them into two heaps, fifty in each.

Tying up these in small canvas bags, she went down to the

garden and called to Christian Cantle, who was loitering
about in hope of a supper which was not really owed him.
Mrs. Yeobright gave him the money-bags, charged him to
go to Mistover, and on no account to deliver them into any
one's hands save her son's and Thomasin' s. On further
thought she deemed it advisable to tell Christian precisely
what the two bags contained, that he might be fully im-
pressed with their importance. Christian pocketed the
money-bags, promised the greatest carefulness, and set out
on his way.
"You need not hurry," said Mrs. Yeobright. "It will be
better not to get there till after dusk, and then nobody will
notice you. Come back here to supper, if it is not too
late/'
It was nearly nine o'clock when he began to ascend the
vale towards Mistover; but the long days of summer being
222 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
at their climax, the first obscurity of evening had only just
begun to tan the landscape. At this point of his journey
Christian heard voices, and found that they proceeded from
a company of men and women who were traversing a hollow
ahead of him, the tops only of their heads being visible.
He paused and thought of the money he carried. It was
almost too early even for Christian seriously to fear robbery;
nevertheless he took a precaution which ever since his boy-
hood he had adopted whenever he carried more than two
or three shillings —
upon his person a precaution somewhat
like that of the owner of the Pitt Diamond when filled with
similar misgivings. He took off his boots, untied the guineas,
and emptied the contents of one little bag into the right
boot, and of the other into the left, spreading them as flatly
as possible over the bottom of each, which was really a
spacious coffer by no means limited to the size of the foot.
Pulling them on again and lacing them to the very top, he
proceeded on his way, more easy in his head than under his
soles.
His path converged towards that of the noisy company,
and on coming nearer he found to his relief that they were
several Egdon people whom he knew very well, while with
them walked Fairway, of Blooms-End.
"What! Christian going too?" said Fairway as soon as
he recognized the new-comer. " You've got no young woman
nor wife to your name to gie a gown-piece to, I'm sure/'
"What d'ye mean?" said Christian.
"Why, the raffle. The one we go to every year. Going
to the raffle as well as ourselves?"
"Never knew a word o't. Is it like cudgel-playing or
other sportful forms of bloodshed? I don't want to go,
thank you, Mister Fairway, and no offense."
"Christian don't know the fun o't, and 'twould be a fine
sight for him," said a buxom woman. "There's no danger
at all, Christian. Every man puts in a shilling apiece, and
one wins a gown-piece for his wife or sweetheart if he's got
one."
"Well, as that's not my fortune there's no meaning in it
to me. But I should like to see the fun, if there's nothing
 THE FASCINATION 223

of the black art in it, and if a man may look on without cost
or getting into any dangerous wrangle."
"There will be no uproar at all," said Timothy. "Sure,
Christian, if you'd like to come we'll see there's no harm
done."
"And no ba'dy gaieties, I suppose? You see, neighbors,

if so, it would be setting father a bad example, as he is so

light moral'd. But a gown-piece for a shilling, and no black
art
— 'tis worth looking in to see, and it wouldn't hinder me

half an hour. Yes, I'll come, if you'll step a little way

towards Mistover with me afterwards, supposing night
should have closed in, and nobody else is going that way."
One or two promised; and Christian, diverging from his
direct path, turned round to the right with his companions
towards the Quiet Woman.
When they entered the large common room of the inn
they found assembled there about ten men from among the
neighboring population, and the group was increased by the
new contingent to double that number. Most of them were
sitting round the room in seats divided by wooden elbows
like those of crude cathedral stalls which were carved with
the initials of many an illustrious drunkard of former times
who had passed his days and his nights between them, and
now lay as an alcoholic cinder in the nearest churchyard.
Among the cups on the long table before the sitters lay an
—
open parcel of light drapery the gown-piece, as it was
—
called which was to be raffled for. Wildeve was standing
with his back to the fireplace, smoking a cigar; and the pro-
moter of the raffle, a packman from a distant town, was ex-
patiating upon the value of the fabric as material for a sum-
mer dress.
"Now, gentlemen," he continued, as the new-comers drew
up to the table, "there's five have entered, and we want four
more to make up the number. I think, by the faces of those
gentlemen who have just come in, that they are shrewd
enough to take advantage of this rare opportunity of beau-
tifying their ladies at a very trifling expense."
Fairway, Sam, and another placed their shillings on the
table, and the man turned to Chrisiftm.
 "

224 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"No, sir," said Christian, drawing back, with a quick
gaze of misgiving. "I am only a poor chap come to look
on, an' it please ye, sir. much as know* how you
I don't so
do it. be I was sure of getting it I would put down
If so
the shilling; but I couldn't otherwise."
"I think you might almost be sure," said the peddler.
"In fact, now I look into your face, even if I can't say you
are sure to win, I can say that I never saw anything look
more like winning in my life."
"You'll anyhow have the same chance as the rest of us,"
said Sam.
"And the extra luck of being the last comer," said another.
"And I was born wi' a caul, and perhaps can be no more
ruined than drowned," Christian added, beginning to give
way.
Ultimately Christian laid down his shilling, the raffle be-
gan, and the dice went round. When it came to Christian's
turn he took the box with a trembling hand, shook it fear-
fully,and threw a pair-royal. Three of the others had
thrown common low pairs, and all the rest mere points.
"The gentleman looked like winning, as I said," observed
the chapman, blandly. "Take it, sir; the article is yours."
"Haw-haw-haw!" said Fairway. "I'm damned if this
isn't the quarest start that ever I knowed !

"Mine?" asked Christian, with a vacant stare from his

target eyes. "I — I haven't got neither maid, wife, nor wid-
der belonging to me at all, and I'm afeard it will make me
laughed at to ha'e it, Master Traveler. What with being
curious to join in I never thought of that What shall I do
!

wi' a woman's clothes in my bedroom, and not lose my

decency?"
"Keep em, to be sure," said Fairway, "if it is only for
luck. Perhaps 'twill tempt some woman that thy poor car-
case had no power over when standing empty-handed."
"Keep it, certainly," said Wildeve, who had idly watched
the scene from a distance.
The table was then cleared of the articles, and the men
began to drink.
"Well, to be sure!" said Christian, half to himself. "To
 THE FASCINATION 225

think I should have been born so lucky as this, and not have
found it out until now What curious creatures these dice
I

—
be powerful rulers of us all, and yet at my command I !

am sure I never need be afeard of anything after this." He

handled the dice fondly one by one. "Why, sir," he said
in a confidential whisper to Wildeve, who was near his left
hand, "if I could only use this power that's in me of mul-
tiplying money I might do some good to a near relation of
yours, seeing what I've got about me of hers eh?" He —
tapped one of h. money-laden boots upon the floor.
"What do you i_iean?" said Wildeve.
"That's a secret. Well, I must be going now." He
looked anxiously towards Fairway.
"Where are you going?" Wildeve asked.
"To Mistover Knap. I have to see Mrs. Thomasin there
—that's all."
"I am going there, too, to fetch Mrs. Wildeve. We can
walk together."
Wildeve became lost in thought, and a look of inward
illumination came into his eyes. It was money for his wife
that Mrs. Yeobright could not trust him with. "Yet she
could trust this fellow," he said to himself. "Why doesn't
that which belongs to the wife belong to the husband too?"
He called to the pot-boy to bring him his hat, and said,
"Now, Christian, I am ready."
"Mr. Wildeve," said Christian timidly, as he turned to
leave the room, "would you mind lending me them wonder-
ful little things that carry my luck inside 'em, that I might
practice a bit by myself, you know?" He looked wistfully
at the dice and box lying on the mantelpiece.
"Certainly," said Wildeve carelessly. "They were only
cut out by some lad with his knife, and are worth nothing."
And Christian went back and privately pocketed them.
Wildeve opened the door and looked out. The night was
warm and cloudy. "By Gad! 'tis dark," he continued.
"But I suppose we shall find our way."
"If we should lose the path it might be awkward," said
Christian. "A lantern is the only shield that will make it
v

safe for us."

 "

226 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

" Let's have a lantern by all means." The stable-lantern
was fetched and lighted. Christian took up his gown-piece,
and the two set out to ascend the hill.
Within the room the men fell into chat till their attention
was for a moment drawn to the chimney-corner. This was
large, and, in addition to its proper recess, contained within
its jambs, like many on Egdon, a receding seat, so that a
person might sit there absolutely unobserved, provided there
was no fire to light him up, as was the case now and through-
out the summer. From the niche a single object protruded
into the light from the candles on the table. It was a clay
pipe and its color was reddish. The men had been attracted
to this object by a voice behind the pipe asking for a light.
"Upon my life, it fairly startled me when the man spoke !

said Fairway, handing a candle.

—
"Oh 'tis the reddleman!
You've kept a quiet tongue, young man."
"Yes, I had nothing to say," observed Venn. In a few
minutes he arose and wished the company good night.
Meanwhile Wildeve and Christian had plunged into the
heath.
It was a stagnant, warm, and misty night, full of all the
heavy perfumes of new vegetation not yet dried by hot sun,
and among these particularly the scent of the fern. The
lantern, dangling from Christian's hand, brushed the feath-
ery fronds in passing by, disturbing moths and other winged
insects, which flew out and alighted upon its horny panes.
"So you have money to carry to Mrs. Wildeve?" said
Christian's companion, after a silence. "Don't you think it
very odd that it shouldn't be given to me?"
"As man and wife be one flesh, 'twould have been all the
same, I should think," said Christian. "But my strict
documents was, to give the money into Mrs. Wildeve's hand;
and 'tis well to do things right."
"No doubt," said Wildeve. Any person who had known
the circumstances might have perceived that Wildeve was
mortified by the discovery that the matter in transit was
money, and not, as he had supposed when at Blooms-End,
some fancy nicknack which only interested the two women
themselves. Mrs. Yeobright's refusal implied that his honor
 THE FASCINATION 227

was not considered to be of sufficiently good quality to make

him a safe bearer of his wife's property.
"How very warm it is to-night, Christian !" he said, pant-
ing,when they were nearly under Rainbarrow. "Let us sit
down for a few minutes, for Heaven's sake."
Wildeve flung himself down on the soft ferns; and Chris-
and parcel on the ground, perched
tian, placing the lantern
himself in a cramped position hard by, his knees almost
touching his chin. He presently thrust one hand into his
coat-pocket and began shaking it about.
"What are you rattling in there?" said Wildeve.
"Only the dice, sir," said Christian, quickly withdrawing
his hand. "What magical machines these little things be,.
Mr. Wildeve! 'Tis a game I should never get tired of.
Would you mind my taking 'em out and looking at 'em for a
minute, to see how they are made? I didn't like to look
close before the other men for fear they should think it bad
manners in me." Christian took them out and examined
them in the hollow of his hand by the lantern light. "That
these little things should carry such luck, and such charm,
and such a spell, and such power in 'em, passes all I ever
heard or zeed," he went on, with a fascinated gaze at the
dice, which, as is frequently the case in country places, were
made of wood, the points being burnt upon each face with
the end of a wire.
"They are a great deal in a small compass, you think ?"
"Yes. Do ye suppose they really be the devil's playthings,
Mr. Wildeve? If so, 'tis no good sign that I be such a lucky
man."
"You ought to win some money, now that you've got
them. Any woman would marry you then. Now is your
time, Christian, and I would recommend you not to let it
slip. Some men are born to luck, some are not. I belong
to the latter class."
"Did you ever know anybody who was born to it besides
myself?"
"0 yes. I once heard of an Italian, who sat down at a
gaming-table, with only a louis (that's a foreign sovereign)
in his pocket. He played on for twenty-four hours, and
 "

228 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

won ten thousand pounds, stripping the bank he had played
against. Then there was another man who had lost a thou-
sand pounds, and went to the broker's next day to sell stock,
that he might pay the debt. The man to whom he owed
the money went with him in a hackney-coach; and to pass
the time they tossed who should pay the fare. The ruined
man won, and the other was tempted to continue the game,
and they played all the way. When the coachman stopped
he was told to drive home again: the whole thousand pounds
had been won back by the man who was going to sell."
— —
"Ha ha splendid!" exclaimed Christian. "Go on go —
on!"
"Then there was a man of London, who was only a waiter
at White's club-house. He began playing first half-crown
and higher, till he became very rich,
stakes, and then higher
got an appointment in India, and rose to be Governor of
Madras. His daughter married a member of parliament,
and the Bishop of Carlisle stood godfather to one of the
children."
!
"Wonderful wonderful
!

"And once there was a young man in America who gam-

bled till he had lost his last dollar. He staked his watch and
chain; and lost as before: staked his umbrella; lost again:
staked his hat; lost again: staked his coat and stood in his
shirt-sleeves; lost again. Began taking off his breeches,
and then a looker-on gave him a trifle for his pluck. With
this he won. Won back his coat, won back his hat, won
back his umbrella, his watch, his money, and went out of
the door a rich man."
—
"0, 'tis too good it takes away my breath! Mr. Wild-
eve, I think I will try another shilling with you, as I am one
of that sort; no danger can come o't, and you can afford to
lose."
"Very well," said Wilde ve, rising. Searching about with
the lantern, he found a large flat stone, which he placed be-
tween himself and Christian, and sat down again. The lan-
tern was opened to give more light, and its rays directed
upon the stone. Christian put down a shilling, Wildeve
another, and each threw. Christian won. They played for
two. Christian won again.
 THE FASCINATION 229

"Let ug try iour," said Wildeve. They played for four.

This time the stakes were won by Wildeve.
"Ah, those little accidents will, of course, sometimes hap-
pen to the luckiest man," he observed.
"And now I have no more money !" exclaimed Christian
excitedly. "And yet, if I could go on, I should get it back
again, and more. I wish this was mine." He struck his
boot upon the ground, so that the guineas chinked within.
."What! you have not put Mrs. Wildeve' s money
there?"
"Yes. 'Tis for safety. Is it any harm to raffle with a
married lady's money when, if I win, I shall only keep my
winnings, and give her her own all the same; and if t'other
man wins, her money will go to the lawful owner?"
"None at all."
Wildeve had been brooding ever since they started on
the mean estimation in which he was held by his wife's
friends; and it cut his heart severely. As the minutes
passed he had gradually drifted into a revengeful intention
without knowing the precise moment of forming it. This
was to teach Mrs. Yeobright a lesson, as he considered it
to be; in other words, to show her, if he could, that her
niece's husband was the proper guardian of her niece's
money.
"Well, here goes!" said Christian, beginning to unlace
one boot. "I shall dream of it nights and nights, I sup-
pose; but I shall always swear my flesh don't crawl when I
think o't!"
He thrust his hand into the boot and withdrew one of
poor Thomasin's precious guineas, piping hot. Wildeve
had already placed a sovereign on the stone. The game
was then resumed. Wildeve won first, and Christian ven-
tured another, winning himself this time. The game fluctu-
ated, but the average was in Wildeve' s favor. Both men
became so absorbed in the game that they took no heed of
anything but the pigmy objects immediately beneath their
eyes; the flat stone, the open lantern, the dice, and the few
illuminated fern-Jpaves which lay under the light, were the
, whole world to them.
At length Christian lost rapidly; and presently, to his
 ""

230 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

horror, the whole fifty guineas belonging to Thomasin had
been handed over to his adversary.
—
"I don't care I don't care!" he moaned, and desperately
set about untying his left boot to get at the other fifty. "The
devil will toss me into the flames on his three-pronged fork
for this night's work, I know! But perhaps I shall win
yet, and then I'll get a wife to sit up with me o' nights, and
I won't be afeard, I won't !Here's another for'ee, my man !

He slapped another guinea down upon the stone, and the

dice-box was rattled again.
Time passed on. Wildeve began to be as excited as
Christian himself. When commencing the game his inten-
tion had been nothing further than a bitter practical joke on
Mrs. Yeobright. To win the money, fairly or otherwise, and
to hand it contemptuously to Thomasin in her aunt's pres-
ence, had been the dim outline of his purpose. But men are
drawn from their intentions even in the course of carrying
them out, and it was extremely doubtful, by the time the
twentieth guinea had been reached, whether Wildeve was
conscious of any other intention than that of winning for
his own personal benefit. Moreover, he was now no longer
gambling for his wife's money, but for Yeobright's; though
of this fact Christian, in his apprehensiveness, did not in-
form him till afterwards.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when, with almost a shriek,
Christian placed Yeobright's last bright guinea upon the
stone. In thirty seconds it had gone the way of its com-
panions.
Christian turned and flung himself on the ferns in a con-
vulsion of remorse. "0, what shall I do with my wretched
self?" he groaned. "What shall I do? Will any good
Heaven hae mercy upon my wicked soul ? "
"Do? Live on just the same."
"I won't live on just the same! I'll die! I say you are
"
a—a
"A man sharper than my neighbor."
"Yes, a man sharper than my neighbor; a regular sharper !

"Poor chips-in-porridge, you are very unmannerly."

"I don't know about that! And I say you be unman-
 THE FASCINATION 231

nerly! You've got money that isn't your own. Half the
guineas are poor Mr. Clym's."
"How's that?"
"Because I had to gie fifty of 'em to him. Mrs. Yeobright
said so."
"Oh? . . . Well, 'twould have been more graceful of her
to have given them to his wife Eustacia. But they are in
my hands now."
Christian pulled on his boots, and with heavy breathings,
which could be heard to some distance, dragged his limbs
together, arose, and tottered away out of sight. Wildeve
set about shutting the lantern to return to the house, for
he deemed it too late to go to Mistover to meet his wife,
who was to be driven home in the captain's four-wheel.
While he was closing the little horn door a figure rose from
behind a neighboring bush and came forward into the lan-
tern light. It was the reddleman approaching.

CHAPTER VIII

A NEW FORCE DISTURBS THE CURRENT

Wildeve stared. Venn looked coolly towards Wildeve,
and, without a word being spoken, he deliberately sat him-
self down where Christian had been seated, thrust his hand
into his pocket, drew out a sovereign, and laid it on the
stone.
"You have been watching us from behind that bush?"
said Wildeve.
The reddleman nodded. "Down with your stake," he
said. Or haven't you pluck enough to go on?
"
Now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much
more easily begun with full pockets than left off with the
same; and though Wildeve in a cooler temper might have
prudently declined this invitation, the excitement of his
recent success carried him completely away. He placed one
of the guineas on the slab beside the reddleman' s sovereign.
"Mine is a guinea," he said.
232 THE RETURN" OF THE NATIVE
"A guinea that's not your own," said Venn sarcastically.
"It is my own," answered Wildeve haughtily. "It is my
wife's, and what is hers is mine."
"Very well; let's make a beginning." He shook the box,
and threw eight, ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to
twenty-seven.
This encouraged Wildeve. He took the box; and his
three casts amounted to forty-five.
Down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against
his first one which Wildeve laid. This time Wildeve threw
fifty-one points, but no pair. The reddleman looked grim,
threw a raffle of aces, and pocketed the stakes.
"Here you are again," said Wildeve contemptuously.
"Double the stakes." He laid two of Thomasin's guineas,
and the reddleman his two pounds. Venn won again. New
stakes were laid on the stone, and the gamblers proceeded as
before.
Wildeve was a nervous and excitable man; and the game
was beginning to tell upon his temper. He writhed, fumed,
shifted his seat; and the beating of his heart was almost
audible. Venn sat with lips impassively closed and eyes
reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles; he scarcely ap-
peared to breathe. He might have been an Arab, or an
automaton; he would have been like a red-sandstone statue
but for the motion of his arm with the dice-box.
The game fluctuated, now in favor of one, now in favor
of the other, without any great advantage on the side of
either. Nearly twenty minutes were passed thus. The light
of the candle had by this time attracted heath-flies, moths,
and other winged creatures of night, which floated round
the lantern, flew into the flame, or beat about the faces of
the two players.
But neither of the men paid much attention to these
things, their eyes being concentrated upon the little flat
stone, which to them was an arena vast and important as a
battle-field. By this time a change had come over the
game; the reddleman won continually. At length sixty
—
guineas Thomasin's fifty, and ten of Clym's had passed—
into his hands. Wildeve was reckless, frantic, exasperated.
 "

THE FASCINATION 233

"'Won back his coat/" said Venn slyly.

Another throw, and the money went the same way.
"'Won back his hat/" continued Venn.
"Oh, oh!" saidWildeve.
" Won back his watch, won back his money, and went out
'

of the door a rich man/ " added Venn, sentence by sentence,

as stake after stake passed over to him.
"Five more!" shouted Wildeve, dashing down the money.
"And —
three casts be hanged one shall decide."
The red automaton opposite lapsed into silence, nodded,
and followed his example. Wildeve rattled the box, and
threw a pair of sixes and five points. He clapped his hands;
"I have done it this time hurrah!" —
"There are two playing, and only one has thrown," said
the reddleman, quietly bringing down the box. The eyes
ofeach were then so intently converged upon the stone that
one could fancy their beams were visible, like rays in a fog.
Venn lifted the box, and behold a triplet of sixes was dis-
closed.
Wildeve was full of fury. While the reddleman was
grasping the stakes Wildeve seized the dice and hurled them,
box and all, into the darkness, uttering a fearful impreca-
tion. Then he arose and began stamping up and down like
a madman.
"It is all over, then?" said Venn.
"No, no!" cried Wildeve. "I mean to have another
!
chance yet. I must
"But, my good man, what have you done with the dice?"
—
"I threw them away it was a momentary irritation.
—
What a fool I am! Here come and help me to look for
them —we must find them again."
Wildeve snatched up the lantern and began anxiously
prowling among the furze and fern.
"You are not likely to find them there," said Venn, follow-
ing. "What did you do such a crazy thing as that for?
Here's the box. The dice can't be far off."
Wildeve turned the light eagerly upon the spot where
Venn had found the box, and mauled the herbage right and
left. In the course of a few minutes one of the dice was
234 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
found. They searched on for some time, but no other was
to be seen.
"Never mind," said Wildeve; "let's play with one."
"Agreed," said Venn.
Down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea
stakes; and the play went on smartly. But Fortune had
unmistakably fallen in love with the reddleman to-night.
He won steadily, till he was the owner of fourteen more of
the gold pieces. Seventy-nine of the hundred guineas were
his, Wildeve possessing only twenty-one. The aspect of the
two opponents was now singular. Apart from motions, a
complete diorama of the fluctuations of the game went on in
their eyes. A diminutive candle-flame was mirrored in each
pupil, and it would have been possible to distinguish therein
between the moods of hope and the moods of abandonment,
even as regards the reddleman, though his facial muscles
betrayed nothing at all. Wildeve played on with the reck-
lessness of despair.
"What's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle;
and they both looked up.
They were surrounded by dusky forms about four feet
high, standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern.
A moment's inspection revealed that the encircling figures
were heath-croppers, their heads being all towards the play-
ers, at whom they gazed intently.
"Hoosh!" said Wildeve; and the whole forty or fifty
animals at once turned and galloped away. Play was again
resumed.
Ten minutes passed away. Then a large death's-head
moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice
round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extin-
guished it by the force of the blow. Wildeve had just
thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast;
and now it was impossible.
"What the infernal !" he shrieked.
"Now, what shall we
—
do? Perhaps I have thrown six have you any matches?"
"None," said Venn.
—
"Christian had some I wonder where he is. Christian !"
But there was no reply to Wildeve's shout, save a mourn-
 THE FASCINATION 235

ful whining from the herons which were nesting lower down
the vale. Both men looked blankly round without rising.
As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they per-
ceived faint greenish points of light among the grass and
fern. These lights dotted the hillside like stars of a low
magnitude.
—
"Ah glowworms, " said Wildeve. "Wait a minute. We
can continue the game."
sat still, and his companion went hither and thither t
Venn
till —
he had gathered thirteen glowworms as many as he \
—
could find in a space of four or five minutes upon a fox- J
glove leaf which he pulled for the purpose. The reddleman C
vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his adversary \
return with these. "Determined to go on, then?" h e said
dryly. (^~ "^ J
"I always am!" said Wildeve angrily,/ And shaking the
glowworms from the leaf he ranged them with a trembling
hand in a circle on the stone, leaving a space in the middle
for the descent of the dice-box, over which the thirteen tiny
lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. The game was again
renewed. It happened to be that season of the year, at which
glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light
they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it
is on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter
possible
by the two or three.
light of
The incongruity between the men's deeds and their en-
vironment was great. Amid the soft juicy vegetation of the
hollow in which they sat, the motionless and the uninhabited
solitude, intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the
exclamations of the reckless players.
Wildeve had lifted the box as soon as the lights were ob-
tained, and the solitary die proclaimed that the game was
still against him.
"I won't play any more; you've been tampering with the
dice," he shouted.
—
"How when they were your own?" said the reddleman.
"We'll change the game; the lowest point shall win the
stake — may cut my
it off ill-luck. Do you refuse?"
"No —go on," said Venn.
 " — I

236 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

—
"O, there they are again damn them!" cried Wilde ve,
looking up. The heath-croppers had returned noiselessly,
and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their
timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering
what mankind and candlelight could have to do in these
haunts at this untoward hour.
—
"What a plague those creatures are staring so !" he said,
and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game
was continued as before.
Wildeve had now ten guineas left; and each laid five.
Wildeve threw three points; Venn two, and raked in the
coins. The other seized the die, and clenched his teeth
upon it in sheer rage, as if he would bite it in pieces. "Never
—
give in here are my last five!" he cried, throwing them
—
down. "Hang the glowworms they are going out. Why
don't you burn, you little fools ? Stir them up with a thorn."
He probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled
them over, the bright side of their tails was upwards.
till

"There's light enough. Throw on," said Venn.

Wildeve brought down the box within the shining circle
and looked eagerly. He had thrown ace. "Well done! —
said it would turn, and it has turned." Venn said nothing;
but his hand shook slightly.
He threw ace also.
"01" said Wildeve. "Curse me !

The diesmacked the stone a second time. It was ace

again. Venn looked gloomy, threw; the die was seen to be
lying in two pieces, the cleft sides uppermost.
"I've thrown nothing at all," he said.
—
"Serves me right I split the die with my teeth. Here
take your money. Blank is less than one."
"I don't wish it."
—
"Take it, I say you've won it " And Wildeve threw the
!

stakes against the reddleman's chest. Venn gathered them

up, arose, and withdrew from the hollow, Wildeve sitting
stupefied.
When he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the
extinguished lantern in his hand, went towards the high-
road. On reaching it he stood still. The silence of night
 THE FASCINATION 237

pervaded the whole heath except in one direction; and that

was towards Mistover. There he could hear the noise of
light wheels, and presently saw two carriage-lamps descend-
ing the hill. Wildeve screened himself under a bush and
waited.
The vehicle came on and passed before him. It was a
hired carriage, and behind the coachman were two persons
whom he knew well. There sat Eustacia and Yeobright,
the arm of the latter being around her waist. They turned
the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary home
which Clym had hired and furnished, about three miles to
the eastward.
Wildeve forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his
lost love, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in
geometrical progression with each new incident that reminded
him of their hopeless division. Brimming with the subtil-
ized misery that he was capable of feeling, he followed the
opposite way towards the inn.
About the same moment that Wildeve stepped into the
highway Venn also had reached it at a point a hundred
yards further on; and he, hearing the same wheels, likewise
waited till the carriage should come up. When he saw who
sat therein he seemed to be disappointed. Reflecting a
minute or two, during which interval the carriage rolled on,
he crossed the road, and took a short cut through the furze
and heath to a point where the turnpike road bent round
in ascending a hill. He was now again in front of the car-
riage, which presently came up at a walking pace. Venn
stepped forward and showed himself.
Eustacia started when the lamp shone upon him, and
Clym's arm was involuntarily withdrawn from her waist.
He said, "What, Diggory? You are having a lonely walk."
—
"Yes I beg your pardon for stopping you," said Venn.
"But I am waiting about for Mrs. Wildeve; I have some-
thing to give her from Mrs. Yeobright. Can you tell me if
she's gone home from the party yet?"
"No. But she will be leaving soon. You may possibly
meet her at the corner."
Venn made a farewell obeisance, and walked back to his
238 THfi RETURN OF THE NATIVE
former position, where the by-road from Mistover joined
the highway. Here he remained fixed for nearly half an
hour; and then another pair of lights came down the hill.
It was the old-fashioned wheeled nondescript belonging to
the captain, and Thomasin sat in it alone, driven by Charley.
The reddleman came up as they slowly turned the corner.
"I beg pardon for stopping you, Mrs. Wildeve," he said.
"But I have something to give you privately from Mrs.
Yeobright." He handed a small parcel; it consisted of the
hundred guineas he had just won, roughly twisted up in a
piece of paper.
Thomasin recovered from her surprise, and took the
packet. —
"That's all, ma'am I wish you good night," he
said, and vanished from her view.
Thus Venn in his anxiety to rectify matters, had placed
in Thomasin' s hands, not only the fifty guineas which rightly
belonged to her, but also the fifty intended for her cousin
Clym. His mistake had been based upon Wildeve's words
at the opening of the game, when he indignantly denied that
the guinea was not his own. It had not been comprehended
by the reddleman that at half-way through the performance
the game was continued with the money of another person;
and it was an error which afterwards helped to cause more
misfortune than treble the loss in money value could have
done.
The night was now somewhat advanced; and Venn plunged
deeper into the heath, till he came to a ravine where his van
—
was standing a spot not more than two hundred yards
from the site of the gambling bout. He entered this mov-
able home of his, lit his lantern, and, before closing his door
for the night, stood reflecting on the circumstances of the
preceding hours. While he stood the dawn grew visible in
the north-east quarter of the heavens, which, the clouds hav-
ing cleared off, was bright with a soft sheen at this mid-
summer time, though it was only between one and two
o'clock. Venn, thoroughly weary, then shut his door and
flung himself down to sleep.
BOOK FOURTH
THE CLOSED DOOR

239
 CHAPTER I

THE RENCOUNTER BY THE POOL

'
The July sun shone over Egdon and fired its crimson
heather to scarlet. It was the one season of the year, and
the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gor-
geous. This flowering period represented the second or
noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes
which alone were possible here; it followed the green or
young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the
brown period, when the heath-bells and ferns would wear
the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the
dark hue of the winter period, representing night.
Clym and Eustacia, in their little house at Alderworth,
were living on with a monotony which was delightful to
them. The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted
out from their eyes for the present. They were inclosed in
a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings
of any inharmonious color, and gave to all things the char-
acter of light. When it rained they were charmed, because
they could remain indoors together all day with such a show
of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they
could sit together on the hills. They were like those double
stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a
distance appear to be one. The absolute solitude in which
they lived intensified their reciprocal thoughts; yet some
might have said that it had the disadvantage of consuming
their mutual affections at a fearfully prodigal rate. Yeo-
bright did not fear for his own part; but recollection of Eu-
stacia's old speech about the evanescence of love, now ap-
parently forgotten by her, sometimes caused him to ask
himself a question; and he recoiled at the thought that the
quality of finiteness was not foreign to Eden.
241
242 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
When three or four weeks had been passed thus, Yeo-
bright resumed his reading in earnest. To make up for lost
time he studied indefatigably, for he wished to enter his new
profession with the least possible delay.
Now, Eustacia's dream had always been that, once mar-
ried to Clym, she would have the power of inducing him
to return to Paris. He had carefully withheld all promise
to do so; but would he be proof against her coaxing and
argument? She had calculated to such a degree on the
probability of success that she had represented Paris, and
not Budmouth, to her grandfather as in all likelihood their
future home. Her hopes were bound up in this dream. In
the quiet days since their marriage, when Yeobright had
been poring over her lips, her eyes, and the lines of her face,
she had mused and mused on the subject, even while in the
act of returning his gaze; and now the sight of the books,
indicating a future which was antagonistic to her dream,
struck her with a positively painful jar. She was hoping for
the time when, as the mistress of some pretty establishment,
however small, near a Parisian Boulevard, she would be
passing her days on the skirts at least of the gay world, and
catching stray wafts from those town pleasures she was so
well fitted to enjoy. Yet Yeobright was as firm in the con-
trary intention as if the tendency of marriage were rather
to develop the fantasies of young philanthropy than to sweep
them away.
Her anxiety reached a high pitch; but there was some-
thing in Clym's undeviating manner which made her hesi-
tate before sounding him on the subject. At this point in
their experience, however, an incident helped her. It oc-
curred one evening about six weeks after their union, and
arose entirely out of the unconscious misapplication by Venn
of the fifty guineas intended for Yeobright.
A day or two after the receipt of the money Thomasin had
sent a note to her aunt to thank her. She had been sur-
prised at the largeness of the amount; but as no sum had
ever been mentioned she set that down to her late uncle's
generosity. She had been strictly charged by her aunt to
aay nothing to her husband of this gift; and Wilde ve. as
 THE CLOSED DOOR 243

was natural enough, had not brought himself to mention

to his wife a single particular of the midnight scene in the
hea.J.. Christian's terror, in like manner, had tied his
tongue on the share he took in that proceeding; and hoping
that by some means or other the money had gone to its
proper destination, he simply asserted as much, without
giving details.
Therefore, when a week or two had passed away, Mrs.
Yeobright began to wonder why she never heard from her
son of the receipt of the present; and to add gloom to her
perplexity came the possibility that resentment might be
the cause of his silence. She could hardly believe as much,
but why did he not write? She questioned Christian, and
the confusion in his answers would at once have led her to
believe that something was wrong, had not one-half of his
story been corroborated by Thomasin's note.
Mrs. Yeobright was in this state of uncertainty when she
was informed one morning that her son's wife was visiting
her grandfather at Mistover. She determined to walk up
the hill, see Eustacia, and ascertain from her daughter-in-
law's lips whether the family guineas, which were to Mrs.
Yeobright what family jewels are to wealthier dowagers,
had miscarried or not.
When Christian learnt where she was going his concern
reached its height. At the moment of her departure he
could prevaricate no longer, and, confessing to the gam-
bling, told her the truth as far as he knew it — that the
guineas had been won by Wildeve.
"What, is he going to keep them?" Mrs. Yeobright cried.
"I hope and trust not!" moaned Christian. "He's a
good man, and perhaps will do right things. He said you
ought to have gied Mr. Clym's share to Eustacia, and that's
perhaps what he'll do himself."
To Mrs. Yeobright, as soon as she could calmly reflect,
there was much likelihood in this, for she could hardly be-
lieve that Wildeve would really appropriate money belonging
to her son. The intermediate course of giving it to Eustacia
was the sort of thing to please Wildeve's fancy. But it filled
the mother with anger none the less. That Wildeve should
 —

244 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

have got command of the guineas after all, and should rear-
range the disposal of them, placing Clym's share in Clym's
wife's hands, because she had been his own sweetheart, and
might be so still, was as irritating a pain as any that Mrs.
Yeobright had ever borne.
She instantly dismissed the wretched Christian from her
employ for his conduct in the affair; but, feeling quite help-
less and unable to do without him, told him afterwards that
he might stay a little longer if he chose. Then she hastened
off to Eustacia, moved by a much less promising emotion
towards her daughter-in-law than she had felt half an hour
earlier, when planning her journey. At that time it was to
inquire in a friendly spirit if there had been any accidental
loss; now it was to ask plainly if Wilde ve had privately
given her money which had been intended as a sacred gift
to Clym.
She started at two o'clock, and her meeting with Eustacia
was hastened by the appearance of the young lady beside
the pool and bank which bordered her grandfather's premises,
where she stood surveying the scene, and perhaps thinking
of the romantic enactments it had witnessed in past days.
When Mrs. Yeobright approached, Eustacia surveyed her
with the calm stare of a stranger.
The mother-in-law was the first to speak. "I was coming
to see you," she said.
" Indeed !" said Eustacia with surprise, for Mrs. Yeobright,
much to the girl's mortification, had refused to be present
at the wedding. "I did not at all expect you."
"I was coming on business only," said the visitor, more
coldly than at first. "Will you excuse my asking this
Have you received a gift from Thomasin's husband ? "
" A gift?"
"I mean money!"
"What—I myself?"
—
"Well, I meant yourself, privately though I was not
going to put it in that way."
"Money from Mr. Wildeve? No never— Madam, what
!

do you mean by that?" Eustacia fired up all too quickly,

for her own consciousness of the old attachment between
 THE CLOSED DOOR 245

herself and Wildeve led her to jump to the conclusion that

Mrs. Yeobright also knew of it, and might have come to
accuse her of receiving dishonorable presents from him
now.
"I simply ask the question/' said Mrs. Yeobright. "I
"
have been
—
"You ought to have better opinions of me I feared you
were against me from the first !" exclaimed Eustacia.
"No. I was simply for Clym," replied Mrs. Yeobright,
with too much emphasis in her earnestness. "It is the in-
stinct of every one to look after their own."
"How can you imply that he required guarding against
me?" cried Eustacia, passionate tears in her eyes. "I have
not injured him by marrying him ! What sin have I done
that you should think so ill of me? You had no right to
speak against me to him when I have never wronged you."
"I only did what was fair under the circumstances," said
Mrs. Yeobright more softly. "I would rather not have
gone into this question at present, but you compel me. I
am not ashamed to tell you the honest truth. I was firmly
—
convinced that he ought not to marry you therefore I tried
to dissuade him by all means in my power. But it is done
now, and I have no idea of complaining any more. I am
ready to welcome you."
"Ah, yes, it is very well to see things in that business
point of view," murmured Eustacia with a smothered fire of
feeling. "But why should you think there is anything be-
tween me and Mr. Wildeve? I have a spirit as well as you.
I am indignant; and so would any woman be. It was a
*^on^^ension" in ine to be Clym's wife, and not a maneuver,
let me remind you; and therefore I will not be treated as a
schemer whom it becomes necessary to bear with because
she has crept into the family."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Yeobright, vainly endeavoring to con-
trol her anger. "I have never heard anything to show that
—
my son's lineage is not as good as the Vyes' perhaps better.
It is amusing to hear you talk of condescension."
"It was condescension, nevertheless," said Eustacia, vehe-
mently. "And if I had known then what I know now, that
246 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
I should be living in this wild heath a month after my mar-
riage, I—I
should have thought twice before agreeing."
"It would be better not to say that; it might not sound
truthful. I am not aware that any deception was used on
his part —
I know there was not—whatever might have been
the case on the other side."
"This is too exasperating!" answered the younger woman
huskily, her face crimsoning, and her eyes darting light.
"How can you dare to speak to me like that? I insist upon
repeating to you that had I known that my life would from
my marriage up to this time have been as it is, I should
have said No. I don't complain. I have never uttered a
sound of such a thing to him; but it is true. I hope there-
fore that in the future you will be silent on my eagerness.
If you injure me now you injure yourself."
"Injure you? Do you think I am an evil-disposed per-
son?"
"You injured me before my marriage, and you have now
suspected me of secretly favoring another man for money!"
"I could not help what I thought. But I have never
spoken of you outside my house."
"You spoke of me within it, to Clym, and you could not
do worse."
"I did my duty."
"And Til do mine."
"A part of which will possibly be to set him against his
mother. It is always so. But why should I not bear it as
others have borne it before me?"
"I understand you," said Eustacia, breathless with emo-
tion. "You think me capable of every bad thing. Who
can be worse than a wife who encourages a lover, and poisons
her husband's mind against his relative? Yet that is now
the character given to me. Will you not come and drag him
out of my hands?"
Mrs. Yeobright gave back heat for heat.
"Don't rage at me, madam! It ill becomes your beauty,
and I am not worth the injury you may do it on my ac-
count, I assure you. I am only a poor old woman who has
lost a son."
 " " "

THE CLOSED DOOR 247

"If you had treated me honorably you would have had

him still," Eustacia said, while scalding tears trickled from

-her eyes. "You have brought yourself to folly; you have

!
caused a division which can never be healed
"I have done nothing. This audacity from a young
woman is more than I can bear."
"It was asked for; you have suspected me, and you have
made me speak of my husband in a way I would not have
done. You will let him know that I have spoken thus, and
it will cause misery between us. Will you go away from
me ? You are no friend
!

"I will go when I have spoken a word. If any one says

I have come here to question you without good grounds
for it, that person speaks untruly. If any one says that I
attempted to stop your marriage by any but honest means,
that person, too, does not speak the truth. I have fallen on
an evil time; God has been unjust to me in letting you insult
me Probably my son's happiness does not lie on this side
!

of the grave, for he is a foolish man who neglects the advice

of his parent. You, Eustacia, stand on the edge of a preci-
pice without knowing it. Only show my son one-half the
—
temper you have shown me to-day and you may before
—
long and you will find that though he is as gentle as a child
!
with you now, he can be as hard as steel
The excited mother then withdrew, and Eustacia, panting,
stood looking into the pool.

CHAPTER II

HE IS SET UPON BY ADVERSITIES, BUT HE

SINGS A SONG

The result of that unpropitious interview was that Eu-

stacia, instead of passing the afternoonwith her grandfather,
hastily returned home to Clym, where she arrived three
hours earlier than she had been expected.
She came indoors with her face flushed, and her eyes still
showing traces of her recent excitement. Yeobright looked
 — " " I

248 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

up astonished; he had never seen her in any way approaching
to that state before. She passed him by, and would have
gone upstairs unnoticed, but Clym was so concerned that he
immediately followed her.
"What is the matter, Eustacia?" he said. She was stand-
ing on the hearthrug in the bedroom, looking upon the floor,
her hands clasped in front of her, her bonnet yet unremoved.
For a moment she did not answer; and then she replied in a
low voice
"I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again !"
A weight fell like a stone upon Clym. That same morn-
ing, when Eustacia had arranged to go and see her grand-
father, Clym had expressed a wish that she would drive
down to Blooms-End and inquire for her mother-in-law, or
adopt any other means she might think fit to bring about a
reconciliation. She had set out gaily; and he had hoped
for much.
"Why is this?" he asked.
"I cannot —
tell I cannot remember. I met your mother.
And I will never meet her again.
7 '

"Why?"
"What do I know about Mr. Wildeve now? I won't
have wicked opinions passed on me by anybody. Oh, it

was too humiliating to be asked if I had received any money

from him, or encouraged him, or something of the sort —
don't exactly know what
!

"How could she have asked you that?"

"She did."
"Then there must have been some meaning in it. What
"
did my mother say besides ?
"I don't know what she, said, except in so far as this,
that we both said words which can never be forgiven
!

"0, there must be some misapprehension. Whose fault

"
was it that her meaning was not made clear ?
"I would rather not say. It may have been the fault of
the circumstances, which were awkward at the very least.
— —
Clym I cannot help expressing it this is an unpleasant
position that you have placed me in. But you must improve
—
it yes, say you will —
for I hate it all now! Yes, take me
 "

THE CLOSED DOOR 249

to Paris, and go on with your old occupation, Clym ! I

don't mind how humbly we live there at first, if it can only
be Paris and not Egdon Heath.
"But I have quite given up that idea," said Yeobright,
with surprise. " Surely I never led you to expect such a
thing?"
"I own it. Yet there are thoughts which cannot be kept
out of mind, and that one was mine. Must I not have a
voice in the matter, now I am your wife and the sharer of
your doom?"
"Well, there are things which are placed beyond the pale
of discussion; and I thought this was specially so, and by
mutual agreement."
"Clym, I am unhappy at what I hear," she said in a low
voice; and her eyes drooped, and she turned away.
This indication of an unexpected mine of hope in Eu-
stacia's bosom disconcerted her husband. It was the first
time that he had confronted the fact of the indirectness of
a woman's movement towards her desire. But his intention
was unshaken, though he loved Eustacia well. All the
effect thather remark had upon him was a resolve to chain
himself moreclosely than ever to his books so as to be the
sooner enabled to appeal to substantial results from another
course in arguing against her whim.
Next day the mystery of the guineas was explained.
Thomasin paid them a hurried visit, and Clym's share was
delivered up to him by her own hands. Eustacia was not
present at the time.
"Then this is what my mother meant," exclaimed Clym.
" Thomasin, do you know that they have had a bitter quar-
rel?"
There was a little more reticence now than formerly in
Thomasin's manner towards her cousin. It is the effect of
marriage to engender in several directions some of the reserve
it annihilates in one. "Your mother told me," she said
quietly. "She came back to my house."
"The worst thing I dreaded has come to pass. Was
mother much disturbed when she came to you, Thomasin?"
"Yes."
250 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Very much, indeed?"
"Yes."
Clym leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate,
and covered his eyes with his hand.
"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 thith-
erward 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 He was obliged to tie a bandage over
his cheeks.
his brow while dressing; and during the day it could not be
abandoned. Eustacia was thoroughly alarmed. On find-
ing 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 CLOSED DOOR 251

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 young couple. Dreadful imagin-
of the
ings 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. Endeavoring 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 sur-
prise that the date at which he might expect to resume his
labors 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 despair-
ing. A quiet firmness, and even cheerfulness, took posses-
sion 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
252 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
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 other-
wise 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 advanc-
ing, 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
I can do, and get a living at, in this time of misfortune."

—"Yes?"
"f-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.
"Surely I shall. Is it not very unwise in us to go on
spending the little money we've got when I can keep down
 THE CLOSED DOOR 253

expenditure by an honest occupation? The outdoor exer-

cise will do me good, and who knows but that in a few months
I shall be able to go on with my reading again?"
"But my grandfather offers to assist us, if we require as-
sistance."
"We don't require it. If I go furze-cutting we shall be
fairly well off."
"In comparison with slaves, and the Israelites in Egypt,
and such people!" A bitter tear rolled down Eustacia's
face, which he did not see. There had been nonchalance
in his tone, showing her that he felt no absolute grief at a
consummation which to her was a positive horror.
The very next day Yeobright went to Humphrey's cot-
tage, and borrowed of him leggings, gloves, a whet-stone,
and a hook, to use till he should be able to purchase some
for himself. Then he sallied forth with his new fellow-
laborer and old acquaintance, and selecting a spot where
the furze grew thickest he struck the first blow in his adopted
calling. His sight, like the wings in "Rasselas," though
useless to him for his grand purpose, sufficed for this strait,
and he found that when a little practice should have hard-
ened his palms against blistering he would be able to work
with ease.
Day after day he rose with the sun, buckled on his leggings,
and went off to the rendezvous with Humphrey. His cus-
tom was to work from four o'clock in the morning till noon;
then, when the heat of the day was at its highest, to go
home and sleep for an hour or two; afterwards coming out
again and working till dusk at nine.
This man from Paris was now so disguised by his leather
accouterments, and by the goggles he was obliged to wear
over his eyes, that his closest friend might have passed by
without recognizing him. He was a brown spot in the
midst of an expanse of olive-green gorse, and nothing mora.
Though frequently depressed in spirit when not actually at
work, owing to thoughts of Eustacia's position and his
mother's estrangement, when in the full swing of labor he
was cheerfully disposed and calm.
His daily life was of a curious microscopic sort, his whole
254 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
world being limited to a circuit of a few feet from his persons
His familiars were creeping and winged things, and they
seemed to enroll him in their band. Bees hummed around
his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and
furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them
down to the sod. The strange amber-colored butterflies
which Egdon produced, and which were never seen else-
where, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his
bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his
hook as he flourished it up and down. Tribes of emerald-
green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly
on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskillful acrobats, as
chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations
under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. Huge
flies, ignorant of larders and wire netting, and quite in a

savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he

was a man. In and out of the fern-brakes snakes glided in
their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the sea-
son immediately following the shedding of their old skins,
when their colors are brightest. Litters of young rabbits
came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks,
the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each
and firing it to a blood-red transparency in
thin-fleshed ear,
which the veins could be seen.
The monotony of his occupation soothed him, and was
in itself a pleasure. A forced limitation of effort offered a
justification of homely courses to an unambitious man, whose
conscience would hardly have allowed him to remain in such
obscurity while his powers were unimpeded. Hence Yeo-
bright sometimes sang to himself, and when obliged to ac-
company Humphrey in search of brambles for faggot-bonds
he would amuse his companion with sketches of Parisian life
and character, and so while away the time.
On one of these warm afternoons Eustacia walked out
alone in the direction of Yeobright's place of work. He
was busily chopping away at the furze, a long row of faggots
which stretched downward from his position representing
the labor of the day. He did not observe her approach, and
she stood close to him, and heard his undercurrent of song.
 THE (JLO&tiD DOOK 255

It shocked her. To see him there, a poor afflicted man,

earning money by the sweat of his brow, had at first moved
her to tears; but to hear him sing and not at all rebel against
an occupation which, however satisfactory to himself, was
degrading to her, as an educated lady-wife, wounded her
through. Unconscious of her presence, he still went on
singing:

"Le point du jour

A nos bosquets rend toute leur parure;
Flore est plus belle a son retour;
L'oiseau reprend doux chant d'amour;
Tout celebre dans la nature
Le point du jour.

"Le point du jour

Cause parfois, cause douleur extrem
Que l'espace des nuits est court
Pour le berger brulant d'amour,
Force de quitter ce qu'il aime
Au point du jour."

It was bitterly plain to Eustacia that he did not care

much about social failure; and the proud fair woman bowed
her head and wept in sick despair at thought of the blasting
effect upon her own life of that mood and condition in him.
Then she came forward.
"I would starve rather than do it!" she exclaimed vehe-
mently. "And you can sing! I will go and live with my
grandfather again!"
"Eustacia !I did not see you, though I noticed something
moving," he said gently. He came forward, pulled off his
huge leather glove, and took her hand. "Why do you speak
in such a strange way? It is only a little old song which
struck my fancy when I was in Paris, and now just applies
to my life with you. Has your love for me all died, then,
because my appearance is no longer that of a fine gentle-
man?"
"Dearest, you must not question me unpleasantly, or it
may make me not love you."
256 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Do you believe it possible that I would run the risk of
doing that?"
"Well, you follow out your own ideas, and won t give in
:

to mine when I wish you to leave off this shameful labor.

Is there anything you dislike in me that you act so contrarily
to my wishes ? I am your wife, and why will you not listen ?
!"
Yes, I am your wife indeed
"I know what that tone means."
"What tone?"
"The tone in which you said, 'Your wife indeed/ It
meant, 'Your wife, worse luck/"
"It is hard in you to probe me with that remark. A
woman may have reason, though she is not without heart,
—
and if I felt 'worse luck/ it was no ignoble feeling it was
only too natural. There, you see that at any rate I do not
attempt untruths. Do you remember how, before we were
married, I warned you that I had not good wifely qualities ? "
"You mock me to say that now. On that point at least
the only noble course would be to hold your tongue, for you
are still queen of me, Eustacia, though I may no longer be
king of you."
"You are my husband. Does not that content you?"
"Not unless you are my wife without regret."
"I cannot answer you. I remember saying that I should
be a •serious matter on your hands."
"Yes, I saw that."
"Then you were too quick to see! No true lover would
have seen any such things; you are too severe upon me,
—
Clym I don't like your speaking so at all."
"Well, I married you in spite of it, and don't regret doing
so. How cold you seem this afternoon! and yet I used to
think there never was a warmer heart than yours."
—
"Yes, I fear we are cooling I see it as well as you," she
sighed mournfully. "And how madly we loved two months
ago! You were never tired of contemplating me, nor I of
contemplating you. Who could have thought then that by
this time my eyes would not seem so very bright to yours,
r &r your lips so very sweet to mine ? Two months—is it
ji
ossible? Yes, 'tis too true!"
 " !

THE CLOSED DOOR 257

"You sigh, dear, as if you were sorry for it; and that's a
hopeful sign."
"No. I don't sigh for that. There are other things for
me to sigh for, or any other woman in my place."
"That your chances in life are ruined by marrying in haste
an unfortunate man?"
"Why will you force me, Clym, to say bitter things? I
deserve pity as much as you. As much? I think I deserve —
it more. For you can sing! It would be a strange hour
which would catch me singing under such a cloud as this!
Believe me, sweet, I could weep to a degree that would
astonish and confound such an elastic mind as yours. Even
had you felt careless about your own affliction, you might
have refrained from singing out of sheer pity for mine. God
if I were a man in such a position I would curse rather than
!

sing
Yeobright placed his hand upon her arm. "Now, don't
you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in
high Promethean fashion, against the gods and fate as well
as you. I have felt more steam and smoke of that sort than
you have ever heard of. But the more I see of life the more
do I perceive that there is nothing particularly great in its
greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small in
mine of furze-cutting. If I feel that the greatest blessings
vouchsafed to us are not very valuable, how can I feel it to
be any great hardship when they are taken away? So I
sing to pass the time. Have you indeed lost all tenderness
for me, that you begrudge me a few cheerful moments?"
"I have still some tenderness left for you."
"Your words have no longer their old flavor. And so
love dies with good fortune!"
—
"I cannot listen to this, Clym it will end bitterly," sh©
said in a broken voice. "I will go home."
 —

258 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER III

SHE GOES OUT TO BATTLE AGAINST DEPRESSION

A few days later, before the month of August had expired,

Eustacia and Yeobright sat together at their early dinner.
Eustacia's manner had become of late almost apathetic.
There was a forlorn look about her beautiful eyes which,
whether she deserved it or not, would have excited pity in
the breast of any one who had known her during the full
flush of her love for Clym. The feelings of husband and
wife varied, in some measure, inversely with their positions.
Clym, the afflicted man, was cheerful; and he even tried to
comfort her, who had never felt a moment of physical suf-
fering in her whole life.
"Come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again.
Some day perhaps I shall see as well as ever. And I sol-
emnly promise that I'll leave off cutting furze as soon as I
have the power to do anything better. You cannot seriously
wish me to stay idling at home all day?"
—
"But it is so dreadful a furze-cutter! and you a man
who have lived about the world, and speak French and
German, and who are fit for what is so much better than
this."
"I suppose when you first saw me and heard about me I
was wrapped in a sort of golden halo to your eyes—a man
who knew glorious things, and had mixed in brilliant scenes
— in short, an adorable, delightful, distracting hero?"
"Yes," she said, sobbing.
"And now I am a poor fellow in brown leather."
"Don't taunt me. But enough of this. I will not be de-
pressed any more. I am going from home this afternoon,
unless you greatly object. There is to be a village picnic
—
a gypsying, they call it at East Egdon, and I shall go."
"To dance?"
"Why not? You can sing."
"Well, well, as you will. Must I come to fetch you?"
 "

THE CLOSED DOOR 259

"If you return soon enough from your work. But do

not inconvenience yourself about it. I know the way home,
and the heath has no terror for me."
"And can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all
the way to a village festival in search of it?"
"Now, you don't like my going alone! Clym, you are
not jealous?"
"No. But I would come, with you if it could give you
any pleasure; though, as things stand, perhaps you have
too much of me already. Still, I somehow wish that you
did not want to go. Yes, perhaps I am jealous; and who
could be jealous with more reason than I, a half-blind man,
over such a woman as you?"
"Don't think like it. Let me go, and don't take all my
spirits away !

"I would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. Go

and do whatever you like. Who can forbid your indul-
gence in any whim? You have all my heart yet, I believe;
and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag upon
you, I owe you thanks. Yes, go alone and shine. As for
me, I will stick to my doom. At that kind of meeting people
would shun me. My hook and gloves are like the St. Laz-
arus rattle of the leper, warning the world to get out of the
way of a sight that would sadden them." He kissed her,
put on his leggings, and went out.
When he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and
said to herself, "Two wasted lives his and mine. And I —
am come to this ! Will it drive me out of my mind?"
She cast about for any possible course which offered the
least improvement on the existing state of things, and could
find none. She imagined how all those Budmouth ones
who should learn what had become of her would say, "Look
at the girl for whom nobody was good enough " To Eusta-
!

cia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that

death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of Heaven
should go much further.
Suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, "But I'll
shake it off. Yes, I will shake it off! No one shall know
my suffering. I'll be bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and
260 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
I'll laugh in derision! And 111 begin by going to this dance
on the green."
She ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with
scrupulous care. To an onlooker her beauty would have
made her feelings almost seem reasonable. The gloomy cor-
ner into which accident as much as indiscretion had brought
this woman might have led even a moderate partisan to feel
that she had cogent reasons for asking the Supreme Power
by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed
in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse
rather than a blessing.
It was five in the afternoon when she came out from the
house ready for her walk. There was material enough in
the picture for twenty new conquests. The rebellious sad-
ness that was rather too apparent when she sat indoors
without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her outdoor
attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it,
devoid of harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked
from its environment as from a cloud, with no noticeable
lines of demarcation between flesh and clothes. The heat
of the day had scarcely declined as yet, and she went along
the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there being ample time
for her idle expedition. Tall ferns buried her in their leafage
whenever her path lay through them, which now formed
miniature forests, though not one stem of them would re-
main to bud the next year.
The site chosen for the village festivity was one of the
lawn-like oases which were occasionally, yet not often, met
with on the plateaux of the heath district. The brakes of
furze and fern terminated abruptly round the margin, and
the grass was unbroken. A green cattle-track skirted the
spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern,
and this path Eustacia followed, in order to reconnoiter the
group before joining it. The lusty notes of the East Egdon
band had directed her unerringly, and she now beheld the
musicians themselves, sitting in a blue wagon with red
wheels scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to
which boughs and flowers were tied. In front of this was
the grand central dance of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked
 THE CLOSED DOOR 261

by minor dances whose gyrations were

of inferior individuals
not always in strictkeeping with the tune.
The young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with
a flush on their faces footed it to the girls, who, with the
excitement and the exercise, blushed deeper than the pink
of their numerous ribbons. Fair ones with long curls, fair
ones with short curls, fair ones with love-locks, fair ones with
braids, flew round and round; and a beholder might well
have wondered how such a prepossessing set of young women
of like size, age, and disposition, could have been collected
together where there were only one or two villages to choose
from. In the background was one happy man dancing by
himself, with closed eyes, totally oblivious of all the rest.
A fire was burning under a pollard thorn a few paces off,
over which three kettles hung in a row. Hard by was a
table where elderly dames prepared tea, but Eustacia looked
among them in vain for the cattle-dealer's wife who had sug-
gested that she should come, and had promised to obtain
a courteous welcome for her.
This unexpected absence of the only local resident whom
Eustacia knew considerably damaged her scheme for an
afternoon of reckless gaiety. Joining in became a matter
of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were she to advance,
cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea and
make much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowl-
edge to themselves. Having watched the company through
the figures of two dances, she decided to walk a little further,
to a cottage where she might get some refreshment, and
then return homeward in the shady time of evening.
This she did; and by the time that she retraced her steps
towards the scene of the gypsying, which it was necessary
to repass on her way to Alderworth, the sun was going down.
The air was now so still that she could hear the band afar
off, and it seemed to be playing with more spirit, if that were
possible, than when she had come away. On reaching the
hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little differ-
ence either to Eustacia or to the revelers, for a round yellow
moon was rising behind her, though its rays had not yet
outmastered those from the west. The dance was going on
262 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
just the same, but strangers had arrived and formed a ring
around the figure, so that Eustacia could stand among these
without a chance of being recognized.
A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad
all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The
forty hearts of those waving couples were beating as they
had not done since, twelve months before, they had come
together in similar jollity. For the time Paganism was re-
vived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they
adored none other than themselves.
How many of those impassioned but temporary embraces
were destined to become perpetual was possibly the wonder
of some of those who indulged in them, as well as of Eusta-
cia who looked on. She began to envy those pirouettes, to
hunger for the hope and happiness which the fascination of
the dance seemed to engender within them. Desperately
fond of dancing herself, one of Eustacia's expectations of
Paris had been the opportunity it might afford her of indul-
gence in this favorite pastime. Unhappily, that expectation
was now extinct within her for ever.
Whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluc-
tuating in the increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her
name whispered by a voice over her shoulder. Turning in
surprise, she beheld at her elbow one whose presence in-
stantly caused her to flush to the temples.
It was Wildeve. Till this moment he had not met her
eye since the morning of his marriage, when she had been
loitering in the church, and had startled him by lifting her
veil and coming forward to sign the register as witness. Yet
why the sight of him should have instigated that sudden
rush of blood she could not tell.
Before she could speak he whispered, "Do you like danc-
ing as much as ever?"
"I think I do," she replied in a low voice.
"Will you dance with me?"
"It would be a great change for me; but will it not seem
strange?"
"What strangeness can there be in relations dancing to-
gether?"
 THE CLOSED DOOR 2G3

"Ah
ft
— yes, relations. Perhaps none."
Still, if you don't like tobe seen, pull down your veil;
though there is not much risk of being known by this light.
Lots of strangers are here."
She did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowl-
edgment that she accepted his offer.
Wildeve gave her his arm and took her down on the out-
side of the ring to the bottom of the dance, which they en-
tered. In two minutes more they were involved in the
figure and began working their way upwards to the top.
Till they had advanced half-way thither Eustacia wished
more than once that she had not yielded to his request;
from the middle to the top she felt that, since she had come
out to seek pleasure, she was only doing a natural thing to
obtain it. Fairly launched into the ceaseless glides and
whirls which their new position as top couple opened up to
them, Eustacia's pulses began to move too quickly for longer
rumination of any kind.
Through the length of five and twenty couples they
threaded their giddy way, and a new vitality entered her
form. The pale ray of evening lent a fascination to the
experience. There is a certain degree and tone of light
which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and
to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to move-
ment, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becom-
ing sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this
light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon.
All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia most
of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away,
and the hard, beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant
towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table. The
air became quite still; the flag above the wagon which held
the musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared
only in outline against the sky; except when the circular
mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and French horn gleamed
out like huge eyes from the shade of their figures. The
pretty dresses of the maids lost their subtler day colors and
showed more or less of a misty white. Eustacia floated
round and round on Wildeve's arm, her face rapt and state*
264 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
esque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten her
features, which were empty and quiescent, as they al-
left
ways are when feeling goes beyond their register.
How near she was to Wilde ve it was terrible to think of.
!

She could feel his breathing, and he, of course, could fee]
hers. How badly she had treated him yet, here they were
!

treading one measure. The enchantment of the dance sur-

prised her. A clear line of difference divided like a tangible
fence her experience within this maze of motion from her
experience without it. Her beginning to dance had been
like a change of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped
in arctic frigidityby comparison with the tropical sensations
here. She had entered the dance from the troubled hours
of her late life as one might enter a brilliant chamber after
a night walk in a wood. Wilde ve by himself would have
been merely an agitation; Wildeve added to the dance, and
the moonlight, and the secrecy, began to be a delight.
Whether his personality supplied the greater part of this
sweetly compounding feeling, or whether the dance and the
scene weighed the more therein, was a nice point upon
which Eustacia herself was entirely in a cloud.
People began to say, "Who are they?" but no invidious
inquiries were made. Had Eustacia mingled with the other
girls in their ordinary daily walks the case would have been
different: here she was not inconvenienced by excessive in-
spection, for all were wrought to their brightest grace by
the occasion. Like the planet Mercury surrounded by the
luster of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without
much notice in the temporary glory of the situation.
As for Wildeve, his feelings are easy to guess. Obstacles
were a ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment
in a delirium of exquisite misery. To clasp as his for five
minutes what was another man's through all the rest of the
year was a kind of thing he of all men could appreciate. He
had long since begun to sigh again for Eustacia; indeed, it
may be asserted that signing the marriage register with
Thomasin was the natural signal to his heart to return to
its first quarters, and that the extra complication of Eusta-
cia's marriage was the one addition required to make that
return compulsory.
 THE CLOSED DOOR 26£

J
Thus, for different reasons, what was to he rest an exhil-
arating movement was to these two a ridLig upon the whirl-
wind. The dance had come like an irresistible attack upon
whatever sense of social order there was in their minds, to
drive them back into old paths which were now doubly
irregular. Through three dances in succession they spun
their way; and then, fatigued with the incessant motion,
Eustacia turned to quit the circle in which she had already
remained too long. Wildeve led her to a grassy mound a
few yards distant, where she sat down, her partner standing
beside her. From the time that he addressed her at the
beginning of the dance till now they had not exchanged a
word.
"The dance and the walking have tired you?" he said
tenderly.
"No; not greatly."
"It is strange that we should have met here of all places,
after missing each other so long."
"We have missed because we tried to miss, I suppose."
—
"Yes. But you began that proceeding by breaking a
promise."
"It is scarcely worth while to talk of that now. We have
—
formed other ties since then you no less than I."
"I am sorry to hear that your husband is ill."
—
"He is not ill only incapacitated."
"Yes: that is what I mean. I sincerely sympathize with
you in your trouble. Fate has treated you cruelly."
She was silent awhile. "Have you heard that he has
chosen to work as a furze-cutter?" she said in a low, mourn-
ful voice.
"It has been mentioned to me," answered Wildeve hesi-
tatingly. "But I hardly believed it."
"It is true. What do you think of me as a furze-cutter's
wife?"
"I think the same as ever of you, Eustacia. Nothing of
that sort can degrade you: you ennoble the occupation of
your husband."
"I wish I could feel it."
"Is there any chance of Mr. Yeobright getting better?"
"He thinks so. I doubt it,"
 !

266 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"I was quite surprised to hear that he had taken a cottage.
I thought, in common with other people, that he would
have taken you off to a home in Paris immediately after you
had married him. 'What a gay, bright future she has be-
fore her I thought.
'
He will, I suppose, return there with
you, if his sight gets strong again ?"
Observing that she did not reply he regarded her more
closely. She was almost weeping. Images of a future never
to be enjoyed, the revived sense of her bitter disappointment,
the picture of the neighbor's suspended ridicule which was
raised by Wildeve's words, had been too much for proud
Eustacia's equanimity.
Wildeve could hardly control his own too forward feelings
when he saw her silent perturbation. But he affected not
to notice this, and she soon recovered her calmness.
" You did not intend to walk home by yourself ? " he asked.
"0 yes," said Eustacia. "What could hurt me on this
heath",who have nothing?"
"The first half of my way home is the same as yours. I
shall be glad to keep you company as far as Throope Cor-
ner." Seeing that Eustacia sat on in hesitation he added,
"Perhaps you think it unwise to be seen in the same road
with me after the events of last summer?"
"Indeed I think no such thing," she said haughtily. "I
shall accept whose company I choose, for all that may be
said by the miserable inhabitants of Egdon."
—
"Then let us walk on if you are ready. Our nearest
way is towards that holly-bush with the dark shadow that
you see down there."
Eustacia arose, and walked beside him in the direction
signified, brushing her way over the damping heath and
fern, and followed by the strains of the merrymakers, who
still kept up the dance. The moon had now waxed bright
and silvery, but the heath was proof against such illumina-
tion, and there was to be observed the striking scene of a
dark, rayless tract of country, under an atmosphere charged
from its zenith to its extremities with whitest light. To an
eye above them their two faces would have appeared amid
the expanse like two pearls on a table of ebony.
 THE CLOSED DOOR 267

On tins account the irregularities of the path were not

visible,and Wilde ve occasionally stumbled; whilst Eustacia
found it necessary to perform some graceful feats of balanc-
ing whenever a small tuft of heather or root of furze pro-
truded itself through the grass of the narrow track and
entangled her feet. At these junctures in her progress a
hand was invariably stretched forward to steady her, hold-
ing her firmly until smooth ground was again reached, when
the hand was again withdrawn to a respectful distance.
They performed the journey for the most part in silence,
and drew near to Throope Corner, a few hundred yards from
which a short path branched away to Eustacia's house. By
degrees they discerned coming towards them a pair of hu-
man figures, apparently of the male sex.
When they came a little nearer Eustacia broke the silence
by saying, "One of those men is my husband. He promised
to come to meet me."
"And the other is my greatest enemy," said Wilde ve.
"It looks like Diggory Venn."
"That is the man."
"It is an awkward meeting," said she; "but such is my
fortune. He knows too much about me, unless he could
know more, and so prove to himself that what he now knows
counts for nothing. Well, let it be: you must deliver me
up to them."
"You will think twice before you direct me to do that.
Here is a man who has not forgotten an item in our meet-
ings at Rainbarrow: he is in company with your husband.
Which of them, seeing us together here, will believe that
our meeting and dancing at the gypsy-party was by
chance?"
"Very well," she whispered gloomily. "Leave me before
they come up."
Wilde ve bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across
the fern and furze, Eustacia slowly walking on. In two or
three minutes she met her husband and his companion.
"My journey ends here for to-night, reddleman," said
Yeobright as soon as he perceived her. "I turn back with
this lady. Good night."
268 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Good night, Mr. Yeobright," said Venn. "I hope tu
see you better soon."
The moonlight shone directly upon Venn's face as he
spoke, and revealed all its lines to Eustacia. He was look-
ing suspiciously at her. That Venn's keen eye had dis-
—
cerned what Yeobright' s feeble vision had not a man in
—
the act of withdrawing from Eustacia's side was within the
limits of the probable.
If Eustacia had been able to follow the reddleman she
would soon have found striking confirmation of her thought.
No sooner had Clym given her his arm and led her off the
scene than the reddleman turned back from the beaten track
towards East Egdon, whither he had been strolling merely
to accompany Clym in his walk, Diggory's van being again
in the neighborhood. Stretching out his long legs he crossed
the pathless portion of the heath somewhat in the direction
which Wilde ve had taken. Only a man accustomed to noc-
turnal rambles could at this hour have descended those
shaggy slopes with Venn's velocity without falling headlong
into a pit, or snapping off his leg by jamming his foot into
some rabbit-burrow. But Venn went on without much in-
convenience to himself, and the course of his scamper was
towards the Quiet Woman Inn. This place he reached in
about half an hour, and he was well aware that no person
who had been near Throope Corner when he started could
have got down here before him.
The lonely inn was not yet closed, though scarcely an
individual was there, the business done being chiefly with
travelers who passed the inn on long journeys, and these
had now gone on their way. Venn went to the public room,
called for a mugof ale, and inquired of the maid in an in-
different tone Mr. Wilde ve was at home.
if

Thomasin sat in an inner room and heard Venn's voice.

When customers were present she seldom showed herself,
owing to her inherent dislike for the business; but perceiving
that no one else was there to-night she came out.
"He is not at home yet, Diggory," she said pleasantly.
"But I expected him sooner. He has been to East Egdon
to buy a horse."
 THE CLOSED DOOR 269

"Did he wear a white wideawake?"

"Yes."
"Then I saw him at Throope Corner, leading one home,"
said Venn dryly. "A beauty, with a white face and a mane
as black as night. He will soon be here, no doubt." Rising
and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet face of Thom-
asin, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the
time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, "Mr,
Wilde ve seems to be often away at this time."
"0 yes," cried Thomasin in what was intended to be a
tone of gaiety. "Husbands will play the truant, you know.
I wish you could tell me of some secret plan that would help
me to keep him home at my will in the evenings."
"I will consider if I know of one," replied Venn in that
same light tone which meant no lightness. And then he
bowed in a manner of his own invention and moved to go.
Thomasin offered him her hand; and without a sigh, though
with food for many, the reddleman went out.
When Wildeve returned, a quarter of an hour later, Thom-
asin said simply, and in the abashed manner usual with her
now, "Where is the horse, Damon?"
"0, I have not bought it, after all. The man asks too
much."
"But somebody saw you at Throope Corner leading it

—
home a beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as
night."
"Ah!" said Wildeve, fixing his eyes upon her; "who told
you that?"
"Venn, the reddleman."
The expression of Wildeve's face became curiously con-
—
densed. "That is a mistake it must have been some one
else," he said slowly and testily, for he perceived that Venn's
counter-moves had begun again.
270 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER IV

ROUGH COERCION IS EMPLOYED

Those words of Thomasin, which seemed so little, but
meant so much, remained in the ears of Diggory Venn:
"Help me to keep him home in the evenings."
On this occasion Venn had arrived on Egdon Heath only
to cross to the other side: he had no further connection with
the interests of the Yeobright family, and he had a business
of his own to attend to. Yet he suddenly began to feel him-
self drifting into the old track of maneuvering on Thomasin s
?

account.
He sat in his van and considered. From Thomasin's words
and manner he had plainly gathered that Wildeve neglected
her. For whom could he neglect her if not for Eustacia?
Yet it was scarcely credible that things had come to such a
head as to indicate that Eustacia systematically encouraged
him. Venn resolved to reconnoiter somewhat carefully the
lonely path which led across the hills from Wildeve' s dwelling
to Clym's house at Alderworth.
At this time, as has been seen, Wildeve was quite inno-
cent of any predetermined act of intrigue, and except at
the dance on the green he had not once met Eustacia since
her marriage. But that the spirit of intrigue was in him had
been shown by a recent romantic habit of his: a habit of
going out after dark and strolling towards Alderworth, there
looking at the moon and stars, looking at Eustacia's house,
and walking back at leisure.
Accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival,
the reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over
the front gate of Clym's garden, sigh, and turn to go back
again. It was plain that Wildeve's intrigue was rather ideal
than real. Venn retreated before him down the hill to a
place where the path was merely a deep groove between the
heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a
few minutes, and retired. When Wildeve came on to that
spot his ankle was caught by something, and lie fell headlong.
 THE CLOSED DOOR 271

As soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he

sat up and listened. There was not a sound in the gloom
beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. Feeling about
for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered
that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the
path, forming a loop, which to a traveler was certain over-
throw. Wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and
went on with tolerable quickness. On reaching home he
found the cord to be of a reddish color. It was just what he
had expected.
Although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to
physical fear, this species of coup-de-Jarnac from one he
knew too well troubled the mind of Wildeve. But his move-
ments were unaltered thereby. A night or two later he
again went up the hill to Alderworth, taking the precaution
of keeping out of the path. The sense that he was watched,
that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes,
added piquancy to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long
as the danger was of no fearful sort. He imagined that Venn
and Mrs. Yeobright were in league and felt that there was
a certain legitimacy in combating such a coalition.
The heath appeared to-night to be totally deserted; and
Wildeve, after looking over Eustacia's garden gate for some
little time, with a cigar in his mouth, was tempted by the
fascination that emotional smuggling had for his nature to
advance towards the window, which was not quite closed,
the blind being only partly drawn down. He could see into
the room, and Eustacia was sitting there alone. Wildeve
contemplated her for a minute, and then retreating into the
heath beat the ferns lightly, whereupon moths flew out
alarmed. Securing one, he returned to the window, and
holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. The moth
made towards the candle upon Eustacia's table, hovered
round it two or three times, and flew into the flame.
Eustacia started up. This had been a well-known signal
in old times when Wildeve had used to come secretly wooing
to Mistover. She at once knew that Wildeve was outside,
but before she could consider what to do her husband came
in from upstairs. Eustacia's face burnt crimson at the un-
272 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
expected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation
that it too frequently lacked.
"You have a very high color, dearest," said Yeobright,
when he came close enough to see it. "Your appearance
7'
-would be no worse if it were always so.
"I am warm," said Eustacia. "I think I will go into the
air for a few minutes."
"Shall I go with you?"
"0 no. I am only going to the gate."
She arose, but before she had time to get out of the room
a loud rapping began upon the front door.
"I'll go —
I'll go," said Eustacia in an unusually quick tone

for her; and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence
the moth had flown; but nothing appeared there.
"You had better not at this time of the evening," he said.
Clym stepped before her into the passage, and Eustacia
waited, her somnolent manner covering her inner heat and
agitation.
She listened, and Clym opened the door. No words were
uttered outside, and presently he closed it and came back,
saying, "Nobody was there. I wonder what that could have
meant?"
He was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for
no explanation offered itself, and Eustacia said nothing, the
additional fact that she knew of only adding more mystery
to the performance.
Meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which
saved Eustacia from all possibility of compromising herself
that evening at least. Whilst he had been preparing his
moth-signal another person had come behind him up to the
gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand, looked on
for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked
up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished
round the corner and over the hedge.
"Damn him!" said Wildeve. "He has been watching me
again."
As his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious
rapping, Wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and
walked quickly down the path without thinking of anything
 THE CLOSED DOOR 273

except getting away unnoticed. Half-way down the hill, the

path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the general
darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. When
Wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a
few spent gunshots fell among the leaves around him.
There was no doubt that he himself wr as the cause of that
gun's discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies,
beating the bushes furiously with his stick; but nobody was
there. This attack was a more serious matter than the last,
and it was some time before Wildeve recovered his equanim-
ity. A new and most unpleasant system of menace had be-
gun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily
harm. Wildeve had looked upon Venn's first attempt as a
species of horse-play, which the reddleman had indulged
in for want of knowing better; but now the boundary-line
was passed which divides the annoying from the perilous.
Had Wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest Venn had
become he might have been still more alarmed. The red-
dleman had been almost exasperated by the sight of Wild-
eve outside Clym's' house, and he was prepared to go to any
lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young
innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. The doubtful
legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind
of Venn. It troubles few such minds in such cases, and
sometimes this is not to be regretted. From the impeach-
ment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch' s short way with the*,
scamps of Virginia there have been many triumphs of justice-
which are mockeries of law.
About half a mile below Clym's secluded dwelling lay a*
hamlet where lived one of the two constables who preserved
the peace in the parish of Alder worth, and Wildeve went
straight to the constable's cottage. Almost the first thing
that he saw on opening the door was the constable's trun-
cheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were
the means to his purpose. On inquiry, however, of the con-
stable's wife he learnt that the constable was not at home.
Wildeve said he would wait.
The minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive.
Wildeve cooled down from his state of high indignation to
274 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
a restless dissatisfaction with himself, the scene, the con-
stable's wife, and the whole
set of cirumstances. He arose
and the house. Altogether, the experience of »that eve-
left
ning had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on misdi-
rected tenderness, and Wildeve was in no mood to ascend
again to Alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance
from Eustacia.
Thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in
Ms rude contrivances for keeping down Wildeve's inclination
to rove in the evening. He had nipped in the bud the pos-
sible meeting between Eustacia and her old lover this very
night. But he had not anticipated that the tendency of
his action would be to divert Wildeve's movement rather
than to stop it. The gambling with the guineas had not
conduced to make him a welcome guest to Clym; but to
callupon his wife's relative was natural, and he was deter-
mined to see Eustacia. It was necessary to choose some
less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night. " Since it
is unsafe to go in the evening," he said, "I will go by
day."
Meanwhile Venn had left the heath and gone to call upon
Mrs. Yeobright, with whom he had been on friendly terms
since she had learnt what a providential counter-move he
had made towards the restitution of the family guineas.
She wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no objec-
tion to see him.
He gave her a account of Clym's affliction, and of the
full
state in which he was living; then, referring to Thomasin,
touched gently upon the apparent sadness of her days.
"Now, ma'am, depend upon it," he said, " you couldn't do
a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself at
home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff
at first."
"Both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; there-
fore I have no interest in their households. Their troubles
are of their own making." Mrs. Yeobright tried to speak
severely; but the account of her son's state had moved her
more than she cared to show.
"Ydw visits would make Wildeve walk straighter than
 THE CLOSED DOOR 275

he is inclined to do, and might prevent unhappiness up the

hill."
"What do you mean?"
"I saw something to-night up there which I didn't like
at all. I wish your son's house and Mr. Wildeve's were a
hundred miles apart instead of two or three."
"Then there was an understanding between him and
!"
Clym's wife when he made a fool of Thomasin
"We'll hope there's no understanding now."
"And our hope will probably be very vain. Clym! O
Thomasin!"
"There's no harm done yet. In fact, I've persuaded Wild-
eve to mind his own business."
"How?"
"0, not by talking —by a plan of mine called the silent
system."
"I hope you'll succeed."
"I shall if you help me by calling and making friends with
your son. You'll have a chance then of using your eyes."
"Well, since it has come to this," said Mrs. Yeobright
sadly, "I will own to you, reddleman, that I thought of
going. I should be much happier if we were reconciled.
The marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut short, and
I should wish to die in peace. He is my only son; and since
sons are made of such stuff I am not sorry I have no other.
As for Thomasin, I never expected much from her; and she
has not disappointed me. But I forgave her long ago; and
I forgive him now. I'll go."

At this very time of the reddleman's conversation with

Mrs. Yeobright at Blooms-End another conversation on the
same subject was languidly proceeding at Alderworth.
All the day Clym had borne himself as if his mind were
too full of its own matter to allow him to care about outward
things, and his words now showed what had occupied his
thoughts. It was just after the mysterious knocking that
he began the theme. "Since I have been away to-day, Eu-
stacia, I have considered that something must be done to
heal up this ghastly breach between my dear mother and
myself. It troubles me."
276 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"What do you propose to do?" said Eustacia abstractedly,
for she could not clear away from her the excitement caused
by Wildeve's recent maneuver for an interview.
"You seem to take a very mild interest' in what I pro-
pose, much," said Clym, with tolerable warmth.
little or
"You mistake me," she answered, reviving at his reproach.
"I am only thinking."
"What of?"
"Partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt
up in the wick of the candle," she said slowly. "But you
know I always take an interest in what you say."
"Very well, dear. Then I think I must go and call upon
her." ... He went on with tender feeling: "It is a thing
I am not at all too proud to do, and only a fear that I might
irritate her has kept me away so long. But I must do some-
thing. It is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go
on."
"What have you to blame yourself about?"
"She is getting old, I am her
and her life is lonely, and
only son."
"She has Thomasin."
"Thomasin is not her daughter; and if she were that
would not excuse me. But this is beside the point. I have
made up my mind to go to her, and all I wish to ask you
is whether you will do your best to help me —
that is, forget
the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled,
meet her half-way by welcoming her to our house, or by
accepting a welcome to hers?"
At first Eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do
anything on the whole globe than what he suggested. But
the lines of her mouth softened with thought, though not
so far as they might have softened; and she said, "I will
put nothing in your way; but after what has passed it is
asking too much that I go and make advances."
"You never distinctly told me what did pass between
you."
"I could not do it then, nor can I now. Sometimes more
bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in
a whole life; and that may be the case here." She paused
 THE CLOSED DOOR 277

a few moments, and added, ^f jo ^,»had never returned to

r

,.your native place,Clym, what a blessing it would have been

"
for you ! . It has altered the destinies of
. .

" Three people."

"Five," Eustacia thought; but she kept that in.

CHAPTER V
THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE HEATH
Thursday, the thirty-first of August, was one of a series
of days during which snug houses were stifling, and when
cool draughts were treats; when cracks appeared in clayey
gardens, and were called " earthquakes " by apprehensive
children; when loose spokes were discovered in the wheels,
of carts and carriages; and when stinging insects haunted
the air, the earth, and every drop of water that was to be
found.
In Mrs. Yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a ten-
der kind flagged by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb
bent downward at eleven; and even stiff cabbages were
limp by noon.
It was about eleven o'clock on this day that Mrs. Yeo-
bright started across the heath towards her son's house, to
do her best in getting reconciled with him and Eustacia,
in conformity with her words to the reddleman. She had
hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the heat of
the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found
that this was not to be done. The sun had branded the
whole heath with his mark, even the purple heath-flowers
having put on a brownness under the dry blazes of the few
preceding days. Every valley was filled with air like that
of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of the winter water-
courses, which formed summer paths, had undergone a
had set in.
species of incineration since the drought
In cool, fresh weather Mrs. Yeobright would have found
no inconvenience in walking to Alderworth; but the present
torrid attack made the journey a heavy undertaking for a
278 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
woman past middle age; and at the end of the third mile
she wished that she had hired Fairway to drive her a por-
tion at least of the distance. But from the point at which
she had arrived it was as easy to reach Clym's house as to
get home again. So she went on, the air around her pul-
sating silently, and oppressing the earth with lassitude. She
looked at the sky overhead, and saw that the sapphirine
hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been re-
placed by a metallic violet.
Occasionally she came to a spot where independent worlds
of ephemerons were passing their time in mad carousal,
some in the air, some on the hot ground and vegetation,
some in the tepid and stringy water of a nearly dried pool.
All the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous mud
amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscene
creatures could be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing
with enjoyment. Being a woman not disinclined to philos-,
ophize she sometimes sat down under her umbrella to rest
and to watch their happiness, for a certain hopefulness as
to the result of her visit gave ease to her mind, and between
important thoughts left it free to dwell on any infinitesi-
mal matter which caught her eyes.
Mrs. Yeobright had never before been to her son's house,
and its exact position was unknown to her. She tried one
ascending path and another, and found that they led her
astray. Retracing her steps she came again to an open
level, where she perceived at a distance a man at work. She
went towards him and inquired the way.
The laborer pointed out the direction and added, "Do
you see that furze-cutter, ma'am, going up that footpath
yond?"
Mrs. Yeobright strained her eyes, and at last said that she
did perceive him.
"Well, if you follow him you can make no mistake. He's
going to the same place, ma'am."
She followed the figure indicated. He appeared of a rus-
set hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around him
than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on. His
progress when actually walking was more rapid than Mrs.
 THE CLOSED DOOR 27$

Yeobright's; but she was enabled to keep at an equable dis*

tance from him by his habit of stopping whenever he came
to a brake of brambles, where he paused awhile. On com-
ing in her turn to each of these spots she found half a dozen
long limp brambles which he had cut from the bush dur-
ing his halt and laid out straight beside the path. They
were evidently intended for furze-faggot bonds which he
meant to collect on his return.
The silent being who thus occupied himself seemed to be
of no more account in life than an insect. He appeared as
a mere parasite of the heath, fretting its surface in his daily
labor as a moth frets a garment, entirely engrossed with its
products, having no knowledge of anything in the world
but fern, furze, heath, lichens, and moss.
The furze-cutter was so absorbed in the business of his
journey that he never turned his head; and his leather-legged
and gauntleted form at length became to her as nothing more
than a moving handpost to show her the way. Suddenly
she was attracted to his individuality by observing peculiar-
ities in his walk. It was a gait she had seen somewhere-
before; and the gait revealed the man to her, as the gait of
Ahimaaz in the distant plain made him known to the watch-
man of the king. "His walk is exactly as my husband's;
used to be," she said; and then the thought burst upon her
that the furze-cutter was her son.
She was scarcely able to familiarize herself with this
strange reality. She had been told that Clym was in the
habit of cutting furze, but she had supposed that he occu-
pied himself with the labor only at odd times, by way of
useful pastime; yet she now beheld him as a furze-cutter
—
and nothing more wearing the regulation dress of the craft,
and thinking the regulation thoughts, to judge by his mo-
tions. Planning a dozen hasty schemes for at once preserv-
ing him and Eustacia from this mode of life, she throbbingly
followed the way, and saw him enter his own door.
At one side of Clym's house was a knoll, and on the top
of the knoll a clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the
sky that their foliage from a distance appeared as a black
spot in the air above the crown of the hill. On reaching this
280 THE KETURN OF THE NATIVE
place Mrs. Yeobright felt distressingly agitated, weary, and
unwell. She ascended, and sat down under their shade to
recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground
with Eustacia, so as not to irritate a woman underneath
whose apparent indolence lurked passions even stronger and
more active than her own.
The trees beneath which she sat were singularly battered,
rude, and wild, and for a few minutes Mrs. Yeobright dis-
missed thoughts of her own storm-broken and exhausted
state to contemplate theirs. Not a bough in the nine trees
which composed the group but was splintered, lopped, and
distorted by the fierce weather that there held them at its
mercy whenever it prevailed. Some were blasted and split
as if by lightning, black stains as from fire marking their
sides, while the ground at their feet was strewn with dead
fir-needles and heaps of cones blown down in the gales of
past years. The place was called the Devil's Bellows, and
it was only necessary to come there on a March or Novem-
ber night to discover the forcible reasons for that name. On
the present heated afternoon, when no perceptible wind was
blowing, the trees kept up a perpetual moan which one could
hardly believe to be caused by the air.
Here she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could
summon resolution to go down to the door, her courage
being lowered to zero by her physical lassitude. To any
other person than a mother it might have seemed a little
humiliating that she, the elder of the two women, should be
the first to make advances. But Mrs. Yeobright had well
considered all that, and she only thought how best to make
her visit appear to Eustacia not abject but wise.
From her elevated position the exhausted woman could
perceive the back roof of the house below, and the garden
and the whole enclosure of the little domicile. And now,
at the moment of rising, she saw a second man approaching
the gate. His manner was peculiar, hesitating, and not that
of a person come on business or by invitation. He surveyed
the house with interest, and then walked round and scanned
the outer boundary of the garden, as one might have done
had it been the birthplace of Shakespeare, the prison of
 THE CLOSED DOOR 281

Mary Stuart, or the Chateau of Hougomont. After passing

round and again reaching the gate he went in. Mrs. Yeo-
bright was vexed at this, having reckoned on finding her son
and his wife by themselves; but a moment's thought showed
her that the presence of an acquaintance would take off the
awkwardness of her first appearance in the house, by con-
fining the talk to general matters until she had begun to feel
comfortable with them. She came down the hill to the gate,
and looked into the hot garden.
There lay th e cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path,
as if beds, rugs, and carpets were unendurable. The ieay.es
of the hollyhocks hung like half -closed umbrell as, the sap
al most simmered in the s terns, and foliage with a smooth
surface glared like metalli c mirr ors. A small apple tree,
of the sort called Rathenpe, grew just inside the gate, the
only one which thrived in The garden, by reason of the light-
ness of the soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground
beneath were wasps rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping
about the little caves in each fruit which they had eaten
out before stupefied__by_ its sweetness. By the door lay
Clym's furze-hook and the last handful of faggot-bonds she
had seen him gather; they had plainly been thrown down
there as he entered the house.

CHAPTER VI

A CONJUNCTURE, AND ITS RESULT UPON THE

PEDESTRIAN

Wildeve, as has been stated, was determined to visit

Eustacia boldly, by day, and on the easy terms of a relation,
since the reddleman had spied out and spoilt his walks to
her by night. The spell that she had thrown over him in
the moonlight dance made it impossible for a man having
no strong puritan force within him to keep away altogether.
He merely calculated on meeting her and her husband in an
ordinary manner, chatting a little while, and leaving again.
Every outward sign was to be conventional; but the one
282 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
great fact would be there to satisfy him: he would see her.
He did not even desire Clym's absence, since it was just
possible that Eustacia might resent any situation which
could compromise her dignity as a wife, whatever the state
of her heart towards him. Women were often so.
He went accordingly; and it happened that the time of
his arrival coincided with that of Mrs. Yeobright's pause on
the hill near the house. When he had looked round the
premises in the manner she had noticed he went and knocked
at the door. There was a few minutes' interval, and then the
key turned in the lock, the door opened, and Eustacia her-
self confronted him.
Nobody could have imagined from her bearing now that
here stood the woman who had joined with him in the im-
passioned dance of the week before, unless indeed he could
have penetrated below the surface and gauged the real depth
of that still stream.
"I hope you reached home safely?" said Wildeve.
"O yes," she carelessly returned.
"And were you not tired the next day? I feared you
might be."
"I was rather. You need —
not speak low nobody will
overhear us. My small servantis gone on an errand to the

village."
"Then Clym is not at home?"

"Yes, he is."
"O! I thought that perhaps you had locked the door
because you were alone and were afraid of tramps."
—
"No here is my husband."
They had been standing in the entry. Closing the front
door and turning the key, as before, she threw open the
door of the adjoining room and asked him to walk in. Wild-
eve entered, the room appearing to be empty; but as soon
as he had advanced a few steps he started. On the hearth-
rug lay Clym asleep. Beside him were the leggings, thick
boots, leather gloves, and sleeve-waistcoat in which he
worked.
"You may go in; you will not disturb him," she said, fol-
lowing behind. "My reason for fastening the door is that
 "

THE CLOSED DOOR 283

he may not be intruded upon by any chance comer while

lying here, if I should be in the garden or upstairs.

"Why is he sleeping there?" said Wildeve in low tones.

"He is very weary. He went out at half-past four this
morning, and has been working ever since. He cuts furze
because it is the only thing he can do that does not put any
strain upon his poor eyes." The contrast between the sleep-
er's appearance and Wildeve's at this moment was painfully
apparent to Eustacia, Wildeve being elegantly dressed in a
new summer suit and light hat; and she continued: "Ah!
you don't know how differently he appeared when I first
met him, though it is such a little while ago. His hands
were as white and soft as mine; and look at them now, how
rough and brown they are! His complexion is by nature
fair, and that rusty look he has now, all of a color with his
leather clothes, is caused by the burning of the sun."
"Why does he go out at all?" Wildeve whispered.
"Because he hates to be idle; though what he earns doesn't
add much to our exchequer. However, he says that when
people are living upon their capital they must keep down
current expenses by turning a penny where they can."
"The fates have not been kind to you, Eustacia Yeo-
bright."
"I have nothing to thank them for."
"Nor has he —
except for their one great gift to him."
"What's that?"
Wildeve looked her in the eyes.
Eustacia blushed for the first time that day. "Well, I
am a questionable gift," she said quietly. "I thought you
—
meant the gift of content which he has, and I have not."
—
"I can understand content in such a case though how
the outward situation can attract him puzzles me."
"That's because you don't know him. He's an enthusiast
about ideas, and careless about outward things. He often
reminds me of the Apostle Paul."
"I am glad to hear that he's so grand in character as that."
"Yes; but the worst of it is that though Paul was excellent
as a man in the Bible he would hardly have done in real life."
Their voices had instinctively dropped lower, though at
284 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
first they had taken no particular care to avoid awakening
Clym. "Well, if that means that your marriage is a mis-
fortune to you, you know who is to blame/ said Wilde ve.
7

"The marriage is no misfortune," she said, showing more

emotion than had as yet appeared in her. "It is simply the
accident which has happened since that has been the cause
of my ruin. I have certainly got thistles for figs in a worldly
sense, but how could I tell what time would bring forth?"
"Sometimes, Eustacia, I think it is a judgment upon you.
You rightly belonged to me, you know; and I had no idea
of losing you."
"No, it was not my fault. Two could not belong to you;
and remember that, before I was aware, you turned aside
to another woman. It was cruel levity in you to do that.
I never dreamt of playing such a game on my side till you
began it on yours."
"I meant nothing by it," replied Wildeve. "It was a
mere interlude. Men are given to the trick of having a
passing fancy for somebody else in the midst of a perma-
nent love, which reasserts itself afterwards just as before.
On account of your rebellious manner to me I was tempted
to go further than I should have done; and when you still
would keep playing the same tantalizing part I went further
still, and married her." Turning and looking again at the
unconscious form of Clym, he murmured, "I am afraid that
you don't value your prize, Clym. ... He ought to be
happier than I in one thing at least. He may know what it
is to come down in the world, and to be afflicted with a

great personal calamity; but he probably doesn't know what

it is to lose the woman he loved."
"He is not ungrateful for winning her," whispered Eusta-
cia, "and in that respect he is a good man. Many women
would go far for such a husband. But do I desire unreason-
—
ably much in wanting what is called life music, poetry,
passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that is going
on in the great arteries of the world? That was the shape
of my youthful dream; but I did not get it. Yet I thought
I saw the way to it in my Clym."
"And you only married him on that account?"
 THE CLOSED DOOR 285

"There you mistake me. I married him because I loved

him, but I won't say that I didn't love him partly because I
thought I saw a promise of that life in him."
"You have dropped into your old mournful key." ,

"But I am not going to be depressed," she cried excitedly.

"I began a new system by going to that dance, and mean to
stick to it. Clym can sing merrily; why should not I?"
Wildeve looked thoughtfully at her. "It is easier to say
you will sing than to do it; though if I could I would encour-
age you in your attempt. But as life means nothing to me,
without one thing which is now impossible, you will forgive
me for not being able to encourage you."
"Damon, what is the matter with you, that you speak
like that?" she asked, raising her deep shady eyes to his.
"That's a thing I shall never tell plainly; and perhaps if
I try to tell you in riddles you will not care to guess them."
Eustacia remained silent for a minute, and she said, "We
are in a strange relationship to-day. You mince matters to
an uncommon nicety. You mean, Damon, that you still
love me. Well, that gives me sorrow, for I am not made
so entirely happy by my marriage that I am willing to spurn
you for the information, as I ought to do. But we have
said too much about this. Do you mean to wait until my
husband is awake?"
"I thought to speak to him; but it is unnecessary. Eusta-
cia, if I offend you by not forgetting you, you are right to
mention it; but do not talk of spurning."
She did not reply, and they stood looking musingly at
Clym as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the re-
sult of physical labor carried on in circumstances that wake
no nervous fear.
"God, how I envy him that sw^ggk-Bte^pJ " said Wildeve.
"I have not slept like that since~T"was a boy years and —
years ago."
While they thus watched him a click at the gate was audi-
ble,and a knock came to the door. Eustacia went to a win-
dow and looked out.
Her countenance changed. First she became crimson, and
then the red subsided till it even partially left her lips.
 "

286 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

" Shall I go away?" said Wildeve, standing up.
"I hardly know."
"Who is it?"
"Mrs. Yeobright. 0, what she said to me that day! I
—
cannot understand this visit what does she mean? And
she suspects that past time of ours."
"I am in your hands. If you think she had better not
see me here I'll go into the next room."
"Well, yes: go."
Wilde ve at once withdrew; but before he had been half
a minute in the adjoining apartment Eustacia came after
him.
"No," she said, "we won't have any of this. If she comes
in she must see you —
I have done no wrong. But how can
I open the door to her, when she dislikes me —
wishes to see
!
not me, but her son ? I won't open the door
Mrs. Yeobright knocked again more loudly.
"Her knocking will, in all likelihood, awaken him," con-
tinued Eustacia; "and then he will let her in himself. Ah
—listen."
They could hear Clym moving in the other room, as if
disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word
"Mother."
— —
"Yes he is awake he will go to the door," she said,
with a breath of relief. "Come this way. I have a bad
name with her, and you must not be seen. Thus I am
obliged to act by stealth, not because I do ill, but because
others are pleased to say so."
By this time she had taken him to the back door, which
was open, disclosing a path leading down the garden. "Now,
one word, Damon," she remarked as he stepped forth.
"This is your first visit here; let it be your last. We have
been hot lovers in our time, but it won't do now. Good-
bye."
"Good-bye," said Wildeve. "I have had all I came for,
and I am satisfied."
"What was it?"
r
"A sight of you. 7pci_ my eternal honor I came for no
more."
Wildeve kissed his hand to the beautiful girl he addressed,
 "

THE CLOSED DOOR 287

and passed into the garden, where she watched him down the
path, over the stile at the end, and into the ferns outside,
which brushed his hips as he went along, and became los'
in their thickets. When he had quite gone she slowly
turned, and directed her attention to the interior of the
house.
But it was might not be desired
possible that her presence
by Clym and mother at this moment of their first meet-
his
ing, or that it would be superfluous. At all events, she was
in no hurry to meet Mrs. Yeobright. She resolved to wait
till Clym came to look for her, and glided back into the

garden. Here she idly occupied herself for a few minutes,

till finding no notice was taken of her she again retraced

her steps, advancing to the front entrance, where she lis-

tened for voices in the parlor. But hearing none she opened
the door and went in. To her astonishment Clym lay pre-
cisely as Wilde ve and herself had left him, his sleep ap-
parently unbroken. He had been disturbed and made to
dream and murmur by the knocking, but he had not awak-
ened. Eustacia hastened to the door, and in spite of her
reluctance to open it to a woman who had spoken of her
so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out. Nobody was
to be seen. There, by the scraper, lay Clym's hook and
the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home; in front
of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing slightly
ajar; and, b eyond, the great valley of jp urple he ath thrilling
silently in the sun. Mrs. Yeobright was gone.

Clym's mother was at this time following a path which

lay hidden from Eustacia by a shoulder of the hill. Her
walk thither from the garden gate had been hasty and de-
termined, as of a woman who was now no less anxious to
escape from the scene than she had previously been to entel
it. Her eyes were fixed on the ground; within her two sightf
—
were graven that of Clym's hook and brambles at the door,
and that of a woman's face at a window. Her lips trembled^
becoming unnaturally thin, as she murmured, "'Tis too
—
much Clym, how can he bear to do it! He is at home;
and yetv he lets her shut the door against me
!

In her anxiety to get out of the direct view of the house

 "

288 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

she had diverged from the straightest path homeward, and
while looking about to regain it she came upon a little boy
gathering whortleberries in a hollow. The boy was Johnny
Nunsuch, who had been Eustacia's stoker at the bonfire,
and, with the tendency of a minute body to gravitate towards
a greater, he began hovering; round Mrs. Yeobright as soon
as she appeared, and tro£fc£cl on beside her without percepti-
ble consciousness of his act.
Mrs. Yeobright spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep .
Tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there
v ^till evening."
^ /v/-^ "I shall," said her small companion. "I am going to
Of play marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o'clock,
because father comes home. Does your father come home
at six too?"
"No: he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody."
"What have made you so down? Have you seen a
ooser?" 1
—
"I have seen what's worse a woman's face looking at
me through a window-pane."
"Is that a bad sight?"
"Yes. It is always a bad sight to see a woman looking
out at a weary wayfarer and not letting her in."
"Once when I went to Throope Great Pond to catch
efTets 2 I seed myself looking up at myself, and I was fright-
ened and jumped back like anything."
... "If they had only shown signs of meeting my ad-
vances half-way how well it might have been done! But
there is no chance. Shut out! She must have set him
a gainst me Can
the re be beautiful HBodies .with out hearts
.

inside THL think so. I would not have done it against a

!
neighbor's cat on such a fiery day as this
"What is it you say?"
" Never again —never ! Not even if they send for me!"
"You must be a very curious woman to talk like that."
"0 no, not at all," she said, returning to the boy's
prattle.

1
A grotesque mask, made for the purpose of frightening people.
2 Efts, newts.
 THE CLOSED DOOR 289

"Most people who grow up and have children talk as I do.

When you grow up your mother will talk as I do too."
"I hope she won't; because 'tis very bad to talk non-
sense."
" Yes, child;
it is nonsense, I suppose. Are you not nearly
spent with the heat?"
"Yes. But not so much as you be."
"How do you know?"
"Your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-
down-like."
"Ah, Iam exhausted from inside."
"Why do you, every time you take a step, go like this?"
The child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp
of an invalid.
"Because I have a burden which is more than I can bear ."
The little boy remained silently pondering, and they tot-
tered on side by side until more than a quarter of an hour
had elapsed, when Mrs. Yeobright, whose weakness plainly
increased, said to him, "I must sit down here to rest."
When she had seated herself he looked long in her face
and said, "How funny you draw your breath like a lamb —
when you drive him till he's nearly done for. Do you al-
ways draw your breath like that?"
"Not always." Her voice was now so low as to be scarcely
above a whisper.
"You will go to sleep there, I suppose, won't you? You
have shut your eyes already."
—
"No. I shall not sleep much till another day, and then
I hope to have a long, long one —very long. Now can you
tell me if Bottom Pond is dry this summer?"
"Bottom Pond is, but Moreford Pool isn't, because he is
—
deep, and is never dry 'tis just over there."
"Is the water clear?"
—
"Yes, middling except where the heath-croppers walk
into it."
"Then, take this, and go as fast as you can, and dip me
up the you can find. I am very faint."
clearest
She drew from the small willow reticule that she carried
in her hand an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle;
290 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
itwas one of half a dozen of the same sort lying in the reti-
cule,which she had preserved ever since her childhood, and
had brought with her to-day as a small present for Clym
and Eustacia.
The boy started on his errand, and soon came back with
the water, such as it was. Mrs. Yeobright attempted to
drink, but it was so warm as to give her nausea, and she
threw it away. Afterwards she still remained sitting, with
her eyes closed.
The boy waited, played near her, caught several of the
little brown butterflies which abounded, and then said as he

waited again, "I like going on better than biding still. Will
you soon start again?"
"I don't know."
"I wish I might go on by myself," he resumed, fearing,
apparently, that he was to be pressed into some unpleasant
service. "Do you want me any more, please?"
Mrs. Yeobright made no reply.
"What shall I tell mother?" the boy continued.
"Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off
by her son."
Before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful
glance, as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsak-
ing her thus. He gazed into her face in a vague, wonder-
ing manner, like that of one examining some strange old
manuscript, the key to whose characters is undiscoverable.
He was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense
that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be
free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in
adult quarters hitherto deemed impregnable; and whether
she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it,
whether she and her affliction were something to pity or
something to fear, it was beyond him to decide. He lowered
his eyesand went on without another word. Before he had
gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except that
she was a woman who had sat down to rest.
Mrs. Yeobright's exertions, physical and emotional, had
well-nigh prostrated her; but she continued to creep along
in short stages with long breaks between.^ The sun had now
 . —
&*&**
l
THE CLOSED DOOR / 291

got far to the west of south and stood directly in her face,
like some merciless ince ndiary? brar^jn Jaand, waiting to
consume her. With the departure of the hoy a ll visible ani-
ma^tion^is^ppeared from the l andsc ape/ though the inter-
mittent husRjT notes "of" the male grasshoppers from every
tuft of furze were enough to show that amidjbhe^rostration
oLiJb^J^^g^mal specje^.a,n imseejaJnsejgtjyorld was bu sy
in jillr4h^-£ulhieas_of life
At length she reached a slope about two-thirds of the
whole distance from Alderworth to her own home, where a
little patch of shjejp herd Vthyme
intruded upon the path;
and she sat down upon the perfumed jnat
it formed th ere.

In front of her a colony of ants had established a thorough-\

fare across the way, where they toiled a never-ending and 1
heavy-laden throng. To look down upon them was like ob- <
serving a city street from the top of a tower. She remem-
bered that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years
—
at the same spot doubtless those of the old times were the
ancestors of these which walked there now. She leant back
to_oh_tain morejjiorou gh rest^ and th e_soft eastern p ortion
of the .^kv^as_a^_great_a relief to her^eygsj^the thyme w as
to her head. While she looked a heron arose on that side ok
the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. He had I

come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he

flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs, and his/
breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he ap-^
peared as if f ormed_ofJb urnis hed _silycr Up_jn_the_ zenith
.

where he was seem ed a free a nd happy p lace, away fro all m

contact with the earthly ball to which she was Jjinioned;
and_s he wisheoTThat she could arise u n_cr"shpri from itfl Rlir-
face and fl xJ&Jie fle w then.
But, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should

soon cease to ruminate upon her own condition. Had the"

track of her next thought been marked by a streak in the j

air, like the path of a meteor, it would have shown a direc-

tion contrary to the heron's, and have descended to the east-
ward upon the roof of Clym's house, <
292 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER VII

THE TRAGIC MEETING OF TWO OLD FRIENDS

He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat
up, and looked around. Eustacia was sitting in a chair hard
by him, and though she held a book in her hand she had
not looked into it for some time.
"Well, indeed!" said Clym, brushing his eyes with his
hands. "How soundly I have slept! I have had such a
tremendous dream, too: one I shall never forget."
"I thought you had been dreaming," said she.
"Yes. It was about my mother. I dreamt that I took
you to her house to make up differences, and when we got
there we couldn't get in, though she kept on crying to us
for help. However, dreams are dreams. What o'clock is
it, Eustacia?"

"Half-past two."
"So late, is it? I didn't mean to stay so long. By the
time Ihave had something to eat it will be after three."
"Ann is not come back from the village, and I thought I
would let you sleep on till she returned."
Clym went to the window and looked out. Presently he
said, musingly, "Week after week passes, and yet mother
does not come. I thought I should have heard something
from her long before this."
Misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course
of expression in Eustacia's dark eyes. She was face to face
with a monstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of
it by postponement.
"I must certainly go to Blooms-End soon," he continued,
"and I think I had better go alone." He picked up his leg-
gings and gloves, threw them down again, and added, "As
dinner will be so late to-day I will not go back to the heath,
but work in the garden till the evening, and then, when it
will be cooler, I will walk to Blooms-End. I am quite sure
that if I make a little advance mother will be willing to for-
get all. It will be rather late before I can get home, as I
 THE CLOSED DOOR 293

shall not be able to do the distance either way in less than

an hour and a half. But you will not mind for one evening,
dear? What are you thinking of to make you look so ab-
stracted ?"
"I cannot tell you," she said heavily. "I wish we didn't
Clym. The world seems all wrong in this place."
live here,
—
"Well if we make it so. I wonder if Thomasin has been
to Blooms-End lately. I hope so. But probably not, as
she is, I believe, expecting to be confined in a month or so.
I wish I had thought of that before. Poor mother must in-
deed be very lonely."
"I don't like you going to-night."
"Why not to-night?"
"Something may be said which will terribly injure me."
"My mother is not vindictive," said Clym, his color faintly
rising.
"But Iwish you would not go," Eustacia repeated in a
low tone. "If you agree not to go to-night I promise to go
myself to her house to-morrow, and make it up with her,
and wait till you fetch me."
"Why do you want to do that at this particular time,
when at every previous time that I have proposed it you
have refused?"
"I cannot explain further than that I should like to see
her alone before you go," she answered, with an impatient
move of her head, and looking at him with an anxiety more
frequently seen upon those of a sanguine temperament than
upon such as herself.
"Well, it is very odd that just when I had decided to go
myself you should want to do what I proposed long ago.
If I wait for you to go to-morrow another day will be lost;
and I know I shall be unable to rest another night without
having been. I want to get this settled, and will. You
must visit her afterwards: it will be all the same."
"I could even go with you now?"
"You could scarcely walk there and back without a longer
rest than I shall take. No, not to-night, Eustacia."
"Let it be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way
of one who, though willing to ward off evil consequences by
 294 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
a mild effort, would let events fall out as they might sooner
than wrestle hard to direct them.
Clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor
stole over Eustacia for the remainder of the afternoon, which
her husband attributed to the heat of the weather.
In the evening he set out on the journey. Although the
heat of summer was yet intense the days had considerably
shortened, and before he had advanced a mile on his way all
the heath purples, browns, and greens had merged in a uni-
form dress without airiness or gradation, and broken only
by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz
sand showed the entrance to a rabbit-burrow, or where the
white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes.
In almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns
which grew here and there a night-hawk revealed his pres-
ence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could
hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling
round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of lis-
tening beginning to whirr again. At each brushing of Clym's
feet white miller-moths flew into the air just high enough
to catch upon their dusty wings the mellowed light from the
west, which now shone across the depressions and levels of
the ground without falling thereon to light them up.
^ Yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope
'
that all would soon be well. At length he came to a spot
where a soft perfume was wafted across his path, and he
stood still for a moment to inhale the familiar scent. It was
the place at which, four hours earlier, his mother had sat
down exhausted on the knoll covered with shepherd's-thyme.
While he stood a sound between a breathing and a moan
suddenly reached his ears.
He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing
appeared there save the verge of the hillock stretching
against the sky in an unbroken line. He moved a few steps
in that direction, and now he perceived a recumbent figure
almost close at his feet.
Among the different possibilities as to the person's in-
dividuality there did not for a moment occur to Yeobright
that it might be one of his own family. Sometimes furze-
 THE CLOSED DOOR 295

cuttershad been known to sleep out of doors at these times,

to save a long journey homeward and back again; but
Clym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that
the form was feminine; and a distress came over him like
cold air from a cave. But he was not absolutely certain
that the woman was his mother till he stooped and beheld
her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.
His breath went, as it were, out of his body, and the cry
of anguish which would have escaped him died upon his
lips. During the momentary interval that elapsed before
he became conscious that something must be done all sense
of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and his
mother were as when he was a child with her many years
ago on this heath at hours similar to the present. Then he
awoke to activity; and bending yet lower he found that she
still breathed, and that her breath though feeble was reg-

ular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp.

—
"0, what is it! Mother, are you very ill you are not
dying?" he cried, pressing his lips to her face. "I am your
Clym. How did you come here? What does it all mean?"
At that moment the chasm in their lives which his love
for Eustacia had caused was not remembered by Yeobright,
and to him the present joined continuously with that friendly
past that had been their experience before the division.
She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could
not speak; and then Clym strove to consider how best to
move her, as it would be necessary to get her away from the
spot before the dews were intense. He was able-bodied,
and his mother was thin. He clasped his arms round her,
lifted her a little, and said, "Does that hurt you?"
She shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow
pace, went onward with his load. The arrjwasjaojLC_om-
pletely_cod]j3uj^
gF6^h(Turi carpeted withjvegetati on there was refb cted-irom
itssurface into his face thVSatwhich it had imbibed during
the day .At the beginning of his undertaking he had thought
but little of the distance which yet would have to be trav-
ersed before Blooms-End could be reached; but though he
had slept that afternoon he soon began to feel the weight
296 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
of his burden. Thus he proceeded, like Aeneas with his
father; the bats circling round his head, nightjars flapping
their wings within a yard of his face, and not a human being
within call.
While he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother
exhibited signs of restlessness under the constraint of being
borne along, as if his arms were irksome to her. He lowered
her upon his knees and looked around. The point they
had now reached, though far from any road, was not more
than a mile from the Blooms-End cottages occupied by
Fairway, Sam, Humphrey, and the Can ties. Moreover,
fifty yards off stood a hut, built of clods and covered with
thin turves, but now entirely disused. The simple outline
of the lonely shed was visible, and thither he determined to
direct his steps. As soon as he arrived he laid her down
carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his
pocket-knife an armful of the dryest fern. Spreading this
within the shed, which was entirely open on one side, he
placed his mother thereon: then he ran with all his might
towards the dwelling of Fairway.
Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only
by the broken breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures
began to animate the line between heath and sky. In a few
moments Clym arrived with Fairway, Humphrey, and Susan
Nunsuch; Oily Dowden, who had chanced to be at Fairway's,
Christian and Grandfer Cantle following helter-skelter be-
hind. They had brought a lantern and matches, water, a
pillow, and a few other articles which had occurred to their
minds in the hurry of the moment. Sam had been dis-
patched back again for brandy, and a boy brought Fairway's
pony, upon which he rode off to the nearest medical man,
with directions to call at Wildeve's on his way, and inform
Thomasin that her aunt was unwell.
Sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered
by the light of the lantern; after which she became sufficiently
conscious to signify by signs that something was wrong with
her foot. Oily Dowden at length understood her meaning,
ana examined the foot indicated. It was swollen and red.
Even as they watched the red began to assume a more livid
 THE CLOSED DOOR 297

midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller

color, in the
than a pea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood,
which rose above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemi-
sphere.
"I know what it is," cried Sam. "She has been stung by
!"
an adder
"Yes," said Clym instantly. "I remember when I was
a child seeing just such a bite. 0, my poor mother!"
"It was my father who was bit," said Sam. "And there's
only one way to cure it. You must rub the place with the
and the only way to get that is
fat of other adders, by fry-
ing them. That's what they did for him."
"'Tis an old remedy," said Clym distractedly, "and I
have doubts about it. But we can do nothing else till the
doctor comes."
"'Tis a sure cure," said Oily Dowden, with emphasis.
"I've used it when I used to go out nursing."
"Then we must pray for daylight, to catch them," said
Clym gloomily.
"I what I can do," said Sam.
will see
He took a green hazel which he had used as a walking-
stick, split it at the end, inserted a small pebble, and with
the lantern in his hand went out into the heath. Clym had
by this time lit a small fire, and dispatched Susan Nunsuch
for a frying-pan. Before she had returned Sam came in
with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in the
cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging dead across it.
"I have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he
ought to be," said Sam. "These limp ones are two I killed
to-day at work; but as they don't die till the sun goes down
they can't be very stale meat." *

The live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinis-

ter look in its small black eye, and the beautiful brown and
jet pattern on its back seemed to intensify with indignation.
Mrs. Yeobright saw the creature, and the creature saw har;
she quivered throughout, and averted her eyes.
"Look at that," murmured Christian Cantle. "Neigh-
bors, how do we know but that something of the old serpent
in God's garden, that gied the apple to the young woman
 "

298 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakes still? Look
at his eye —for all the world like a villainous sort of black
currant. 'Tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us! There's
folks in heath who've been overlooked 1 already. I will never
kill another adder as long as I live."
"Well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't help
it," said Grandfer Cantle. "'Twould have saved me many
a brave danger in my time."
"I fancy I heard something outside the shed," said Chris-
tian. "I wish troubles would come in the daytime, for then
a man could show his courage, and hardly beg for mercy of
the most broomstick old woman he should see, if he was
a brave man, and able to run out of her sight !

"Even such an ignorant fellow as I should know better

than do that," said Sam.
"Well, there's calamities where we least expect it, whether
or no. Neighbors, if Mrs. Yeobright were to die, d'ye think
we should be took up and tried for the manslaughter of a
woman?"
"No, they couldn't bring it in that," said Sam, "unless
they could prove we had been poachers at some time of our
lives. But she'll fetch round."
"Now, if I had been stung by ten adders I should hardly
have lost a day's work for't," said Grandfer Cantle. "Such
is my spirit when I am on my mettle. But perhaps 'tis
natural in a man trained for war. Yes, I've gone through a
good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me after I joined
the Locals in four." He shook his head and smiled at a
mental picture of himself in uniform. "I was always first
!"
in the most galliantest scrapes in my younger days
"I suppose that was because they always used to put the
biggest fool afore," said Fairway from the fire, beside which
he knelt, blowing it with his breath.
"D'ye think so, Timothy?" said Grandfer Cantle, coming
forward to Fairway's side, with sudden depression in his
face. "Then a man may feel for years that he is good solid
company, and be wrong about himself after all?"
"Never mind that question, Grandfer. Stir your stumps
i Bewitched.
 THE CLOSED DOOR 299

and get some more sticks. 'Tis very nonsense of an old

man to prattle so when life and death's in mangling."
"Yes, yes/' said Grandfer Cantle, with melancholy con-
viction. "Well, this is a bad night altogether for them that
have done well in their time; and if I were ever such a dab
at the hautboy or tenor-viol, I shouldn't have the heart to
play tunes upon 'em now."
Susan now arrived with the frying-pan, when the live
adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off. The
remainders, being cut into lengths and split open, were
tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling over
the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the carcases,
whereupon Clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into
the liquid and anointed the wound.

CHAPTER VIII

EUSTACIA HEARS OF GOOD FORTUNE AND

BEHOLDS EVIL

In the meantime Eustacia, left alone in her cottage at

Alderworth, had become considerably depressed by the
posture of affairs. The consequences which might result
from Clym's discovery that his mother had been turned from
his door that day were likely to be disagreeable, and this
was a quality in events which she hated as much as the
dreadful.
To be left to pass the evening by herself was irksome to
her at any time, and this evening it was more irksome than
usual by reason of the excitements of the past hours. The
two visits had stirred her into restlessness. She was not
wrought to any great pitch of uneasiness by the probability
of appearing in an ill light in the discussion between Clym
and his mother, but she was wrought to vexation; and her
slumbering activities were quickened to the extent of wish-
ing that she had opened the door. She had certainly be-
lieved that Clym was awake, and the excuse would be an
honest one as far as it went; but nothing could save her
 1 —"

300 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

from censure in refusing to answer at the first knock. Yet,
instead of blaming herself for the issue she laid the fault
upon the shoulders of some indistinct, colossal Prince of
the World, who had framed her situation and ruled her lot.
At this time of the year it was pleasanter to walk by night
than by day, and when Clym had been absent about an hour
she suddenly resolved to go out in the direction of Blooms-
End, on the chance of meeting him on his return. When
she reached the garden gate she heard wheels approaching,
and looking round beheld her grandfather coming up in his
car.
"I can't stay a minute, thank ye," he answered to her
greeting. "I am driving to East Egdon; but I came round
here just to tell you the news. Perhaps you have heard
"
about Mr. Wildeve's fortune ?
"No,"said Eustacia blankly.
"Well, he has come into a fortune of eleven thousand
—
pounds uncle died in Canada, just after hearing that all
1
his family, whom he was sending home, had gone to the
i
bottom in the Cassiopeia; so Wildeve has come into every-
thing, without in the least expecting it."
Eustacia stood motionless awhile. "How long has he
known of this?" she asked.
"Well, it was known to him this morning early, for I
knew it at ten o'clock, when Charley came back. Now, he is
what I call a lucky man. What a fool you were, Eustacia !

"In what way ? " she said, lifting her eyes in apparent calm-
ness.
"Why, in not sticking to him when you had him."
"Had him, indeed!"
"I did not know there had ever been anything between
you till lately; and, faith, I should have been hot and strong
against it if I had known; but since it seems that there was
some sniffing between ye, why the deuce didn't you stick
to him?"
Eustacia made no reply, but she looked as if she could
say as much upon that subject as he if she chose.
"And how is your poor purblind husband?" continued the
old man. "Not a bad fellow either, as far as he goes."
 THE CLOSED DOOR 301

"He is quite well."

"It is a good thing for his cousin what-d'ye-call-her ? By
George, you ought to have been in that galley, my girl!
Now I must drive on. Do you want any assistance ? What's
mine is yours, you know."
"Thank you, grandfather, we are not in want at present,"
she said coldly. "Clym cuts furze, but he does it mostly
as a useful pastime, because he can do nothing else."
"He is paid for his pastime, isn't he? Three shillings a
hundred, I heard."
"Clym has money," she said, coloring; "but he likes to
earn a little."
"Very good night." And the captain drove on.
well;
When her grandfather was gone Eustacia went on hei
way mechanically; but her thoughts were no longer con-
cerning her mother-in-law and Clym. Wildeve, notwith^
standing his complaints against his fate, had been seized
upon by destiny and placed in the sunshine once more.
Eleven thousand pounds! From every Egdon point of
view he was a rich man. In Eustacia's eyes, too, it wa?
—
an ample sum one sufficient to supply those wants of her?
which had been stigmatized by Clym in his more austere
moods as vain and luxurious. Though she was no lover of
money she loved what money could bring; and the new
accessories she imagined around him clothed Wildeve with
a great deal of interest. She recollected now how quietly
well-dressed he had been that morning: he had probably
put on his newest suit, regardless of damage by briars and
thorns. And then she thought of his manner towards herself.
"0 1 see it, I see it," she said. "How much he wishes he
!"
had me now, that he might give me all I desire
—
In recalling the details of his glances and words at the
—
time scarcely regarded it became plain to her how greatly
they had been dictated by his knowledge of this new event.
"Had he been a man to bear a jilt ill-will he would have
told me of his good fortune in crowing tones; instead of
doing that he mentioned not a word, in deference to my mis-
fortunes, and merely implied that he loved me still, as one
superior to him."
 •

302 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Wildeve's silence that day on what had happened to him
was just the kind of behavior calculated to make an impres-
sion on such a woman. Those delicate touches of good
taste were, in fact, one of the strong points in his demeanor
towards the other sex. The peculiarity of Wilde ve was
that, while at one time passionate, upbraiding, and resentful
towards a woman, at another he would treat her with such
unparalleled grace as to make previous neglect appear as
no discourtesy, injury as no insult, interference as a delicate
attention, and the ruin of her honor as excess of chivalry.
This man, whose admiration to-day Eustacia had disre-
garded, whose good wishes she had scarcely taken the trouble
to accept, whom she had shown out of the house by the
back door, was the possessor of eleven thousand pounds —
a man of fair professional education, and one who had served
his articles with a civil engineer.
So intent was Eustacia upon Wildeve's fortunes that she
forgot how much closer to her own course were those of
Clym; and instead of walking on to meet him at once she sat
down upon a stone. She was disturbed in her reverie by
a voice behind, and turning her head beheld the old lover
and fortunate inheritor of wealth immediately beside her.
She remained sitting, though the fluctuation in her look
might have told any man who knew her so well as Wildeve
that she was thinking of him.
"How did you come here?" she said in her clear, low
tone. "I thought you were at home."
"I went on to the village after leaving your garden; and
now I have come back again: that's all. Which way are
you walking, may I ask?"
She waved her hand in the direction of Blooms-End. "I
am going to meet my husband. I think I may possibly
have got into trouble whilst you were with me to-day."
"How could that be?"
"By not letting in Mrs. Yeobright."
"I hope that visit of mine did you no harm."
"None. It was not your fault," she said quietly.
By this time she had arisen; and they involuntarily saun-
tered on together, without speaking, for two or three min-
 THE CLOSED DOOR 303

utes; when Eustacia broke silence by saying, "I assume I

must congratulate you."
"On what? O yes; on my eleven thousand pounds, you
mean. Well, since I didn't get something else, I must be
content with getting that."
"You seem very indifferent about it. Why didn't you
tell me to-day when you came?" she said in the tone of a
neglected person. "I heard of it quite by accident."
"I did mean to tell you," said Wildeve. "But I well, I —
will speak frankly —I did not like to mention it when I saw,
Eustacia, that your star was not high. The sight of a man
lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay,
made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would
be greatly out of place. Yet, as you stood there beside him,
I could not help feeling too that in many respects he was
a richer man than I."
At this Eustacia said, with slumbering mischievousness,
—
"What, would you exchange with him your fortune for
me?"
"I certainly would," said Wildeve.
"As we are imagining what is impossible and absurd, sup-
pose we change the subject?"
"Very well; and I will tell you of my plans for the future,
if you care to hear them. I shall permanently invest nine
thousand pounds, keep one thousand as ready money, and
with the remaining thousand travel for a year or so."
"Travel? What a bright idea! Where will you go
to?"
"From here to Paris, where I shall pass the winter and
spring. Then I shall go to Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Pales-
tine, before the hot weather comes on. In the summer I
shall go to America; and then, by a plan not yet settled, I
shall go to Australia and round to India. By that time I
shall have begun to have had enough of it. Then I shall
probably come back to Paris again, and there I shall stay
as long as I can afford to."
"Back to Paris again," she murmured in a voice that was
nearly a sigh. She had never once told Wildeve of the
Parisian desires which Clym's description had sown in her;
304 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
yet here was he involuntarily in a position to gratify them.
"You think a good deal of Paris?" she added.
"Yes. In my opinion it is the central beauty-spot of the
world."
"And in mine! And Thomasin will go with you?"
"Yes, if she cares to. She may prefer to stay at home."
"So you will be going about, and I shall be staying here !"
"I suppose you will. But we know whose fault that is."
"I am not blaming you," she said quickly.
"Oh, I thought you were. If ever you should be inclined
to blame me, think of a certain evening by Rainbarrow,
when you promised to meet me and did not. You sent me
a letter; and my heart ached to read that as I hope yours
never will. That was one point of divergence. I then did
something in haste. . . But she is a good woman, and I
.

will say no more."

"I know that the blame was on my side that time," said
Eustacia. "But it had not always been so. However, it
is my misfortune to be too sudden in feeling. Damon,
—
don't reproach me any more I can't bear that."
They went on silently for a distance of a mile and more,
when Eustacia said suddenly, "Haven't you come out of
your way, Mr. Wildeve?"
"My way is anywhere to-night. I will go with you as
far as the hill on which we can see Blooms-End, as it is
getting late for you to be alone."
"Don't trouble. I am not obliged to be out at all. I
think I would rather you did not accompany me further.
This sort of thing would have an odd look if known."
"Very well, I will leave you." He took her hand unex-
—
pectedly, and kissed it for the first time since her marriage.
"What light is that on the hill?" he added, as it were to hide
the caress.
She looked, and saw a flickering firelight proceeding from
the open side of a hovel a little way before them. The
hovel which she had hitherto always found empty, seemed
to be inhabited now.
"Since you have come so far," said Eustacia, "will you
see me safely past that hut? I thought I should have met
 THE CLOSED DOOR 305

Clym somewhere about here, but as he doesn't appear I

will hasten on and get to Blooms-End before he leaves."
They advanced to the turf-shed, and when they got near
it the firelight and the lantern inside showed distinctly

enough the form of a woman reclining on a bed of fern, a

group of heath men and women standing around her. Eu-
stacia did not recognize Mrs. Yeobright in the reclining
figure, nor Clym as one of the standers-by till she came close.
Then she quickly pressed her hand upon Wilde ve's arm and
signified to him to come back from the open side of the
shed into the shadow.
"It is my husband and his mother," she whispered in an
agitated voice. "What can it mean? Will you step for-
ward and tell me?"
Wildeve left her side and went to the back wall of the
hut. Presently Eustacia perceived that he was beckoning
to her, and she advanced and joined him.
"It is a serious case," said Wildeve.
From their position they could hear what was proceeding
inside.
"I cannot think where she could have been going," said
Clym to some one. "She had evidently walked a long way,
but even when she was able to speak just now she would
not tell me where. What do you really think of her?"
"There is a great deal of fear," was gravely answered in a
voice which Eustacia recognized as that of the only surgeon
in the district. "She has suffered somewhat from the bite
of the adder; but it is exhaustion which has overpowered
her. My impression is that her walk must have been ex-
ceptionally long."
"I used to tell her not to overwalk herself this weather,"
said Clym, with distress. "Do you think we did well in
using the adder's fat?"
—
"Well, it is a very ancient remedy the old remedy of the
viper-catchers, I believe," replied the doctor. "It is men-
tioned as an infallible ointment by Hoffman, Mead, and I
think the Abbe Font ana. Undoubtedly it was as good a
thing as you could do; though I question if some other oils
would not have been equally efficacious."
 "

306 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Come here, come here!" was then rapidly said in soft
female tones; and Clym and the doctor could be heard rush-
ing forward from the back part of the shed, where they had
been standing.
"0, what is it?" whispered Eustacia.
"'Twas Thomasin who spoke," said Wildeve. "Then
they have fetched her. I wonder if I had better go in yet —
itmight do harm."
For a long time there was utter silence among the group
within; and it was broken at last by Clym saying, in an
agonized voice, "0 doctor, what does it mean?"
The doctor did not reply at once; ultimately he said,
"She is sinking fast. Her heart was previously affected,
and physical exhaustion has dealt the finishing blow."
Then there was a weeping of women, then waiting, then
hushed exclamations, then a strange gasping sound, then a
painful stillness.
"It is all over," said the doctor.
Further back in the hut the cotters whispered, "Mrs.
Yeobright is dead."
Almost at the same moment the two watchers observed
the form of a small old-fashioned child entering at the open
side of the shed. Susan Nunsuch, whose boy it was, went
forward to the opening and silently beckoned to him to go
back.
"I've got something to tell 'ee, mother," he cried in a shrill
tone. "That woman asleep there walked along with me to-
day; and she said I was to say that I had seed her, and she
was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son, and
then I came on home."
A confused sob as from a man was heard within, upon
which Eustacia gasped faintly, "That's Clym I must go —
—
to him yet dare I do it? No: come away !

When they had withdrawn from the neighborhood of the

shed she said huskily, "I am to blame for this. There is
evil in store for me."
"Was she not admitted to your house after all?" Wildeve
inquired.
"No; and that's where it all lies! 0, what shall I do'
 THE CLOSED DOOR 307

I shall not intrude upon them: I shall go straight home.

Damon, good-bye !I cannot speak to you any more now."
They parted company; and when Eustacia had reached
the nexthill she looked back. A melancholy procession was
wending its way by the light of the lantern from the hut
towards Blooms-End. Wildeve was nowhere to be seen.
BOOK FIFTH
THE DISCOVERY
 CHAPTER I

"WHEREFORE IS LIGHT GIVEN TO HIM THAT IS IN

MISERY"

One evening, about three weeks after the funeral of Mrs.

Yeobright, when the silver face of the moon sent a bundle
of beams directly upon the floor of Clym's house at Alder-
worth, a woman came forth from within. She reclined over
the garden gate as if to refresh herself awhile. The pale
lunar touches which make beauties of hags lent divinity to
this face, already beautiful.
She had not long been there when a man came up the
road and with some hesitation said to her, "How is he to-
night, ma'am, if you please?"
"He is better, though still very unwell, Humphrey," re-
plied Eustacia.
"Is he light-headed, ma'am?"
"No. He is quite sensible now."
"Do he rave about his mother just the same, poor fellow?"
continued Humphrey.
"Just as much, though not quite so wildly," she said in a
low voice.
"It was very unfortunate, ma'am, that the boy Johnny
should ever ha' told him his mother's dying words, about
her being broken-hearted and cast off by her son. 'Twas
enough to upset any man alive."
Eustacia made no reply beyond that of a slight catch in
her breath, as of one who fain would speak but could not;
and Humphrey, finding that she was disinclined to say more,
went home again.
Eustacia turned, entered the house, and ascended to the
front bedroom, where a shaded light was burning. In the
311
 " '

312 THE KETURN OF THE NATIVE

bed lay Clym, pale, haggard, wide awake, tossing to one
side and to the other, his eyes litby a hot light, as if the fire
in their pupils were burning up their substance.
"Is it you, Eustacia?" he said as she sat down.
"Yes, Clym. I have been down to the gate. The moon
is shining beautifully, and there is not a leaf stirring/

"Shining, is it? What's the moon to a man like me?

—
Let it shine let anything be, so that I never see another
day! . Eustacia, I don't know where to look: my
. .

thoughts go through me like swords. O, if any man wants

to make himself immortal by painting a picture of wretched-
!
ness, let him come here
"Why do you say so?"
"I cannot help feeling that I did my best to kill her."
"No, Clym."
"Yes, it was so; it is useless to excuseme! My conduct
to her was too hideous — I made no advances; and she could
not bring herself to forgive me. Now she is dead If I had !

only shown myself willing to make it up with her sooner,

and we had been friends, and then she had died, it wouldn't
be so hard to bear. But I never went near her house, so
she never came near mine, and didn't know how welcome
—
she would have been that's what troubles me. She did
not know I was going to her house that very night, for she
was too insensible to understand me. If she had only come
to see me I longed that she would.
! But it was not to be."
There escaped from Eustacia one of those shivering sighs
which used to shake her like a pestilent blast. She had not
yet told.
But Yeobright was too deeply absorbed in the ramblings
incidental to his remorseful state to notice her. During his
illnesshe had been continually talking thus. Despair had
been added to his original grief by the unfortunate disclosure
of the boy who had received the last words of Mrs. Yeo-
—
bright words too bitterly uttered in an hour of misappre-
hension. Then his distress had overwhelmed him, and he
longed for death, as a field laborer longs for the shade. It
was the pitiful sight of a man standing in the very focus
of sorrow. He continually bewailed his tardy journey to
 '

THE DISCOVERY 313

his mother's house, because it was an error which could never

be rectified,and insisted that he must have been horribly-

perverted by some fiend not to have thought before that it
was his duty to go to her, since she did not come to him.
He would ask Eustacia to agree with him in his self-condem-
nation; and when she, seared inwardly by a secret she dared
not tell, declared that she could not give an opinion, he would
say, " That's because you didn't know my mother's nature.
She was always ready to forgive if asked to do so; but I
seemed to her to be as an obstinate child, and that made
her unyielding. Yet not unyielding: she was proud and
reserved, no more. . . Yes, I can understand why she
.

held out against me so long. She was waiting for me. I

dare say she said a hundred times in her sorrow, 'What a
return he makes for all the sacrifices I have made for him
!

I never went to her! When I set out to visit her it was

!"
too late. To think of that is nearly intolerable
Sometimes his condition had been one of utter remorse,
unsoftened by a single tear of pure sorrow: and then he
writhed as he lay, fevered far more by thought than by
physical ills. "If I could only get one assurance that she
did not die in a belief that I was resentful," he said one day
when in this mood, "it would be better to think of than a
hope of heaven. But that I cannot do."
"You give yourself up too much to this wearying despair/'
said Eustacia. "Other men's mothers have died."
"That doesn't make the loss of mine less. Yet it is less
the loss than the circumstances of the loss. I sinned against
her, and on that account there is no light for me."
"She sinned against you, I think."
"No: she did not. I committed the guilt; and may the
!"
whole burden be upon my head
"I think you might consider twice before you say that,"
Eustacia replied. "Single men have, no doubt, a right to
curse themselves as much as they please; but men with
wives involve two in the doom they pray down."
"I am in too sorry a state to understand what you are
refining on," said the wretched man. "Day and night
shout at me, 'You have helped to kill her.' But in loath-
314 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
ing myself I may, I own, be unjust to you, my poor wife.
Forgive me for it, Eustacia, for I scarcely know what I do."
Eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her hus-
band in such a state as this, which had become as dreadful
to her as the trial scene was to Judas Iscariot. It brought
before her eyes the specter of a worn-out woman knocking
at a door which she would not open; and she shrank from
contemplating it. Yet it was better for Yeobright himself
when he spoke openly of his sharp regret, for in silence he
endured infinitely more, and would sometimes remain so
long in a tense, brooding mood, consuming himself by the
gnawing of his thought, that it was imperatively necessary
to make him talk aloud, that his grief might in some degree
expend itself in the effort.
Eustacia had not been long indoors after her look at the
moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house, and
Thomasin was announced by the woman downstairs.
"Ah, Thomasin! Thank you for coming to-night," said
Clym when she entered the room. "Here am I, you see.
Such a wretched spectacle am I, that I shrink from being
seen by a single friend, and almost from you."
"You must not shrink from me, dear Clym," said Thom-
asin earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came to a
sufferer like fresh air into a Black Hole. "Nothing in you
can ever shock me or drive me away. I have been here
before, but you don't remember it."
"Yes, I do; I am not delirious, Thomasin, nor have I been
so at all. Don't you believe that if they say so. I am only
in great misery at what I have done: and that, with the
weakness, makes me seem mad. But it has not upset my
reason. Do you think I should remember all about my
mother's death if I were out of my mind? No such good
luck. Two months and a half, Thomasin, the last of her
life, did my poor mother live alone, distracted and mourning

because of me; yet she was un visited by me, though I was

living only five miles off. Two months and a half—seventy-
five days did the sun rise and set upon her in that deserted
state which a dog didn't deserve! Poor people who had
nothing in common with her would have cared for her, and
 THE DISCOVERY 315

visited her had they known her sickness and loneliness; but
I, who should have been all to her, stayed away like a cur.
If there is any justice in God let Him kill me now. He has
nearly blinded me, but that is not enough. If He would
only strike me with more pain I would believe in Him for
ever!"
"Hush, hush! 0, pray, Clym, don't, don't say it!" im-
plored Thomasin, affrighted into sobs and tears; while Eusta-
cia, on the other side of the room, though her pale face
remained calm, writhed in her chair. Clym went on with-
out heeding his cousin.
"But I am not worth receiving further proof even of
Heaven's reprobation. Do you think, Thomasin, that she
—
knew me that she did not die in that horrid mistaken
notion about my not forgiving her, which I can't tell you
how she acquired? If you could only assure me of that!
Do you think so, Eustacia? Do speak to me."
"I think I can assure you that she knew better at last,"
said Thomasin. The pallid Eustacia said nothing.
"Why didn't she come to my house? I would have taken
her in and showed her how I loved her in spite of all. But
she never came; and I didn't go to her, and she died on the
heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to help her till it
was too late. If you could have seen her, Thomasin, as I
—
saw her a poor dying woman, lying in the dark upon the
bare ground, moaning, nobody near, believing she was utterly
deserted by all the world, it would have moved you to
anguish, it would have moved a brute. And this poor
woman my mother No wonder she said to the child, You
!
'

have seen a broken-hearted woman.' What a state she must

have been brought to, to say that and who can have done
!

it but I? It is too dreadful to think of, and I wish I could

be punished more heavily than I am. How long was I
what they called out of my senses?"
"A week, I think."
"And then I became calm."
"Yes, for four days."
"And now I have left off being calm."
"But try to be quiet: please do, and you will soon be
 "

316 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

strong. If you could remove that impression from your
"
mind
"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "But I don't want to
get strong. What's the use of my getting well? It would
be better for me if I die, and it would certainly be better fo^
Eustacia. Is Eustacia there?"
"Yes."
J*
"It would be better for you, Eustacia, if I were to die?
"Don't press such a question, dear Clym."
"Well, it really is but a shadowy supposition; for unfor-
tunately I am going to live. I feel myself getting better.
Thomasin, how long are you going to stay at the inn, now
"
that all this money has come to your husband ?
"Another month or two, probably; until my illness is
over. We cannot get off till then. I think it will be a
month or more."
"Yes, yes. Of course. Ah, Cousin Tamsie, you will get
over your trouble— one little month will take you through
it, and bring something to console you; but I shall never get
!
over mine, and no consolation will come
"Clym, you are unjust to yourself. Depend upon it,

aunt thought kindly of you. I know that, if she had lived,

you would have been reconciled with her."
"But she didn't come to see me, though I asked her, be-
fore I married, if she would come. Had she come, or had
I gone there, she would never have died, saying, 'I am a
broken-hearted woman, cast off by my son.' My door has
—
always been open to her a welcome here has always awaited
her. But that she never came to see."
"You had better not talk any more now, Clym," said Eu-
stacia faintly, from the other part of the room, for the scene
was growing intolerable to her.
"Let me talk to you instead for the little time I shall be
here," Thomasin said soothingly. "Consider what a one-
sided way you have of looking at the matter, Clym. When
she said that to the little boy you had not found her and
taken her into your arms; and it might have been uttered in
a moment of bitterness. It was rather like aunt to say
things in haste. She sometimes used to speak so to me.
 " '

THE DISCOVERY 317

Though she did not come I am convinced that she thought

of coming to see you. Do you suppose a man's mother
could live two or three months without one forgiving
thought? She forgave me; and why should she not have
forgiven you ?"
"You labored to win her round; I did nothing. I, who
was going to teach people the higher secrets of happiness,
did not know how to keep out of that gross misery which
the most untaught are wise enough to avoid.'
"How did you get here to-night, Thomasin?" said Eu-
stacia.
"Damon set me down at the end of the lane. He has
driven into the village on business, and he will come and
pick me up by-and-by."
Accordingly they soon after heard the noise of wTheels.
Wilde ve had come, and was waiting outside with his horse
and gig.
"Send out and tell him I will be down in two minutes/ '

said Thomasin.
"I will run down myself/' said Eustacia.
She went down. Wildeve had alighted, and was stand-
ing before the horse's head when Eustacia opened the door.
He did not turn for a moment, thinking the comer Thomasin.
Then he looked, started ever so little, and said one word:
"Well?"
"I have not yet told him," she replied in a, whisper.
—
"Then don't do so till he is well it will be fatal. You
are ill yourself."
"I am wretched. ... Damon," she said, bursting into
tears, "I — I can't tell you how unhappy I am I can haraly
!

bear this. canI tell —

nobody of my trouble noboay Jmows
of it but you."
"Poor girl!" said Wildeve, visibly affected at her distress,
and at last led on so far as to take her hand. "It is hard,
when you have done nothing to deserve it, that you should
have got involved in such a web as this. You were not
made for these sad scenes. I am to blame most. If I could
!
only have saved you from it all
"But, Damon, please pray tell me what I must do? To
318 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach himself
as being the cause of her death, and to know that I am the
sinner, if any human being is at all, drives me into cold
despair. I don't know what to do. Should I tell him or
should I not tell him? I always am asking myself that.
O, I want to tell him; and yet I am afraid. If he finds it
out he must surely kill me, for nothing else will be in pro-
portion to his feelings now. '
Beware the fury of a patient
man' sounds day by day in my ears as I watch him."
"Well, wait till he is better, and trust to chance. And
—
when you tell, you must only tell part for his own sake."
"Which part should I keep back?"
Wildeve paused. "That I was in the house at the time/'
he said in a low tone.
"Yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whis-
pered. How much easier are hasty actions than speeches
that will excuse them!"
"If he were only to die " Wildeve murmured.
"Do not think of it I would not buy hope of immunity
!

by so cowardly a desire even if I hated him. Now I am

going up to him again. Thomasin bade me tell you she
would be down in a few minutes. Good-bye."
She returned, and Thomasin soon appeared. When she
was seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was
turning to go off, Wildeve lifted his eyes to the bedroom
windows. Looking from one of them, he could discern a
pale, tragic face watching him drive away. It was Eu-
stacia's.

CHAPTER II

A LURID LIGHT BREAKS IN UPON A DARKENED

UNDERSTANDING
Clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. His
strength returned, and a month after the visit of Thomasin
he might have been seen walking about the garden. En-
durance and despair, equanimity and gloom, the tints of
health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdly in his face.
 THE DISCOVERY 319

He was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past that re-
lated to his mother; and though Eustacia knew that he
was thinking of it none the less, she was only too glad to
escape the topic ever to bring it up anew. When his mind
had been weaker his heart had led him to speak out; but
reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank into
taciturnity.
One evening when he was thus standing in the garden,
abstractedly spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony fig-
ure turned the corner of the house and came up to him.
" Christian, isn't it?" said Clym. "I am glad you have
found me out. I shall soon want you to go to Blooms-End
and assist me in putting the house in order. I suppose it
is all locked up as I left it?"
"Yes, Mister Clym."
"Have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?"
"Yes, without a drop o' rain, thank God. But I was com-
ing to tell 'ee of something else which is quite different from
what we have lately had in the family. I be sent by the
rich gentleman at the Woman, that we used to call the land-
lord, to tell 'ee that Mrs. Wildeve is doing well of a girl,
which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon, or a few
minutes more or less; and 'tis said that expecting of this in-
crease is what have kept them there since they came into
their money."
"And she is getting on well, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Only Mr. Wildeve is twanky1 because 'tisn't a
boy —that's what they say in the kitchen, but I was not sup-
posed to notice that."
"Christian, now listen to me."
"Yes, sure, Mr. Yeobright."
"Did you see my mother the day before she died?"
"No, I did not."
Yeobright's face expressed disappointment.
"But I seed her the morning of the same day she died."
Clym's look lighted up. "That's nearer still to my mean-
ing," he said.
"Yes, I know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'I be going
1
Peevish, complaining.
320 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
to see him, Christian; so I shall not want any vegetables
"
brought in for dinner.'
"See whom?"
"See you. She was going to your house, you under-
stand."
Yeobright regarded Christian with intense surprise.' f
Why
did you never mention this?" he said. "Are you sure it
"
was my house she was coming to ?
"O yes. I didn't mention it because I've never seed you
lately. And as she didn't get there it was all nought, and
nothing to tell."
"And I have been wondering why she should have walked
in the heath on that hot day! Well, did she say what she
was coming for? It is a thing, Christian, I am very anxious
to know."
"Yes, Mister Clym. She didn't say it to me, though I
think she did to one here and there."
"Do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?"
"There is one man, please, sir, but I hope you won't men-
tion my name to him, as I have seen him in strange places,
particular in dreams. One night last summer he glared at
me like Famine and Sword, and it made me feel so low that
I didn't comb out my few hairs for two days. He was stand-
ing, as it might be, Mister Yeobright, in the middle of the
path to Mistover, and your mother came up, looking as
"
pale
"Yes, when was that?"
"Last summer, in my dream."
"Pooh! Who's the man?"
"Diggory, the reddleman. He called upon her and sat
with her the evening before she set out to see you. I hadn't
gone home from work when he came up to the gate."
—
"I must see Venn I wish I had known it before," said
Clym anxiously. "I wonder why he has not come to tell
IBP?"
"He went out of Egdon Heath the next day, so would not
be likely to know you wanted him."
"Christian," said Clym, "you must go and find Venn. I
am otherwise engaged, or I would go myself. Find him at
™xce, and tell him I want to speak to him."
 THE DISCOVERY 321

"lama good hand at hunting up folk by day," said Chris-

tian, looking dubiously round at the declining light; "but as
to night-time, never is such a bad hand as I, Mister Yeo-
bright."
"Search the heath when you will, so that you bring him
soon. Bring him to-morrow, if you can/'
Christian then departed. The morrow came, but no
Venn. In the evening Christian arrived, looking very
weary. He had been searching all day, and had heard noth-
ing of the reddleman.
"Inquire as much as you can to-morrow without neglect-
ing your work," said Yeobright. "Don't come again till
you have found him."
The next day Yeobright set out for the old house at Blooms-
End, which, with the garden, was now his own. His severe
illness had hindered all preparations for his removal thither;
but it had become necessary that he should go and overlook
its contents, as administrator to his mother's little prop-
erty; for which purpose he decided to pass the next night
on the premises.
He journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in
the slow walk of one who has been awakened from a stupe-
fying sleep. It was early afternoon when he reached the
valley. The expression of the place, the tone of the hour,
were precisely those of many such occasions in days gone
by; and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusion
that she, who was there no longer, would come out to wel-
come him. The garden gate was locked and the shutters
were closed, just as he himself had left them on the evening
after the funeral. He unlocked the gate, and found that
a spider had already constructed a large web, tying the door
to the lintel, on the supposition that it was never to be
opened again. When he had entered the house and flung
back the shutters he set about his task of overhauling the
cupboards and closets, burning papers, and considering
how best to arrange the place for Eustacia's reception, until
such time as he might be in a position to carry out his long-
delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive.
As he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined for
the alterations which would have to be made in the time-
322 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
honored furnishing of his parents and grandparents, to suit
Eustacia's modern ideas. The gaunt oak-cased clock, with
the picture of the Ascension on the door-panel and the Mi-
raculous Draught of Fishes on the base; his grandmother's
corner cupboard with glass door, through which the spotted
china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea-trays;
—
the hanging fountain with the brass tap whither would
these venerable articles have to be banished?
He noticed that the flowers in the window had died for
want of water, and he placed them out upon the ledge,
that they might be taken away. While thus engaged he
heard footsteps on the gravel without, and somebody knocked
at the door.
Yeobright opened it, and Venn was standing before him.
"Good morning," said the reddleman. "Is Mrs. Yeo-
bright at home?"
Yeobright looked upon the ground. "Then you have not
seen Christian or any of the Egdon folks ? " he said.
"No. I have only just return pH after a long stay away.
I called here the day before I left."
"And you have heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"My mother is —dead."
"Dead!" said Venn mechanically.
"Her home now is where I shouldn't mind having mine."
Venn regarded him, and then said, "If I didn't see your
face I could never believe your words. Have you been ill?"
"I had an illness."
"Well, the change! When I parted from her a month
ago everything seemed to say that she was going- to begin
a new life."
"And what seemed came true."
"You say right, no doubt. Trouble has taught you a
deeper vein of talk than mine. All I meant was regarding
her life here. She has died too soon."
"Perhaps through my living too long. I have had a bit-
ter experience on that score this last month, Diggory. But
eome in; I have been wanting to see you."
He conducted the reddleman into the large room where
 "

THE DISCOVERY 323

the dancing had taken place the previous Christmas; and

they sat down in the settle together. "There's the cold fire-
place, you see," said Clym. "When that half -burnt log and
those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been
changed here yet. I can do nothing. My
life creeps like a

snail."
"How came she to die?" said Venn.
Yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness and
death, and continued: "After this no kind of pain will ever
—
seem more than an indisposition to me. I began saying
that I wanted to ask you something, but I stray from sub-
jects like a drunken man. I am anxious to know what my
mother said to you when she last saw you. You talked with
her a long time, I think?"
"I talked with her more than half an hour."
"About me?"
"Yes. And it must have been on account of what we said
that she was on the heath. Without question she was com-
ing to see you."
"But why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly
against me? There's the mystery."
"Yet I know she quite forgave you."
—
"But, Diggory would a woman who had quite forgiven
her son, say, when she felt herself ill on the way to his house,
!
that she was broken-hearted because of his ill-usage ? Never
"What I know is, that she didn't blame you at all. She
blamed herself for what had happened, and only herself. I
had it from her own lips."
"You had it from her lips that I had not ill-treated her*
and at the same time another had it from her lips that i
had ill-treated her? My mother was no impulsive woman
who changed her opinion every hour without reason. How
can it be, Venn, that she should have told such different
stories in close succession?"
"I cannot say. It is certainly odd, when she had forgiven
you, and had forgiven your wife, and was going to see you
on purpose to make friends."
"If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was
this incomprehensible thing! . . .Diggory, if we, who re-
 !

324 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

main alive, were only allowed to hold conversation with the
dead —just once, a bare minute, even through a screen of
—
what we might learn
iron bars, as with persons in prison
How many who now would hide their heads!
ride smiling
And this mystery—I should then be at the bottom of it at
once. But the grave has for ever shut her in; and how
shall it be found out now?"
No reply was returned by his companion, since none
could be given; and when Venn left, a few minutes later,
Clym had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the fluctua-
tion of carking incertitude.
He continued in the same state all the afternoon. A bed
was made up for him in the same house by a neighbor, that
he might not have to return again the next day; and when
he retired to rest in the deserted place it was only to remain
awake hour after hour thinking the same thoughts. How
to discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed a query
of more importance than highest problems of the living.
There was housed in his memory a vivid picture of the face
of a little boy as he entered the hovel where Clym's mother
lay. The round eyes, eager gaze, the piping voice which
enunciated the words, had operated like stilettos on his
brain.
A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning
new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive.
To probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for
facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get
at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not
promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked
we grope towards the small and obscure. There was noth-
ing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to
drop into the abyss of undiscoverable things.
It was about daybreak when he had reached this decision,
and he at once arose. He locked up the house and went
out into the green patch which merged in heather further
on. In front of the white garden-palings the path branched
into three like a broad-arrow.The road to the right led to
the Quiet Woman and its neighborhood; the middle track
led to Mistover Knap; the left-hand track led over the hill
 THE DISCOVERY 325

to another part of Mistover, where the child lived. On in-

clining into the latter path Yeobright felt a creeping chilli-
ness, familiar enough to most people, and probably caused
by the unsunned morning air. In after days he thought of
it as a thing of singular significance.
When Yeobright reached the cottage of Susan Nunsuch,
the mother of the boy he sought, he found that the inmates
were not yet astir. But in upland hamlets the transition
from a-bed to abroad is surprisingly swift and easy. There
no dense partition of yawns and toilets divides humanity by
night from humanity by day. Yeobright tapped at the
upper window-sill, which he could reach with his walking-
stick; and in three or four minutes the woman came
down.
It was not till this moment that Clym recollected her to
be the person who had behaved so barbarously to Eustacia.
It partly explained the insuavity with which the woman
greeted him. Moreover, the boy had been ailing again; and
Susan now, as ever since the night when he had been pressed
into Eustacia' s service at the bonfire, attributed his indis-
positions to Eustacia's influence as a witch. It was one of
those sentiments which lurk like moles underneath the
visible surface of manners, and may have been kept alive by
Eustaeia's entreaty to the captain, at the time that he had
intended to prosecute Susan for the pricking in church, to
let the matter drop; which he accordingly had done.
Yeobright overcame his repugnance, for Susan had at
least borne his mother no ill-will. He asked kindly for the
boy; but her manner did not improve.
"I wish to see him," continued Yeobright, with some hesi-
tation; "to ask him if he remembers anything more of his
walk with my mother than what he has previously told."
She regarded him in a peculiar and criticising manner.
To anybody but a half-blind man it would have said, "You
want another of the knocks which have already laid you so
low."
She called the boy downstairs, asked Clym to sit down
on a stool, and continued, "Now, Johnny, tell Mr. Yeobright
anything you can call to mind."
 "

326 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"You have not forgotten how you walked with the poor
lady on that hot day?" said Clym.
"No," said the boy.
"And what she said to you?"
The boy repeated the exact words he had used on enter-
ing the hut. Yeobright rested his elbow on the table and
shaded his face with his hand; and the mother looked as
ifshe wondered how a man could want more of what had
stung him so deeply.
"She was going to Alderworth when you first met her?"
"No; she was coming away."
"That can't be."
"Yes; she walked along with me. I was coming away,
too."
"Then where did you first see her?"
"At your house."
"Attend, and speak the truth!" said Clym sternly.
"Yes, sir; at your house was where I seed her first."
Clym started up, and Susan smiled in an expectant way,
which did not embellish her face; it seemed to mean, "Some-
!
thing sinister is coming
"What did she do at my house?"
"She went and sat under the trees at the Devil's Bellows/'
"Good God! this is all news to me!"
"You never told me this before?" said Susan.
"No, mother; because I didn't like to tell 'ee I had been
so far. I was picking black-hearts, and they don't grow
nearer."
"What did she do then?" said Yeobright.
"Looked at a man who came up and went into your
house."
"That was myself —a furze-cutter, with brambles in his
hand."
"No; 'twas not you. 'Twas a gentleman. You had gone
in afore."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
"Now tell me what happened next."
"The poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the
 " —

THE DISCOVERY 327

lady with black hair looked out of the side-window at

her *"
The boy's mother turned to Clym and said, "This is
something you didn't expect?"
Yeobright took no more notice of her than if he had been
of stone. "Go on, go on," he said hoarsely to the boy.
"And when she saw the young lady look out of the win-
dow the old lady knocked again; and when nobody came
she took up the furze-hook and looked at it, and put it
down again, and then she looked at the faggot-bonds; and
then she went away, and walked across to me, and bio wed
her breath very hard, like this. We walked on together,
she and I, and I talked to her and she talked to me a bit,
but not much, because she couldn't blow her breath."
"0 !" murmured Clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head.
"Let's have more," he said.
"She couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her
face was, O so queer!"
"How was her face?"
"Like yours is now."
The woman looked at Yeobright, and beheld him color-
less, in a cold sweat. "Isn't there meaning in it?" she said
stealthily. "What do you think of her now?"
"Silence!" said Clym fiercely. And, turning to the boy,
"And then you left her to die?"
"No," said the woman, quickly and angrily. "He did not
leave her to die! She sent him away. Whoever says he
forsook her says what's not true."
"Trouble no more about that," answered Clym, with a
quivering mouth. "What he did is a trifle in comparison
with what he saw. Door kept shut, did you say? Kept
shut, she looking out of window? Good heart of God!
what does it mean?"
The child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner.
"He said so," answered the mother, "and Johnny's a God-
fearing boy and tells no lies."
"
'Cast off by my son !
No, by my best life, dear mother,
'

it is not so! But by your son's, your son's

!
— May all
murderesses get the torment they deserve
328 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
With these words Yeobright went forth from the little
dwelling. The pupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blank-
ness, were vaguely lit with an icy shine; his mouth had
passed into the phase more or less imaginatively rendered
in studies of Oedipus. The strangest deeds were possible
to his mood. But they were not possible to his situation.
Instead of there being before him the pale face of Eustacia,
and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imper-
turbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the
cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by
its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a
single man.

CHAPTER III

EUSTACIA DRESSES HERSELF ON A BLACK

MORNING
A consciousness of a vast impassivity in all which lay
around him took possession even of Yeobright in his wild
walk towards Alderworth. He had once before felt in his
own person this overpowering of the fervid by the inani-
mate; but then it had tended to enervate a passion far
sweeter than that which at present pervaded him. It was
once when he stood parting from Eustacia in the moist still
levels beyond the hills.
But dismissing all this he went onward again, and came
to the front of his house. The blinds of Eustacia's bedroom
were still closely drawn, for she was no early riser. All
the life visible was in the shape of a solitary thrush crack-
ing a small snail upon the door-stone for his breakfast, and
his tapping seemed a loud noise in the general silence which
prevailed; but on going to the door Clym found it unfast-
ened, the young girl who attended upon Eustacia being
astir in the back part of the premises. Yeobright entered
and went straight to his wife's room.
The must have aroused her, for when
noise of his arrival
he opened the door she was standing before the looking-
 "

THE DISCOVERY 329

glass in her night-dress, the ends of her hair gathered into

one hand, with which she was coiling the whole mass round
her head, previous to beginning toilette operations. She
was not a woman given to speaking first at a meeting, and
she allowed Clym to walk across in silence, without turning
her head. He came behind her, and she saw his face in the
glass. It was ashy, haggard, and terrible. Instead of start-
ing towards him in sorrowful surprise, as even Eustacia,
undemonstrative wife as she was, would have done in days
before she burdened herself with a secret, she remained
motionless, looking at him in the glass. And while she
looked, the carmine flush with which warmth and sound
sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck, dissolved from view,
and the death-like pallor in his face flew across into hers.
He was close enough to see this, and the sight instigated
his tongue.
"You know what is the matter/' he said huskily. "I see
it in your face."
Her hand relinquished the rope of hair and dropped to her
side,and the pile of tresses, no longer supported, fell from
the crown of her head about her shoulders and over the
white night-gown. She made no reply.
" Speak to me," said Yeobright peremptorily.
The blanching process did not cease in her, and her lips
now became as white as her face. She turned to him and
said, "Yes, Clym, I'll speak to you. Why do you return
so early? Can I do anything for you?"
"Yes, you can me. It seems that
listen to my wife is not
very well?"
"Why?"
"Your face, my dear;your face. Or perhaps it is the pale
morning light which takes your color away? Now I am
going to reveal a secret to you. Ha-ha!"
"O, that is ghastly!"
"What?"
"Your laugh." |
"There's reason for ghastliness. Eustacialyou have held
my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil
you have dashed it down
!
330 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
She started back from the dressing-table, retreated a few
steps from him, and looked him in the face. " Ah you think !

to frighten me," she said, with a slight laugh. "Is it worth

while? I am undefended, and alone."
"How extraordinary!"
"What do you mean?"
"As there is ample time I will tell you, though you know
well enough. I mean that it is extraordinary that you
should be alone in my absence. Tell me, now, where is he
who was with you on the afternoon of the thirty-first of Au-
gust? Under the bed? Up the chimney?"
A shudder overcame her and shook the light fabric of her
night-dress throughout. "I do not remember dates so ex-
actly," she said. "I cannot recollect that anybody was
with me besides yourself."
"The day I mean," said Yeobright, his voice growing
louder and harsher, "was the day you shut the door against
my mother and killed her. 0, it is too much too bad!" —
He leant over the footpiece of the bedstead for a few mo-
ments, with his back towards her; then rising again: "Tell
—
me, tell me! tell me do you hear?" he cried, rushing up
to her and seizing her by the loose folds of her sleeve.
The superstratum of timidity which often overlies those
who are daring and defiant at heart had been passed through,
and the mettlesome substance of the woman was reached.
The red blood inundated her face, previously so pale.
"What are you going to do?" she said in a low voice, re-
garding him with a proud smile. "You will not alarm me
by holding on so; but it would be a pity to tear my sleeve."
Instead of letting go he drew her closer to him. "Tell
—
me the particulars of my mother's death," he said in a
hard, panting whisper; "or I'll I'll — — "

"Clym," she answered slowly, "do you think you dare

do anything to me that I dare not bear? But before you
strike me listen. You will get nothing from me by a blow,
even though it should kill me, as it probably will. But per-
haps you do not wish me to speak killing may be all you. —
mean?"
"
" Kill you ! Do you expect it ?
 "

THE DISCOVERY 331

"I do."
"Why?"
"No less degree of rage against me will match your pre-
vious grief for her."
—
"Phew I shall not kill you," he said contemptuously, as
if under a sudden change of purpose. "I did think of it;
—
but I shall not. That would be making a martyr of you,
and sending you to where she is; and I would keep you
away from her till the universe come to an end, if I could."
"I almost wish you would kill me," said she with gloomy
bitterness. "It is with no strong desire, I assure you, that
I play the part I have lately played on earth. You are no
blessing, my husband."
"You —
shut the door you looked out of the window upon
—
her you had a man in the house with you you sent her —
—
away to die. The inhumanity the treachery I will not —
— —
touch you stand away from me and confess every word
!

"Never! I'll hold my tongue like the very death that I

don't mind meeting, even though I can clear myself of half
you believe by speaking. Yes, I will Who of any dignity
!

would take the trouble to clear cobwebs from a wild man's

mind after such language as this? No; let him go on, and
think his narrow thoughts, and run his head into the mire.
I have other cares."
—
" 'Tis too much but I must spare you."
"Poor charity."
"By my wretched soul you sting me, Eustacia! I can
keep it it up, and hotly too. Now, then, madam, tell me
his name!"
"Never, I am resolved."
"How often does he write to you? Where does he put his
letters —when does he meet you? Ah, his letters! Do you
tell me his name?"
"I do not."
"Then I'll find it myself." His eye had fallen upon a
small desk that stood near, on which she was accustomed
to write her letters. He went to it. It was locked.
"Unlock this!"
"You have no right to say it. That's mine."
332 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Without another word he seized the desk and dashed it
to the floor. The hinge burst open, and a number of letters
tumbled out.
"Stay!" said Eustacia, stepping before him with more
excitement than she had hitherto shown.
"Come, come! stand away! I must see them."
She looked at the letters as they lay, checked her feeling,
and moved indifferently aside; when he gathered them up,
and examined them.
By no stretch of meaning could any but a harmless con-
struction be placed upon a single one of the letters them-
selves. The solitary exception was an empty envelope
directed to her, and the handwriting was Wildeve's. Yeo-
bright held it up. Eustacia was doggedly silent.
"Can you read, madam? Look at this envelope. Doubt-
less we shall find more soon, and what was inside them. I
shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what
a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain trade my
lady is."
"Do you say it to me—do you?" she gasped.
He searched further, but found nothing more. "What
was in this letter?" he said.
"Ask the writer. Am I your hound that you should talk
to me in this way?"
"Do you brave me? do you stand me out, mistress? An-
swer. Don't look at me with those eyes as if you would be-
witch me again! Sooner than that I die. You refuse to
answer?"
"I wouldn't tell you after this, if I were as innocent as
!"
the sweetest babe in heaven
"Which you are not."
"Certainly I am not absolutely," she replied. "1 have not
done what you suppose; but if to have done no harm at
all is the only innocence recognized, I am beyond forgive-

ness. But I require no help from your conscience."

"You can resist, and resist again! Instead of hating you
I could, I think, mourn for and pity you, if you were con-
trite, and would confess all. Forgive you I never can. I
—
don't speak of your lover I will give you the benefit of the
 THE DISCOVERY 333

doubt in that matter, for it only affects me personally. But

the other: had you half -killed me, had it been that you will-
fully took the sight away from these feeble eyes of mine, I
!"
could have forgiven you. But that's too much for nature
"Say no more. I will do without your pity. But I would
have saved you from uttering what you will regret."
"I am going away now. I shall leave you."
"You need not go, as I am going myself. You will keep
just as far away from me by staying here."
— —
"Call her to mind think of her what goodness there
was in her: it showed in every line of her face! Most
women, even when but slightly annoyed, show a flicker of
evil in some curl of the mouth or some corner of the cheek;
but as for her, never in her angriest moments was there any-
thing malicious in her look. She was angered quickly, but
she forgave just as readily, and underneath her pride there
was the meekness of a child. What came of it? what —
cared you? You hated her just as she was learning to love
you. ! couldn't you see what was best for you, but must
bring a curse upon me, and agony and death upon her, by
doing that cruel deed What was the devil's name who was
!

keeping you company and causing you to add cruelty to

her to your wrong to me? Was it Wildeve? Was it poor
Thomasin's husband? Heaven, what wickedness! Lost
your voice, have you? It is natural after detection of that
most noble trick. . . Eustacia, didn't any tender thought
.

of your own mother lead you to think of being gentle to

mine at such a time of weariness ? Did not one grain of pity
enter your heart as she turned away? Think what a vast
opportunity was then lost of beginning a forgiving and hon-
est course. Why did not you kick him out, and let her in,
and say, I'll be an honest wife and a noble woman from this
hour? Had I told you to go and quench eternally our last
flickering chance of happiness here you could have done no
worse. Well, she's asleep now; and have you a hundred
gallants, neither they nor you can insult her any more."
"You exaggerate fearfully," she said in a faint, weary
—
voice; "but I cannot enter into my defense it is not worth
doing. You are nothing to, me in future, and the past side
 —

334 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

of the story may as well remain untold.
I have lost all
through you, but have not complained. Your blunders
I
and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you, but they
have been a wrong to me. All persons of refinement have
been scared away from me since I sank into the mire of
—
marriage. Is this your cherishing to put me into a hut
like this, and keep me like the wife of a hind? You de-
—
ceived me not by words, but by appearances, which are
less seen through than words. But the place will serve as
—
well as any other as somewhere to pass from into my —
grave." Her words were smothered in her throat, and her
head drooped down.
"I don't know what you mean by that. Am I the cause
of your sin?" (Eustacia made a trembling motion towards
him.) "What, you can begin to shed tears and offer me
your hand? Good God! can you? No, not I. I'll not
commit the fault of taking that." (The hand she had offered
dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.)
"Well, yes, take it, if only for the sake of my own foolish
I'll

kisses that were wasted there before I knew what I cher-

ished. How bewitched I was! How could there be any
good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?"
"0, 0, O !" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking
with sobs which choked her, she sank upon her knees. "0,
will you have done! 0, you are too relentless there's a —
limit to the cruelty of savages I have held out long
! but —
—
you crush me down. I beg for mercy I cannot bear this
—
any longer it is inhuman to go further with this! If I
— —
had killed your mother with my own hand I should not —
deserve such a scourging to the bone as this. 0, 0! God
have mercy upon a miserable woman! You have
. . .

—
beaten me in this game I beg of you to stay your hand in
pity ! . I confess that I
. . —
willfully did not undo the door
— ——
the first time she knocked but I should have unfastened
it the second —
if I had not thought you had gone to do it

yourself. When I found you had not I opened it, but she
was gone. That's the extent of my crime towards her. —
Rest natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?
I think they do. —
Now I will leave you for ever and ever!"
 "

THE DISCOVERY 335

"Tell all, and I will pity you. Was the man in the house
with you Wildeve?"
"I cannot tell," she said desperately through her sobbing.
—
"Don't insist further I cannot tell. I am going from this
house. We cannot both stay here."
"You need not go: I will go. You can t-tay here."
"No, I will dress, and then I will go."
"Where?"
"Where I came from, or elsewhere."
She hastily dressed herself, Yeobright moodily walking
up and down the room the whole of the time. At last all
her things were on. Her little hands quivered so violently
as she held them to her chin to fasten her bonnet that she
could not tie the strings, and after a few moments she relin-
quished the attempt. Seeing this he moved forward and
said, "Let me tie them."
She assented in silence, and lifted her chin. For once at
least in her life she was charm of her
totally oblivious of the
attitude. But he was and he turned his eyes aside,
not,
that he might not be tempted to softness.
The strings were tied; she turned from him. "Do you
still prefer going away yourself to my leaving you?" he

inquired again.
"I do."
"Very well — let it be. And when you will confess to the
man I may pity you."
She flung her shawl about her and went downstairs, leav-
inghim standing in the room.

Eustacia had not long been gone when there came a knock
at the door of the bedroom; and Yeobright said, "Well?"
It was the servant; and she replied, "Somebody from
Mrs. Wildeve's have called to tell 'ee that the mis'ess and
the baby are getting on wonderful well; and the baby's
name is to be Eustacia Clementine." And
the girl retired.
"What a mockery!" said Clym. "This unhappy mar-
riage of mine to be perpetuated in that child's name
!
336 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER IV

THE MINISTRATIONS OF A HALF-FORGOTTEN ONE

Eustacia's journey was at first as vague in direction as
that of thistledown in the wind. She did not know what
to do. She wished it had been night instead of morning,
that she might at least have borne her misery without the
possibility of being seen. Going listlessly along between the
dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs, she at length
turned her steps towards her grandfather's house. On reach-
ing it she found the front door closed and locked. Mechan-
ically she went round to the end where the stable was, and
on looking in at the stable-door she saw Charley standing
within.
" Captain Vye is not at home?" she said.
"No, ma'am," said the lad in a flutter of feeling; "he's
gone to Weatherbury, and won't be home till night. And
the servant is gone home for a holiday. So the house is
locked up."
Eustacia's face was not visible to Charley as she stood at
the doorway, her back being to the sky; and the stable but
indifferently lighted;but the wildness of her manner arrested
his attention.She turned and walked away across the
enclosure to the gate, and was hidden by the bank.
When she had disappeared Charley, with misgiving in
his eyes, slowly came from the stable-door, and going to
another point in the bank he looked over. Eustacia was
leaning against it on the outside, her face covered with her
hands, and her head pressing the dewy heather which bearded
the bank's outer side. She appeared to be utterly indiffer-
ent to the circumstance that her bonnet, hair, and garments
were becoming wet and disarranged by the moisture of her
cold, harsh pillow. Clearly something was wrong.
Charley had always regarded Eustacia as Eustacia had
regarded Clym when she first beheld him as a romantic —
and sweet vision, scarcely incarnate. He had been so shut
off from her by the dignity of her look and the pride of her
 THE DISCOVERY 337

speech except at that one blissful interval when he was

allowed to hold her hand, that he had hardly deemed her a
woman, wingless and earthly, subject to household condi-
tions and domestic jars. The inner details of her life he
had only conjectured. She had been a lovely wonder, pre-
destined to an orbit in which the whole of his own was but
a point; and this sight of her leaning like a helpless, despair-
ing creature against a wild wet bank, rilled him with an
amazed horror. He could not longer remain where he was.
Leaping over, he came up, touched her with his finger, and
said tenderly, "You are poorly, ma'am. What can I do?"
Eustacia started up, and said, "Ah, Charley you have —
followed me. You did not think when I left home in the
summer that I should come back like this!"
"I did not, dear ma'am. Can I help you now?"
"I am afraid not. I wish I could get into the house. I
giddy—that's all."
feel
"Lean on my arm, ma'am, till we get to the porch; and
I will try to open the door."
He supported her to the porch, and there depositing her
on a seat hastened to the back, climbed to a window by the
help of a ladder, and descending inside opened the door.
Next he assisted her into the room, where there was an old-
fashioned horsehair settee as large as a donkey-wagon. &he\
lay down here, and Charley covered her with a cloak he*,
found in the hall.
"Shall I get you something to eat and drink?" he said.
,;>
"If you please, Charley. But I suppose there is no fire.
"I can light it, ma'am."
He vanished, and she heard a splitting of wood and at
blowing of bellows; and presently he returned, saying, "i
have lighted a fire in the kitchen, and now I'll light one here.'''
He lit the fire, Eustacia dreamily observing him from her
couch. When it was blazing up he said, "Shall I wheel you
round in front of it, ma'am, as the morning is chilly?"
"Yes, if you like."
"Shall I go and bring the breakfast now?"
"Yes, do," she murmured languidly.
When he had gone, and the dull sounds occasionally
338 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
reached her ears of his movements in the kitchen, she forgot
where she was, and had for a moment to consider by an
effort what the sounds meant. After an interval which
seemed short to her whose thoughts were elsewhere, he came
in with a tray on which steamed tea and toast.
" Place it on the table," she said. "I shall be ready soon."
He did so, and retired to the door: when, however, he per-
ceived that she did not move he came back a few steps.
"Let me hold it to you, if you don't wish to get up," said
Charley. He brought the tray to the front of the couch,
where he knelt down, adding, "I will hold it for you."
Eustacia sat up and poured out a cup of tea. "You are
very kind to me, Charley," she murmured as she sipped.
"Well, I ought to be," said he diffidently, taking great
trouble not to rest his eyes upon her, though this was their
only natural position, Eustacia being immediately before
Mm. "You have been kind to me."
""How have I ? " said Eustacia.
"You let me bold your hand when you were a maiden at
tome."
"Ah, so I did. Why did I do that? My mind is lost—it
had to do with the mumming, had it not?"
"Yes, you wanted to go in my place."
—
"I remember. I do indeed remember too well!"
She again became utterly downcast; and Charley, seeing
that she was not going to eat or drink any more, took away
the tray.
Afterwards he occasionally came in to see if the fire was
burning, to ask her if she wanted anything, to tell her that
the wind had shifted from south to west, to ask her if she
would like him to gather her some blackberries; to all which
inquiries she replied in the negative or with indifference.
She remained on the settee some time longer, when she
aroused herself and went upstairs. The room in which she
had formerly slept still remained much as she had left it, and
the recollection that this forced upon her of her own greatly
changed and infinitely worse situation again set on her face
the undetermined and formless misery which it had worn
on her first arrival. She peeped into her grandfather's room,
 THE DISCOVERY 339

through which the fresh autumn air was blowing from the
open windows. Her eye was arrested by what was a familiar
sight enough, though it broke upon her now with a lew sig-
nificance.
It was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her
grandfather's bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a
precaution against possible burglars, the house being very
lonely. Eustacia regarded them long, as if they were the
page of a book in which she read a new and a strange mat-
ter. Quickly, like one afraid of herself, she returned down*
stairs and stood in deep thought.
"If I could only do it!" she said. "It would be doing-
much good to myself and all connected with me, and no
harm to a single one."
The idea seemed to gather force within her, and she re-
mained in a fixed attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain
finality was expressed in her gaze, and no longer the blank-
ness of indecision.
—
She turned and went up the second time softly and
stealthily now — and entered her grandfather's room, her
eyes at once seeking the head of the bed. The pistols were
gone.
The instant quashing of her purpose by their absence
affected her brain as a sudden vacuum affects the body: she
nearly fainted. Who had done this? There was only one
person on the premises besides herself. Eustacia involun-
tarily turned to the open window which overlooked the
gardsn as far as the bank that bounded it. On the summit
of the latter stood Charley, sufficiently elevated by its height
to see into the room. His gaze was directed eagerly and
solicitously upon her.
She went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him.
"You have taken them away?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Why did you do it?"
"I saw you looking at them too long."
"What has that to do with it?"
"You have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you
did not want to live."
 "

mo THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Well?"
"And could not bear to leave them in your way.
I There
was meaning in your look at them."
"Where are they now?"
"Locked up."
"Where?"
"In the stable."
"Give them to me."
"No, ma'am."
"You refuse?"
"I do. I care too much for you to give 'em up."
She turned aside, her face for the first time softening from
the stony immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of
her mouth resuming something of that delicacy of cut which
was always lost in her moments of despair. At last she
confronted him again.
"Why should I not die if I wish?" she said tremulously.
"I have made a bad bargain with life, and I am weary of
—
it weary. And now you have hindered my escape. 0,
why did you, Charley! What makes death painful except
—
the thought of others' grief ? and that is absent in my case,
for not a sigh would follow me
!

"Ah, it is trouble that has done this I wish in my very

!

soul that he who brought it about might die and rot, even if
!"
'tis transportation to say it

"Charley, no more of that. What do you mean to do

about this you have seen?"
"Keep it close as night, if you promise not to think of it
again."
"You need not fear. The moment has passed. I prom-
ise." She then went away, entered the house, and lay down.
Later in the afternoon her grandfather returned. He
was about to question her categorically; but on looking at
her he withheld his words.
"Yes, it is too bad to talk of," she slowly returned in
answer to his glance. "Can my old room be got ready f 3r
me to-night, grandfather? I shall want to occupy it again."
He did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left
iher husband, but ordered the room to be prepared.
 THE DISCOVERY 341

CHAPTER V
AN OLD MOVE INADVERTENTLY REPEATED
Charley's attentions to his former mistress were unbound-
ed. The only solace to his own trouble lay in his attempts
to relieve hers. Hour after, hour he considered her wants:
he thought of her presence there with a sort of gratitude,
and, while uttering imprecations on the cause of her un*
happiness, in some measure blessed the result. Perhaps
she would always remain there, he thought, and then he
would be as happy as he had been before. His dread was
lest she should think fit to return to Alderworth, and in
that dread his eyes, with all the inquisitiveness of affection,,
frequently sought her face when she was not observing him >
as he would have watched the head of a stockdove to learn
if it contemplated flight. Having once really succored her,
and possibly preserved her from the rashest of acts, he men-
tally assumed in addition a guardian's responsibility for her
welfare.
For this reason he busily endeavored to provide her with
pleasant distractions, bringing home curious objects which
he found in the heath, such as white trumpet-shaped mosses,
red-headed lichens, stone arrow-heads used by the old tribes
on Egdon, and faceted crystals from the hollows of flints.
These he deposited on the premises in such positions that
she should see them as if by accident.
A week passed, Eustacia never going out of the house.
Then she walked into the enclosed plot and looked through
her grandfather's spy-glass, as she had been in the habit of
doing before her marriage. One day she saw, at a place
where the high-road crossed the distant valley, a heavily
laden wagon passing along. It was piled high with house-
hold furniture. She looked again and again, and recog-
nized it to be her own. In the evening her grandfather came
indoors with a rumor that Yeobright had removed that day
from Alderworth to the old house at Blooms-End.
On another occasion when reconnoitering thus she beheld
342 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
two female figures walking in the vale. The day was fine
and clear; and the persons not being more than half a mile
off she could see their every detail with the telescope. The
woman walking in front carried a white bundle in her arms,
from one end of which hung a long appendage of drapery;
and when the walkers turned, so that the sun fell more
directly upon them, Eustacia could see that the object was
a baby. She called Charley, and asked him if he knew who
they were, though she well guessed.
"Mrs. Wildeve and the nurse-girl," said Charley.
"The nurse is carrying the baby?" said Eustacia.
"No, Mrs. Wildeve carrying that," he answered, "and
'tis

the nurse walks behind carrying nothing."

The lad was in good spirits that day, for the fifth of No-
vember had again come round, and he was planning yet
another scheme to divert her from her too absorbing thoughts.
For two successive years his mistress had seemed to take
pleasure in lighting a bonfire on the bank overlooking the
valley; but this year she had apparently quite forgotten
the day and the customary deed. He was careful not to
remind her, and went on with his secret preparations for a
cheerful surprise, the more zealously that he had been ab-
sent last time and unable to assist. At every vacant min-
ute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots,
and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding
them from cursory view.
The evening came, and Eustacia was still seemingly un-
conscious of the anniversary. She had gone indoors after
her survey through the glass, and had not been visible since.
As soon as it was quite dark Charley began to build the
bonfire, choosing precisely that spot on the bank which
Eustacia had chosen at previous times.
When all the surrounding bonfires had burst into exis-
tence Charley kindled his, and arranged its fuel so that it
should not require tending for some time. He then went
back to the house, and lingered round the door and win-
dows till she should by some means or other learn of his
achievement and come out to witness it. But the shutters
were closed, the door remained shut, and no heed whatever
 THE DISCOVERY 343

seemed to be taken of his performance. Not liking- to call

her he went back and replenished the fire, continuing to do
this for more than half an hour. It was not till his stock
of fuel had greatly diminished that he went to the back door
and sent in to beg that Mrs. Yeobright would open the
window-shutters and see the sight outside.
Eustacia, who had been sitting listlessly in the parlor,
started up at the intelligence and flung open the shutters.
Facing her on the bank blazed the fire, which at once sent
a ruddy glare into the room where she was, and overpowered
the candles.
"Well done, Charley!" said Captain Vye from the chim-
ney-corner. "But I hope it is not my wood that he's burn-
ing. . .Ah, it was this time last year that I met with
.

that man Venn, bringing home Thomasin Yeobright to be—

sure it was! Well, who would have thought that girl's
troubles would have ended so well ? What a snipe you were
in that matter, Eustacia ! Has your husband written to you
^et?"
"No," said Eustacia, looking vaguely through the window
at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that
she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She
could see Charley's form on the bank, shoveling and stirring,
the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other

form which that fire might call up.

She left the room, put on her garden-bonnet and cloak,
and went out. Reaching the bank she looked over with a
wild curiosity and misgiving, when Charley said to her, with
a pleased sense of himself, "I made it o' purpose for you,
ma'am."
"Thank you," she said hastily. "But I wish you to put
it out now."
"It will soon burn down," said Charley, rather disap-
pointed. "Is it not a pity to knock it out?"
"I don't know," she musingly answered.
They stood in silence, broken only by the crackling of
the flames, till Charley, perceiving that she did not want
to talk to him, moved reluctantly away.
Eustacia remained within the bank looking at the fire,
 "

344 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

intending to go indoors, yet lingering still. Had she not
by her situation been inclined to hold in indifference all
things honored of the gods and of men she would probably
have come away. But her state was so hopeless that she
could play with it. To have lost is less disturbing than to
wonder if we may possibly have won: and Eustacia could
now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point
outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator,
and think what a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia
was.
While she stood she heard a sound. It was the splash
of a stone in the pond.
Had Eustacia received the stone full in the bosom her
heart could not have given a more decided thump. She
had thought of the possibility of such a signal in answer
to that which had been unwittingly given by Charley; but
she had not expected it yet. How prompt Wilde ve was!
Yet how could he think her capable of deliberately wishing
to renew their assignations now? An impulse to leave the
spot, a desire to stay, struggled within her; and the desire
held its own. More than that it did not do, for she re-
frained even from ascending the bank and looking over.
She remained motionless, not disturbing a muscle of her
face or raising her eyes; for were she to turn up her face
the fire on the bank would shine upon it, and Wildeve might
be looking down.
There was a second splash into the pond.
Why did he stay so long without advancing and looking
over? Curiosity had its way: she ascended one or two of
the earth-steps in the bank and glanced out.
Wildeve was before her. He had come forward after
throwing the last pebble, and the fire now shone into each
of their facesfrom the bank stretching breast-high between
them.
"I did not light it!" cried Eustacia quickly. "It was lit
without my knowledge. Don't, don't come over to me !

"Why have you been living here all these days without
telling me? You have left your home. I fear I am some-
thing to blame in this?"
 "

THE DISCOVERY 345

"I did not let in his mother; that's how it is !

"You do not deserve what you have got, Eustacia; you

are in great misery; I see it in your eyes, your mouth, and
all over you. My poor, poor girl!" He stepped over the
bank. "You are beyond everything unhappy!"
"
"No, no; not exactly
—
"It has been pushed too far it is killing you: I do think
it!"
Her usually quiet breathing had grown quicker with his
words. ——
"I I " she began, and then burst into quivering
sobs, shaken to the very heart by the unexpected voice of
—
pity a sentiment whose existence in relation to herself she
had almost forgotten.
This outbreak of weeping took Eustacia herself so much
.by surprise that she could not leave off, and she turned
aside from him in some shame, though turning hid nothing
from him. She sobbed on desperately; then the outpour
lessened, and she became quieter. Wildeve had resisted
the impulse to clasp her, and stood without speaking.
"Are you not ashamed of me, who used never to be a cry-
ing animal?" she asked in a weak whisper as she wiped her
eyes. "Why didn't you go away? I wish you had not
seen quite all that; it reveals too much by half/'
"You might have wished makes me as sad
it, because it

as you," he said with emotion and deference. "As for re-

—
vealing the word is impossible between us two."
—
"I did not send for you don't forget it, Damon; I am
in pain, but I did not send for you! As a wife, at least,
I've been straight."
—
"Never mind I came. 0, Eustacia, forgive me for the
harm I have done you in these two past years ! I see more

~ — —«_« —
?,
and more that I .have be^nry1Ml^xp ]:l •

"Not you. The place I live in >** - ,

"Ah, your generosity may naturally make you say that.

But I am the culprit. I should either have done more or
nothing at all."
"In what way?"
"I ought never to have hunted you out; or, having done
it, I ought to have persisted in retaining you. But of course
346 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
I have no right to talk of that now. I will only ask this:
can I do anything for you? Is there anything on the face
of the earth that a man can do to make you happier than
you are at present? If there is, I will do it. You may
command me, Eustacia, to the limit of my influence; and
don't forget that I am richer now. Surely something can
be done to save you from this Such a rare plant in such
!

a wild place it grieves me to see. Do you want anything

bought? Do you want to go anywhere? Do you want to
escape the place altogether? Only say it and I'll do any-
thing to put an end to those tears, which but for me would
never have been at all."
"We are each married to another person/' she said faintly;
"and assistance from you would have an evil sound after
"
—
—after
"Well, there's no preventing slanderers from having their
fill at any time; but you need not be afraid. Whatever I
may feel I promise you on my word of honor never to speak
to you about —
or act upon—until you say I may. I know
my duty to Thomasin quite as well as I know my duty to
you as a woman unfairly treated. What shall I assist you
in?"
"In getting away from here."
"Where do you wish to go?"
"I have a place in my mind. If you could help me as
far as Budmouth I can do all the rest. Steamers sail from
there across the Channel, and so I can get to Paris, where
I want to be. Yes," she pleaded earnestly, "help me to get
to Budmouth harbor without my grandfather's or my hus-
band's knowledge, and I can do all the rest."
"Will it be safe to leave you there alone?"
"Yes, yes. I know Budmouth well."
"Shall I go with you? I am rich now."
She was silent.
"Say yes, sweet!"
She was silent still.
"Well, let me know when you wish to go. Wc shall be
at our present house till December; after that we remove
to Casterbriclge. Command me in anything till that time."
 THE DISCOVERY 347

"I will think of this," she said hurriedly. " Whether I

can honestly make use of you as a friend, or must close with
—
you as a lover that is what I must ask myself. If I wish
to go and decide to accept your company I will signal to
you some evening at eight o'clock punctually and this will
mean that you are to be ready with a horse and trap at
twelve o'clock the same night to drive me to Budmouth
harbor in time for the morning boat."
"I will look out every night at eight, and no signal shall
escape me."
"Now please go away. If I decide on this escape I can
—
only meet you once more unless I cannot go without you.
— —
Go I cannot bear it longer. Go go !"
Wildeve slowly went up the steps and descended into the
darkness on the other side; and as he walked he glanced
back, till the bank blotted out her form from his further

CHAPTER VI

THOMASIN ARGUES WITH HER COUSIN, AND HE

WRITES A LETTER

Yeobright was at this time at Blooms-End, hoping that

Eustacia would return to him. The removal of furniture
had been accomplished only that day, though Clym had
lived in the old house for more than a week. He had spent
the time in working about the premises, sweeping the leaves
from the garden-paths, cutting dead stalks from the flower-
beds, and nailing up creepers which had been displaced by
the autumn winds. He took no particular pleasure in these
deeds, but they formed a screen between himself and de-
spair. Moreover, it had become a religion with him to pre-
serve in good condition all that had lapsed from his moth-
er's hands to his own.
During these operations he was constantly on the watch
for Eustacia. That there should be no mistake about her
knowing where to find him he had ordered a notice-board
348 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
to be affixed to the garden gate at Alderworth, signifying
in white letters whither he had removed. When a leaf
floated to the earth he turned his head, thinking it might
be her footfall. A bird searching for worms in the mould
of the flower-beds sounded like her hand on the latch of the
gate; and at dusk, when soft, strange ventriloquisms came
from holes in the ground, hollow stalks, curled dead leaves,
and other crannies wherein breezes, worms, and insects
can work their will, he fancied that they were Eustacia,
standing without and breathing wishes of reconciliation.
Up to this time he had persevered in his resolve not to
invite her back. At the same time the severity with which
he had treated her lulled the sharpness of his regret for his
mother, and awoke some of his old solicitude for his mother's
supplanter. Harsh feelings produce harsh usage, and this
by reaction quenches the sentiments that gave it birth.
The more he reflected the more he softened. But to look
upon his wife as innocence in distress was impossible, though
he could ask himself whether he had given her quite time
—
enough if he had not come a little too suddenly upon her
on that somber morning.
Now that the first flush of his anger had paled he was
disinclined to ascribe to her more than an indiscreet friend-
ship with Wildeve, for there had not appeared in her man-
ner the signs of dishonor. And this once admitted, an ab-
solutely dark interpretation of her act towards his mother
was no longer forced upon him.
On the evening of the fifth of November his thoughts of
Eustacia were intense. Echoes from those past times when
they had exchanged tender words all the day long came like
the diffused murmur of a seashore left miles behind. " Sure-
ly/ he said, "she might have brought herself to communi-
'

cate with me before now, and confess honestly what Wil-

deve was to her."
Instead of remaining home that night he determined to
go and see Thomasin and her husband. If he found oppor-
tunity he would allude to the cause of the separation be-
tween Eustacia and himself, keeping silence, however, on
the fact that there was a third person in his house when his
 THE DISCOVERY 349

mother was turned away. If it proved that Wildeve was

innocently there he would doubtless openly mention it. If
he were there with unjust intentions Wildeve, being a man
of quick feeling, might possibly say something to reveal
the extent to which Eustacia was compromised.
But on reaching his cousin's house he found that only
Thomasin was at home, Wildeve being at that time on his
way towards the bonfire innocently lit by Charley at Mist-
over. Thomasin then, as always, was glad to see Clym, and
took him to inspect the sleeping baby, carefully screening
the candlelight from the infant's eyes with her hand.
"Tamsin, have you heard that Eustacia is not with me
now?" he said when they had sat down again.
"No," said Thorrfasin, alarmed.
"And not that I have left Alderworth?"
"No. I never hear tidings from Alderworth unless you
bring them. What is the matter?"
Clym in a disturbed voice related to her his visit to Susan
Nunsuch's boy, the revelation he had made, and what had
resulted from his charging Eustacia with having willfully
and heartlessly done the deed. He suppressed all men-
tion of Wildeve's presence with her.
"All this, and I not knowing it!" murmured Thomasin
in an awestruck tone. "Terrible! What could have made
her 0, Eustacia! And when you found it out you
—
went in hot haste to her? Were you too cruel? or is she
really so wicked as she seems?"
"Can a man be too cruel to his mother's enemy?"
"I can fancy so."
—
"Very well, then I'll admit that he can. But now what
is done?"
to be
"Make it up again —
if a quarrel so deadly can ever be

made up. Ialmost wish you had not told me. But do try
to be reconciled. There are ways, after all, if you both wish
to."
"I don't know that we do both wish to make it up," said
Clym. "If she had wished it, would she not have sent to
me by this time?"
"You seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her."
350 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"True; but I have been tossed to and fro in doubt if I
ought, aftersuch strong provocation. To see me now,
Thomasin, gives you no idea of what I have been; of what
depths I have descended to in these few last days. 0, it
was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that Can
!

I ever forget it, or even agree to see her again?"

"She might not have known that anything serious would
come of it, and perhaps she did not mean to keep aunt out
altogether."
"She says herself that she did not. But the fact remains
that keep her out she did."
"Believe her sorry, and send for her."
"How if she will not come?"
"It will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit
to nourish enmity. But I do not think that for a moment."
"I will do this. I will wait for a day or two longer —
not longer than two days certainly; and if she does not
send to me in that time I will indeed send to her. I thought
to have seen Wildeve here to-night. Is he from home?"
Thomasin blushed a little. "No," she said. "He is
merely gone out for a walk."
"Why didn't he take you with him? The evening is
fine. You want fresh air as well as he."
"0, I don't care for going anywhere; besides, there is
baby."
"Yes, yes. Well, I have been thinking whether I should
not consult your husband about this as well as you," said
Clym steadily.
"I fancy I would not," she quickly answered. "It can do
no good."
Her cousin looked her in the face. No doubt Thomasin
was ignorant that her husband had any share in the events
of that tragic afternoon; but her countenance seemed to
signify that she concealed some suspicion or thought of the
reputed tender relations between Wildeve and Eustacia in
days gone by.
Clym, however, could make nothing of it, and he rose
to depart, more in doubt than when he came.
"You will write to her in a day or two?" said the youjug
 THE DISCOVERY 351

woman earnestly. "I do so hope the wretched separation

may come to an end."
"I will," said Clym; "I don't rejoice in my present state
at all."
And he left her and climbed the hills to Blooms-End.
Before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following
letter:

"My Dear —
Eustacia I must obey my heart without
consulting my reason too closely. Will you come back to
me? Do so, and the past shall never be mentioned. I was
too severe; but 0, Eustacia, the provocation You don't !

know, you never will know, what those words of anger cost
me which you drew down upon yourself. All that an honest
man can promise you I promise now, which is that from
me you shall never suffer anything on this score again.
After all the vows we have made, Eustacia, I think we had
better pass the remainder of our lives in trying to keep
them. Come to me, then, even if you reproach me. I have
thought of your sufferings that morning on which I parted
from you; I know they were genuine and they are as much
as you ought to bear. Our love must still continue. Such
hearts as ours would never have been given us but to be
concerned with each other. I could not ask you back at
first, Eustacia, for I was unable to persuade myself that

he who was with you was not there as a lover. But if you
will come and explain distracting appearances I do not
question that you can show your honesty to me. Why
have you not come before? Do you think I will not listen
to you? Surely not when you remember the kisses and
vows we exchanged under the summer moon. Return
then, and you shall be warmly welcomed. I can no longer
—
think of you to your prejudice I am but too much ab-
—
sorbed in justifying you. Your husband as ever,
"Clym."

"There," he said, as he laid it in his desk, "that's a good

thing done. If she does not come before to-morrow night
I will send it to her."
352 THE KETURN OF THE NATIVE
Meanwhile, at the house he had just left Thomasin sat
sighing uneasily. Fidelity to her husband had that evening
induced her to conceal all suspicion that Wildeve's interest
in Eustacia had not ended with his marriage. But she knew
nothing positive; and though Clym was her well-beloved
cousin there was one nearer to her still.
When, a little later, Wildeve returned from his walk to
Mistover, Thomasin said, "Damon, where have you been?
I was getting quite frightened, and thought you had fallen
into the river. I dislike being in the house by myself."
" Frightened ? " he said, touching her cheek as if she were
some domestic animal. "Why, I thought nothing could
frighten you. It is that you arc getting proud, I am sure,
and don't like living here since we have risen above our
business. Well, it is a tedious matter, this getting a new
house; but I couldn't have set about it sooner, unless our
ten thousand pounds had been a hundred thousand, when
we could have afforded to despise caution."
— —
"No I don't mind waiting I would rather stay here
twelve months longer than run any risk with baby". But
I don't like your vanishing so in the evenings. There's
—
something on your mind I know there is, Damon. You
go about so gloomily, and look at the heath as if it were
somebody's jail instead of a nice wild place to walk in."
He looked towards her with pitying surprise. "What,
do you like Egdon Heath?" he said.
"I like what I was born near to; I admire its grim old
face."
"Pooh, my dear. You don't know what you like."
"I am sure I do. There's only one thing unpleasant
about Egdon."
"What's that?"
"You never take me with you when you walk there.
Why do you wander so much in it yourself if you dislike
it?"
The inquiry, though a simple one, was plainly disconcert-
ing, and he sat down before replying. "I don't think you
often see me there. Give an instance."
"I will," she answered triumphantly. "When you went
 THE DISCOVERY 353

out this evening I thought that as baby was asleep I would

see where you were going to so mysteriously without tell-
ing me. So I ran out and followed behind you. You stopped
at the place where the road forks, looked round at the bon-
fires, and then said, Damn it, I'll go
l !
And you went
'

quickly up the left-hand road. Then I stood and watched

you.;'
Wildeve frowned, afterwards saying, with a forced smile,
"Well, what wonderful discovery did you make?"
—
" There now you are angry, and we won't talk of this
any more." She went across to him, sat on a footstool and
looked up in his face.
" Nonsense!" he said; "that's how you always back out.
We will go on with it now we have begun. What did you
next see? I particularly want to know."
"Don't be like that, Damon!" she murmured. "I didn't
see anything. You vanished out of sight, and then I looked
round at the bonfires and came in."
"Perhaps this is not the only time you have dogged my
steps. Are you trying to find out something bad about
me?"
"Not at all!I have never done such a thing before, and
I shouldn't have done it now if words had not sometimes
been dropped about you."
"What do you mean?" he impatiently asked.
—
"They say they say you used to go to Alderworth in
the evenings, and it puts into my mind what I have heard
"
about
Wildeve turned angrily and stood up in front of her.
"Now," he said, flourishing his hand in the air, "just out
with it, madam I demand to know what remarks you have
!

heard."
"Well, I heard that you used to be very fond of Eustacia
— nothing more than that, though told more in a bit-by-bit
way. You ought not to be angry!"
He observed that her eyes were brimming with tears.
"Well," he said, "there is nothing new in that, and of course
I don't mean to be rough towards you, so you need not cry.
Now, don't let us speak of the subject any more."
354 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
And no more was said, Thomasin being glad enough of
a reason for not mentioning Clym's visit to her that evening,
and his story.

CHAPTER VII

THE NIGHT OF THE SIXTH OF NOVEMBER

Having resolved on flight, Eustacia at times seemed anx-
ious that something should happen to thwart her own in-
tention. The only event that could really change her posi-
tion was the appearance of Clym. The glory which had
encircled him as her lover was departed now; yet some
good simple quality of his would occasionally return to her
memory and stir a momentary throb of hope that he would
again present himself before her. But, calmly considered,
it was not likely that such a severance as now existed would
ever close up: she would have to live on as a painful ob-
ject, isolated, and out of place. [She had used to think of
the heath alone as an uncongeniaTrpoTT;^
lfrnow of the whole world.
Towards evening on the sixth her determination to go
away again revived. About four o'clock she packed up
anew a few small articles she had brought in her flight from
Alderworth and also some belonging to her which had been
left here: the whole formed a bundle not too large to be car-
ried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two. The scene
without grew darker; mud-colored clouds bellied downwards
from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with
the increase of night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there
was no rain.
Eustacia could not rest indoors, having nothing more to
do, and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from
the house she was soon to leave. In these desultory ram-
blings she passed the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, a little lower
down than her grandfather's. The door was ajar, and a
riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without. As
Eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an instant
 THE DISCOVERY 355

as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria —a creature of

lightsurrounded by an area of darkness: the moment passed
and she was absorbed in night again.
A woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and
recognized her in that momentary irradiation. This was
Susan herself, occupied in preparing a posset for her little
boy, who, often ailing, was now seriously unwell. Susan
dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure,
and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent way.
At eight o'clock, the hour at which Eustacia had promised
to signal to Wildeve if ever she signaled at all, she looked
around the premises to learn if the coast was clear, went to
the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed bough of
that fuel. This she carried to the corner of the bank, and,
glancing behind to see if the shutters were all closed, she
struck a light, and kindled the furze. When it was thor-
oughly ablaze Eustacia took it by the stem and waved it in
the air above her head till it had burned itself out.
She was gratified, if gratification were possible to such a
mood, by seeing a similar light in the vicinity of Wildeve's
residence a minute or two later. Having agreed to keep
watch at this hour every night, in case she should require
assistance, this promptness proved how strictly he had held
to his word. Four hours after the present time, that is, at
midnight, he was to be ready to drive her to Budmouth, as
prearranged.
Eustacia returned to the house. Supper having been got
over she retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for
the time to go by. The night being dark and threatening
Captain Vye had not strolled out to gossip in any cottage
or to call at the inn, as was sometimes his custom on these
long autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone down-
stairs. About ten o'clock there was a knock at the door.
When the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell upon
the form of Fairway.
"I was a-forced to go to Lower Mistover to-night," he
said;"and Mr. Yeobright asked me to leave this here on
my way; but, faith, I put it in the lining of my hat, and
thought no more about it till I got back and was hasping
356 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
my gate before going to bed. So . I have run back with it
at once."
He handed in a letter and went his way. The girl brought
it to the captain, who found that it was directed to Eustacia.
He turned it over and over, and fancied that the writing
was her husband's, though he could not be sure. However,
he decided to let her have it at once if possible, and took it
upstairs for that purpose; but on reaching the door of her
room and looking in at the keyhole he found there was no
light within, the fact being that Eustacia, without undress-
ing, had flung upon the bed, to rest and gather a little
herself
strength for her coming journey.Her grandfather concluded
from what he saw that he ought not to disturb her; and de-
scending again to the parlor, he placed the letter on the
mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning.
At eleven o'clock he went to bed himself, smoked for
some time in his bedroom, put out his light at half-past
eleven, and then, as was his invariable custom, pulled up
the blind before getting into bed, that he might see which
way the wind blew on opening his eyes in the morning, his
bedroom window commanding a view of the flagstaff and
vane. Just as he had lain down he was surprised to observe
the white pole of the staff flash into existence like a streak
of phosphorus drawn downwards across the shade of night
without. Only one explanation met this a light had been —
suddenly thrown upon the pole from the direction of the
house. As everybody had retired to rest the old man felt
it necessary to get out of bed, open the window softly, and

look to the right and left. Eustacia's bedroom was lighted

up, and it was the shine from her window which had lighted
the pole. Wondering what had aroused her he remained
undecided at the window, and was thinking of fetching the
letter to slip it under her door, when he heard a slight brush-
ing of garments on the partition dividing his room from the
passage.
The captain concluded that Eustacia, feeling wakeful, had
gone for a book, and would have dismissed the matter as
unimportant if he had not also heard her distinctly weeping.
"She is thinking of that husband of hers," he said to him-
 THE DISCOVERY 357

self. "Ah, the goose! she had no business to marry

silly
him. I wonder that letter is really his?"
if

He arose, threw his boat-cloak round him, opened the

door, and said, "Eustacia!" There was no answer. "Eu-
stacia!" he repeated louder, "there is a letter on the man-
telpiece for you."
But no response was made to this statement save an
imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at
the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops of
rain upon the windows.
He went oh to the landing, and stood waiting nearly
five minutes. she did not return. He went back for
Still

a light, and prepared to follow her; but first he looked into

her bedroom. There, on the outside of the quilt, was the
impression of her form, showing that the bed had not been
opened; and, what was more significant, she had not taken
her candlestick downstairs. He was now thoroughly
alarmed; and hastily putting on his clothes he descended
to the front door, which he himself had bolted and locked.
It was now unfastened. There was no longer any doubt
that Eustacia had left the house at this midnight hour; and
whither could she have gone? To follow her was almost
impossible. Had the dwelling stood in an ordinary road,
two persons setting out, one in each direction, might have
made sure of overtaking her; but it was a hopeless task
to seek for anybody on a heath in the dark, the practicable
directions for flight across it from any point being as numer-
ous as the meridians radiating from the pole. Perplexed
what to do he looked into the parlor, and was vexed to find
that the letter still lay there untouched.

At half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent,

Eustacia had lighted her candle, put on some warm outer
wrappings, taken her bag in her hand, and, extinguishing
the light again, descended the staircase. When she got
into the outer air she found that it had begun to rain, and
as she stood pausing at the door it increased, threatening
to come on heavily. But having committed herself to this
line of action there was no retreating for bad weather, since
358 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Wildeve had been communicated with, and was probably-
even then waiting for her. The gloom of the night was
funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky
points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky
like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. Nothing below
the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning
in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.
Eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the en-
closure by the steps over the bank, after which she was
beyond all danger of being perceived. Skirting the pool
she followed the path towards Rainbarrow, occasionally
stumbling over twisted furze-roots, tufts of rushes, or oozing
lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay scattered
about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some
colossal animal. The moon and stars were closed up by
cloud and rain to the degree of extinction. It was a night
which led the traveler's thoughts instinctively to dwell on
nocturnal scenes of disaster in the chronicles of the world,
—
on all that is terrible and dark in history and legend the
last plague of Egypt, the destruction of Sennacherib's host,
the agony in Gethsemane.
Eustacia at length reached Rainbarrow, and stood still
there to think. Never was harmony more perfect than that
between the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world
without. A sudden recollection had flashed on her this
moment: she had not money enough for undertaking a long
journey. Amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her
impractical mind had not dwelt on the necessity of being
well-provided, and now that she thoroughly realized the
conditions she sighed bitterly and ceased to stand erect,
gradually crouching down under the umbrella as if she were
drawn into the Barrow by a hand from beneath. Could it
be that she was to remain a captive still? Money: she had
never felt its value before. Even to efface herself from the
country means were required. To ask Wildeve for pecuniary
aid without allowing him to accompany her was impossible
to a woman with the shadow of pride left in her: to fly as his
— —
mistress and she knew that he loved her was of the nature
of humiliation.
 " !

THE DISCOVERY 359

Any one who had stood by now would have pitied her,
not so much on account of her exposure to weather, and
isolation from all of humanity except the mouldered remains
inside the Barrow; but for that other form of misery which
was denoted by the slightly rocking movement that her
feelings imparted to her person. Extreme unhappiness
weighed visibly upon her. Between the drippings of the
rain from her umbrella to her mantte, from her mantle to
the heather, from the heather to the earth, very similar
sounds could be heard coming from her lips; and the tear-
fulness of the outer scenewas repeated upon her face. The
wings of her soul were broken by the cruel obstructiveness
of all about her; and even had she seen herself in a promis-
ing way of getting toBudmouth, entering a steamer, and
sailing to some opposite port she would have been but little
more buoyant, so fearfully malignant were other things.
She uttered words aloud. When
a woman in such a situa-
tion, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon
herself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something griev-
ous the matter.
"Can I go, can I go?" she moaned. "He's not great
enough for me to give myself to he does not suffice for —
my desire ! If he had been a Saul or a Bonaparte
. . . ah —
But to break my marriage vow for him it is too poor a —
iuxury ! . And I have no money to go alone And if I
. . !

could, what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as

I have dragged on this year, and the year after that as be-
fore. How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman,
and how destiny has been against me! I do not de- . . .

serve my lot!" she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. "O,

the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I
was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted
and crushed by things beyond my control! 0, how hard
it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have
done no harm to Heaven at all !

The distant light which Eustacia had cursorily observed in

leaving the house came, as she had divined, from the cot-
tage-window of Susan Nunsuch. What Eustacia did not
divine was the occupation of the woman within at that
360 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
moment. Susan's sight of her passing figure earlier in the
evening, not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation,
"Mother, I do feel so bad!" persuaded the matron that an
evil influence was certainly exercised by Eustacia's propin-
quity.
On account Susan did not go to bed as soon as the
this
evening's work was
over, as she would have done at ordi-
nary times. To counteract the malign spell which she
imagined poor Eustacia to be working, the boy's mother
busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition, cal-
culated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation
on any human being against whom it was directed. It was
a practice well known on Egdon at that date, and one that
is not quite extinct at the present day.

She passed with her candle into an inner room, where,

among other utensils, were two large brown pans, contain-
ing together perhaps a hundredweight of liquid honey, the
produce of the bees during the foregoing summer. On a
shelf over the pans was a smooth and solid yellow mass of a
hemispherical form, consisting of beeswax from the same
take of honey. Susan took down the lump, and, cutting
off several thin slices, heaped them in an iron ladle, with
which she returned to the living-room, and placed the vessel
in the hot ashes of the fireplace. As soon as the wax had
softened to the plasticity of dough she kneaded the pieces
together. And now her face became more intent. She be-
gan moulding the wax; and it was evident from her manner
of manipulation that she was endeavoring to give it some
preconceived form. The form was human.
By warming and kneading, cutting and twisting, dismem-
bering and rejoining the incipient image she had in about
a quarter of an hour produced a shape which tolerably well
resembled a woman, and was about six inches high. She
laid it on the table to get cold and hard. Meanwhile she
took the candle and went upstairs to where the little boy
was lying.
"Did you notice, my dear, what Mrs. Eustacia wore this
afternoon besides the dark dress?"
"A red ribbon round her neck."
 '

THE DISCOVERY 361

''Anything else?"
'
' —
No except sandal-shoes . '

"A red ribbon and sandal-shoes," she said to herself.

Mrs. Nunsuch went and searched till she found a frag-
ment of the narrowest red ribbon, which she took down-
stairs and tied round the neck of the image. Then fetch-
ing ink and a quill from the rickety bureau by the window,
she blackened the feet of the image to the extent presum-
ably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot marked
cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandal-strings of those
days. Finally she tied a bit of black thread round the upper
part of the head, in faint resemblance to a fillet worn for
confining the hair.
Susan held the object at arm's "length and contemplated
it with a satisfaction in which there was no smile. To any-
body acquainted with the inhabitants of Egdon Heath the
image would have suggested Eustacia Yeobright.
From her work-basket in the window-seat the woman
took a paper of pins, of the old long and yellow sort, whose
heads were disposed to come off at their first usage. These
she began to thrust into the image in all directions, with
apparently excruciating energy. Probably as many as fifty
were thus inserted, some into the head of the wax model,
some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some upwards
through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely
permeated with pins.
She turned to the fire. It had been of turf; and though
the high heap of ashes which turf fires produce was some-
what dark and dead on the outside upon raking it abroad
with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow of red
heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from the chimney-
corner and built them together over the glow upon which
the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs the image that
she had made of Eustacia, she held it in the heat, and watched
it as it began to waste slowly away. And while she stood
thus engaged, there came from between her lips a murmur
of words.
It was a strange jargon —
the Lord's Prayer repeated
—
backwards the incantation usual in proceedings for ob-
362 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
taining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. Susan
uttered the lugubrious discourse three times slowly and
when was completed the image had considerably dimin-
it

ished. As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose
from the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure eat
still further into its substance. A pin occasionally dropped
with the wax, and the embers heated it red as it lay.

CHAPTER VIII

RAIN, DARKNESS, AND ANXIOUS WANDERERS

While the Eustacia was melting to nothing, and
effigy of
the fair woman was standing on Rainbarrow, her
herself
soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one so
young, Yeobright sat lonely at Blooms-End. He had ful-
filled his word to Thomasin by sending off Fairway with the
letter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience
for some sound or signal of her return. Were Eustacia still
at Mistover the very least to be expected was that she would
send him back a reply to-night by the same hand; though,
to leave all to her inclination he had cautioned Fairway not
to ask for an answer. If one were told or handed to him he
was to bring it immediately; if not, he was to go straight
home without troubling to come round to Blooms-End
again that night.
But secretly Clym had a more pleasing hope. Eustacia
—
might possibly decline to use her pen it was rather her
—
way to work silently and surprise him by appearing at
his door.
To Clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the
evening advanced. The wind rasped and scraped at the
corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings like
peas against the panes. He walked restlessly about the un-
tenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows and
doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements and
crevices and pressing together the lead-work of the quarries
where it had become loosened from the glass. It was one of
 " —

THE DISCOVERY 363

those nights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen,

when ancient stains on the ceilings of decayed manor-houses
are renewed and enlarged from the size of a man's hand
to an area of many feet. The little gate in the palings be-
fore his dwelling continually opened and clicked together
again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody was there;
it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in on

their way to visit him.

Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither Fair-
way nor anybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and
despite his anxieties soon fell asleep. His sleep, however,
was not very sound, by reason of the expectancy he had
given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knocking
which began at the door about an hour after. Clym arose
and looked out of the window. Rain was still falling heavily,
the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued
hiss under the downpour. It was too dark to see anything
at all.
" Who's there?" he cried.
Light footsteps shifted their position in the porch, and
he could just distinguish in a plaintive female voice the
words, "0 Clym, come down and let me in!"
He flushed hot with agitation. " Surely it is Eustacia!"
he murmured. If so, she had indeed come to him unawares.
He hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down.
On his flinging open the door the rays of the candle fell
upon a woman closely wrapped up, who at once came for-
ward.
"Thomasin!" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of
disappointment. "It is Thomasin, and on such a night as
"
this! 0, where is Eustacia ?
Thomasin it was, wet, frightened, and panting.
"Eustacia? I don't know, Clym; but I can think," she
said with much perturbation. "Let me come in and rest I
will explain this. There is a great trouble brewing my
!
—
husband and Eustacia
"What, what?"
"I think my husband is going to leave me or do some-
thing dreadful — I don't know what —Clym, will you go and
364 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
see? I have nobody to help me but you! Eustacia has
not come home ? "
"No."
She went on breathlessly: "Then they are going to run
off together ! He came
indoors to-night about eight o' clock
and said in an off-hand way, 'Tamsie, I have just found
that I must go a journey/ 'When?' I said. 'To-night/ he
said. Where ?' I asked him. 'I cannot tell you at pres-
'

ent/ he said; 'I shall be back again to-morrow.' He then

went and busied himself in looking up his things, and took
no notice of me at all. I expected to see him start, but he
did not, and then it came to be ten o'clock, when he said,
'You had better go to bed. I didn't know what to do, and
7

I went to bed. I believe he thought I fell asleep, for half

an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak chest
we keep money in when we have much in the house and took
out a roll of something which I believe was bank-notes,
though I was not aware that he had 'em there. These he
must have got from the bank when he went there the other
day. What does he want bank-notes for, if he is only going
off for a day? When he had gone down I thought of Eusta-
cia, and how he had met her the night before — I know he
did meet her, Clym, for I followed him part of the way;
but I did not like to tell you when you called, and so make
you think ill of him, as I did not think it was so serious.
Then I could not stay in bed. I got up and dressed myself,
and when I heard him out in the stable I thought I would
come and tell you. So I came downstairs without any noise
and slipped out."
"Then he was not absolutely gone when you left?"
"No. Will you, dear Cousin Clym, go and try to per-
suade him not to go? He takes no notice of what I say,
and puts me off with the story of his going on a journey,
and will be home to-morrow, and all that; but I don't be-
lieve it. I think you could influence him."
"I'll go," said Clym. "0, Eustacia!"
Thomasin carried in her arms a large bundle; and having
by this time seated herself she began to unroll it, when a
—
baby appeared as the kernel to the husks dry, warm, and
 "

THE DISCOVERY 365

unconscious of travel or rough weather. Thomasin briefly

kissed the baby, and then found time to begin crying as she
said, "I brought baby, for I was afraid what might happen
to her. I suppose it will be her death, but I couldn't leave
!
her with Rachel
Clym hastily put together the logs on the hearth, raked
abroad the embers, which were scarcely yet extinct, and
blew up a flame with the bellows.
"Dry yourself," he said. "I'll go and get some more
wood."
—
"No, no don't stay for that. I'll make up the fire.

—
Will you go at once please will you?"
Yeobright ran upstairs to finish dressing himself. While
he was gone another rapping came to the door. This time
there was no delusion that it might be Eustacia's; the foot-
steps just preceding it had been heavy and slow. Yeo-
bright, thinking it might possibly be Fairway with a note
in answer, descended again and opened the door.
"Captain Vye?" he said to a dripping figure.
"Is my grand-daughter here?" said the captain.
"No."
"Then where is she?"

"I don't know."

—
"But you ought to know you are her husband."
"Only in name apparently," said Clym with rising ex-
citement. "I believe she means to elope to-night with Wild-
eve. I am just going to look to it."
"Well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour
ago. Who's sitting there?"
"My cousin Thomasin."
The captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her. "I only
hope it is no worse than an elopement," he said.
"Worse? What's worse than the worst a wife can do?"
"Well, I have been told a strange tale. Before starting
in search of her I called up Charley, my stable-lad. I missed
my pistols the other day."
"Pistols?"
"He said at the time that he took them down to clean.
He has now owned that he took them because he saw Eusta-
 "

366 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

cia looking curiously at them; and she afterwards owned
tohim that she was thinking of taking her life but bound

him to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thing

again. Ihardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough
to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in
her mind; and people who think of that sort of thing once
think of it again."
"Where are the pistols?"
" Safely locked up. O no, she won't touch them again.
But there are more ways of letting out life than through a
bullet-hole. What did you quarrel about so bitterly with
her to drive her to all this? You must have treated her
badly indeed. Well, I was always against the marriage,
and I was right."
"Are you going with me?" said Yeobright paying no
attention to the captain's latter remark. "If so, I can tell
you what we quarreled about as we walk along."
"Whereto?"
"To Wilde ve's —
that was her destination, depend upon it."
Thomasin here broke in, still weeping: "He said he was
only going on a sudden short journey; but if so, why did
he want so much money? 0, Clym, what do you think
will happen? I am afraid that you, my poor baby, will
!
soon have no father left to you
"I am off now," said Yeobright, stepping into the porch.
"I would fain go with ye," said the old man doubtfully.
"But I begin to be afraid that my legs will hardly carry me
there such a night as this. I am not so young as I was. If
they are interrupted in their flight she will be sure to come
back to me and I ought to be at the house to receive her.
But be it as 'twill I can't walk to the Quiet Woman, and
that's an end on't. I'll go straight home."
"It will perhaps be best," said Clym. "Thomasin, dry
yourself, and be as comfortable as you can."
With this he closed the door upon her, and left the house
in company with Captain Vye, who parted from him outside
the gate taking the middle path, which led to Mistover,
Clym crossed by the right-hand track towards the inn.
Thomasin, being left alone, took off some of her wet gar-
 THE DISCOVERY 367

ments, carried the baby upstairs to Clym's bed, and then

came down to the sitting-room again, where she made a
larger fire, and began drying herself. The fire soon flared
up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfort
that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the
storm without which snapped at the window-panes and
breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that
seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy.
But the least part of Thomasin was in the house, for her
heart being at ease about the little girl upstairs she was
mentally following Clym on his journey. Having indulged
in this imaginary peregrination for some considerable in-
terval, she became impressed with a sense of the intolerable
slowness of time. But she sat on. The moment then came
when she could scarcely sit longer; and it was like a satire
on her patience to remember that Clym could hardly have
reached the inn as yet. At last she went to the baby's bed-
side. The child was sleeping soundly; but her imagina-
tion of possibly disastrous events at her home, the predom-
inance within her of the unseen over the seen, agitated her
beyond endurance. She could not refrain from going down
and opening the door. The rain still continued, the candle-
light falling upon the nearest drops and making glistening
darts of them as they descended across the throng of invis-
ible ones behind. To plunge into that medium was to plunge
into water slightly diluted with air. But the difficulty of
returning to her house at this moment made her all the more
desirous of doing so; anything was better than suspense.
" I have come here well enough," she said, " and why shouldn't
I go back again? It is a mistake for me to be away."
She hastily fetched the infant, wrapped it up, cloaked her-
self as before, and shoveling the ashes over the fire, to pre-
vent accidents went into the open air. Pausing first to put
the door-key in its old place behind the shutter, she reso-
lutely turned her face to the confronting pile of firmamenta!
darkness beyond the palings, and stepped into its midst.
But Thomasin's imagination being so actively engaged else-
where, the night and the weather had for her no terror be-
yond that of their actual discomfort and difficulty.
368 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
She was soon ascending Blooms-End valley and travers*
ing the undulations on the side of the hill. The noise of the
wind over the heath was shrill, and as if it whistled for joy
at finding a night so congenial as this. Sometimes the path
led her to hollows between thickets of tall and dripping
bracken, dead, though not yet prostrate, which enclosed her
like a pool. When they were more than usually tall she
lifted the baby to the top of her head, that it might be out
of the reach of their drenching fronds. On higher ground,
where the wind was brisk and sustained, the rain flew in a
level flight without sensible descent so that it was beyond
all power to imagine the remoteness of the point at which it

left the bosoms of the clouds. Here self-defense was impos-

sible and individual drops stuck into her like the arrows
into Saint Sebastian. She was enabled to avoid puddles
by the nebulous paleness which signified their presence,
though beside anything less dark than the heath they them-
selves would have appeared as blackness.
Yet in spite of all this, Thomasin was not sorry that she
had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons
in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops
which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain;
Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but imper-
sonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational,
her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it
was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might
experience much discomfort, lose the path without care,
and possibly catch cold.
If the path is well known the difficulty at such times of
keeping therein is not altogether great, from its familiar feel
to the feet; but once lost it is irrecoverable. Owing to her
baby, who somewhat impeded Thomasin's view forward and
distracted her mind, she did at last lose the track. This
mishap occurred when she was descending an open slope
about two-thirds home. Instead of attempting, by wander-
ing hither and thither the hopeless task of finding such a
mere thread she went straight on, trusting for guidance to
her general knowledge of the district, which was scarcely
surpassed by Clym's or bv that of the he?th-croppers them-
selves.
 THE DISCOVERY 309

At length Thomasin reached a hollow and began to dis-

cern through the rain a faint blotted radiance, which pres-
ently assumed the oblong form of an open door. She knew
that no house stood hereabouts, and was soon aware of the
nature of the door by its height above the ground.
"Why, it is Diggory Venn's van, surely!" she said.
A certain secluded spot near Rainbarrow was, she knew,
often Venn's oliosen center when staying in this neighbor-
hood; and she guessed at once that she had stumbled upon
this mysterious retreat. The question arose in her mind
whether or not she should ask him to guide her into the path.
In her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would
appeal to him notwithstanding the strangeness of appear-
ing before his eyes at this place and season. B^t when,
in pursuance of this resolve, Thomasin reached vhe van
and looked in she found it to be untenanted; though there
was no doubt that it was the reddleman's. The fire was
burning in the stove, the lantern hung from the nail. Round
the doorway the floor was merely sprinkled with rain, and
not saturated, which told her that the door had not long
been opened.
While she stood uncertainly looking in Thomasin heard
a footstep advancing from the darkness behind her; and
turning, beheld the well-known form in corduroy, lurid from
head to foot, the lantern beams falling upon him through
an intervening gauze of raindrops.
"I thought you went down the slope," he said, without
noticing her face. "How do you come back here again?"
"Diggory?" said Thomasin faintly.
"Who are you?" said Venn, still unperceiving. "And
why were you crying so just now?"
"0, Diggory! don't you know me?" said she. "But of
course you don't, wrapped up like this. What do you
mean? I have not been crying here, and I have not been
here before."
Venn then ciime nearer till he could see the illuminated
side of her form.
"Mrs. Wildeve!" he exclaimed, staring. "What a time
for us tomeet! And the baby, too! What dreadful thing
can have brought you out on such a night as this?"
 "

370 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

She could not immediately answer; and without asking
her permission he hopped into his van, took her by the arm,
and drew her up after him.
"What is it?" he continued when they stood within.
"I have lost my way coming from Blooms-End, and I
am in a great hurry to get home. Please show me as quickly
as you can It is so silly of me not to know Egdon better,
!

and I cannot think how I came to lose the path. Show me

quickly, Diggory, please."
"Yes, of course. I will go with ye. But you came to me
before this, Mrs. Wildeve?"
"I only came this minute."
"That's strange. I was lying down here asleep about
five minutes ago, with the door shut to keep out the weather,
when the brushing of a woman's clothes over the heath-
bushes just outside woke me up (for I don't sleep heavy),
and at the same time I heard a sobbing or crying from the
same woman. I opened my door and held out my lantern,
and just as far as the light would reach I saw a woman; she
turned her head when the light sheened on her, and then
hurried on downhill. I hung up the lantern, and was curi-
ous enough to pull on my things and dog her a few steps,
but I could see nothing of her any more. That was where
I had been when you came up; and when I saw you I thought
you were the same one."
"Perhaps it was one of the heath-folk going home?"
"No, it couldn't. 'Tis too late. The noise of her gown
over the he'th was of a whistling sort that nothing but silk
will make."
"It wasn't I, then. My dress is not silk, you see. .
. .

Are we anywhere in a line between Mistover and the inn?"

"Well, yes; not far out."
"Ah, I wonder if it was she Diggory, I must go at once
!
!

She jumped down from the van before he was aware,

when Venn unhooked the lantern and leaped down after
her. "I'll take the baby, ma'am," he said. "You must be
tired out by the weight."
Thomasin hesitated a moment and then delivered the
baby into Venn's hands. "Don't squeeze her, Diggory,"
 "

THE DISCOVERY 371

she said, "or hurt her little arm; and keep the cloak close
over her like this, so that the rain may not drop in her face."
"I will," said Venn earnestly. "As if I could hurt any-
!
thing belonging to you
"I only meant accidentally," said Thomasin.
"The baby is dry enough, but you are pretty wet," said
the reddleman when, in closing the door of his cart to pad-
lock it, he noticed on the floor a ring of water-drops where
her cloak had hung from her.
Thomasin followed him as he wound right and left to
avoid the larger bushes, stopping occasionally and covering
the lantern, while he looked over his shoulder to gain some
idea of the position of Rainbarrow above them which it
was necessary to keep directly behind their backs to pre-
serve a proper course.
"You are sure the rain does not fall upon baby?"
" Quite sure. May I ask how old he is, ma'am ? "
"He!" said Thomasin reproachfully. "Anybody can see
better than that in a moment. She is nearly two months
old. How far is it now to the inn ? "
"A little over a quarter of a mile."
"Will you walk a little faster?"
"I was afraid you could not keep up."
"I am very anxious to get there. Ah, there is a light from
the window!"
" 'Tis not from the window. That's a gig-lamp to the
best of my belief."
" !
" said Thomasin in despair. " I wish I had been there
sooner — me —
the baby, Diggory you can go back now."
give
"I must go all the way," said Venn. "There is a quag
between us and that light, and you will walk into it up to
your neck unless I take you round."
"But the light is at the inn, and there is no quag in front
of that."
"No, the light is below the inn some two or three hun-
dred yards."
"Never mind," said Thomasin hurriedly. "Go towards
the light, and not towards the inn."
"Yes," answered Venn, swerving round in obedience*
372 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
and, after a pause, "I wish you would tell me what this great
trouble is. I think you have proved that I can be trusted."
—
"There are some things that cannot be cannot be told
to " And then her heart rose into her throat, and she
could say no more.

CHAPTER IX
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS DRAW THE WANDERERS
TOGETHER
Having seen Eustacia's signal from the hill at eight o'clock,
Wildeve immediately prepared to assist her in her flight,
and, as he hoped, accompany her. He was somewhat per-
turbed, and his manner of informing Thomasin that he was
going on a journey was in itself sufficient to rouse her sus-
picions. When she had gone to bed he collected the few
articles he would require, and went upstairs to the money-
chest, whence he took a tolerably bountiful sum in notes,
which had been advanced to him on the property he was
so soon to have in possession, to defray expenses incidental
to the removal.
He then went to the stable and coach-house to assure
himself that the horse, gig, and harness were in a fit condi-
tion for a long drive. Nearly half an hour was spent thus,
and on returning to the house Wildeve had no thought of
Thomasin being anywhere but in bed. He had told the
stable-lad not to stay up, leading the boy to understand that
his departure would be at three or four in the morning; for
this, though an exceptional hour, was less strange than mid-
night, the time actually agreed on, the packet from Bud-
mouth sailing between one and two.
At last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait.
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 DISCOVERY 373

the half of his property, and with chivalrous devotion to-

wards another and greater woman by sharing her fate, was
possible. And though he meant to adhere to Eustacia's in-
structions 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 depart together.
He would not allow himself to dwell long upon these con-
jectures, 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 to-
gether 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 a few yards further on,
where the road approached the river 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
labor 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.
374 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
"Eufltacia?" said Wildeve.
The person came forward, and the upon the iorm
light fell
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 ad-
joining, apparently at a point near the weir.
Both "Good God! can it be she?" said Clym.
started.
"Why should it be she?" said Wildeve, in his alarm for-
getting 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.
Shad water 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 ma-
sonry, 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
 THE DISCOVERY 375

race, and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow
him crossed to the other side of the river.
off, 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.
"0, my darling!" exclaimed Wildeve in an agonized
voice; and, without showing sufficient presence of mind
even to throw off his great-coat he leaped into the boiling
hole.
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. Be-
thinking himself of a wiser plan he placed the lamp against
a post to make it stand upright, ard 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 center of the basin, where he perceived Wild-
eve 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. They had not
been near enough to the river to hear the plunge, but they
saw the removal of the carriage-lamp, and watched its mo-
tion into the mead. As soon as they reached the car and
horse Venn guessed that something new was amiss, and
hastened to follow in the course of the moving light. Venn
walked faster than Thomasin, and came to the weir alone.
The lamp placed against the post by Clym still shone
across the water, and the reddleman observed something
floating motionless. Being encumbered with the infant he
ran back to meet Thomasin.
"Take the baby, please, Mrs. Wildeve," he said hastily.
"Run home with her, call the stable-lad, and make him send
376 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
down to me any men who may be living near. Somebody
has fallen into the weir."
Thomasin took the child and ran. When she came to the
covered car, the horse, though fresh from the stable, was
standing perfectly still, as if conscious of misfortune. She
saw for the first time whose it was. She nearly fainted, and
would have been unable to proceed another step but that
the necessity of preserving the little girl from harm nerved
her to an amazing self-control. In this agony of suspense
she entered the house, put the baby in a place of safety, woke
the lad and the female domestic, and ran out to give the
alarm at the nearest cottage.
Diggory, having returned to the brink of the pool, ob-
served that the small upper hatches or floats were with-
drawn. He found one of these lying upon the grass, and
taking it under one arm, and with his lantern in his hand,
entered at the bottom of the pool as Clym had done. As
soon as he began to be in deep water he flung himself across
the hatch; thus supported he was able to keep afloat as
long as he chose, holding the lantern aloft with his disen-
gaged hand. Propelled by his feet he steered round and
round the pool, ascending each time by one of the back
streams and descending in the middle of the current.
At first he could see nothing. Then amidst the glistening
of the whirlpools and the white clots of foam he distin-
guished a woman's bonnet floating alone. His search was
now under the left wall when something came to the sur-
face almost close beside him. It was not, as he had ex-
pected, a woman, but a man. The reddleman put the ring
of the lantern between his teeth, seized the floating man
by the collar, and, holding on to the hatch with his remain-
ing arm, struck out into the strongest race, by which the
unconscious man, the hatch, and himself were carried down
the stream. As soon as Venn found his feet dragging over
the pebbles of the shallower part below he secured his foot-
ing and waded towards the brink. There, where the water
stood at about the height of his waist, he flung away the
hatch, and attempted to drag forth the man. This was a
matter of great difficulty, and he found as the reason that
 THE DISCOVERY 377

the legs of the unfortunate stranger were tightly embraced

by the arms of another man, who had hitherto been entirely
beneath the surface.
At this moment his heart bounded to hear footsteps run-
ning towards him, and two men, roused by Thomasin, ap-
peared at the brink above. They ran to where Venn was,
and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned per-
sons, separating them, and laying them out upon the grass.
Venn turned the light upon their faces. The one who had
been uppermost was Yeobright; he who had been completely
submerged was Wilde ve.
"Now we must search the hole again," said Venn. "A
woman is in there somewhere. Get a pole."
One of the men went to the foot-bridge and tore off the
handrail. The reddleman and the two others then entered
the water together from below as before, and with their
united force probed the pool forwards to where it sloped
down to its central depth. Venn was not mistaken in sup-
posing that any person who had sunk for the last time would
be washed down to this point, for when they had examined
to about half-way across, something impeded their thrust.
"Pull it forward," said Venn, and they raked it in with
the pole till it was close to their feet.
Venn vanished under the stream, and came up with an
armful of wet drapery enclosing a woman's cold form, which
was all that remained of the desperate Eustacia.
When they reached the bank there stood Thomasin in a
stress of grief, bending over the two unconscious ones who
already lay there. The horse and car were brought to the
nearest point in the road, and it was the work of a few min-
utes only to place the three in the vehicle. Venn led on the
horse, supporting Thomasin upon his arm, and the two men
followed, till they reached the inn.
The woman who had been shaken out of her sleep by
Thomasin had hastily dressed herself and lighted a fire, the
other servant being left to snore on in peace at the back
of the house. The insensible forms of Eustacia, Clym, and
Wilde ve were then brought in and laid on the carpet, with
their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as
378 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
could be thought of were adopted at once, the stableman
being in the meantime sent for a doctor. But there seemed
to be not a whiff of life left in either of the bodies. Then
Thomasin, whose stupor of grief had been thrust off awhile
by frantic action, applied a bottle of hartshorn to Clym's
nostrils, having tried it in vain upon the other two. He
sighed.
"Clym's alive!" she exclaimed.
He soon breathed distinctly, and again and again did
she attempt to revive her husband by the same means; but
Wildeve gave no sign. There was too much reason to think
that he and Eustacia both were forever beyond the reach
of stimulating perfumes. Their exertions did not relax till
the doctor arrived when, one by one, the senseless three
were taken upstairs and put into warm beds.
Venn soon felt himself relieved from further attendance,
and went to the door, scarcely able yet to realize the strange
catastrophe that had befallen the family in which he took
so great an interest. Thomasin surely would be broken
down by the sudden and overwhelming nature of this event.
No firm and sensible Mrs. Yeobright lived now to support
the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an unim-
passioned spectator might think of her loss of such a hus-
band as Wildeve, there could be no doubt that for the mo-
ment 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
 THE DISCOVERY 379

hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom

was Oily 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."
"0, '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 leg-
gings 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 cir-
cle, 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 occupa-
tion 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
380 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
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 bank-notes/' 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 forever,
there was no reason why he should not remain. So he re*
tired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit,
and there he continued, watching the steam from the double
row ofbank-notes 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. Fresently 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. 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 Charley's only utterance was a feeble, indis-
told.
tinct sound. He
stood quite still; then he burst out spas-
modically, "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 com-
ing from the tomb*
 THE DISCOVERY 381

It was Yeobright. Neither Venn nor Charley spoke, and

Clym continued: "You shall see her. There will he 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 Yeo-
bright 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 bed-
side and folded back the ^heet.
They stood silently looking upon Eustacia, who, as she
lay there still in death, eclipsed all her loving phases. Pallor
did not include all the quality of her complexion, which
seemed more than whiteness; it was almost light. The ex-
pression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant, as if a
sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speak-
ing. Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary
transition between fervor 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 sym-
pathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that
he was born for a higher destiny than this. The only sign
upon him c his recent struggle for life was in his finger-
tips, which were worn and scarified in his dying endeavors
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 on when they had left the room
1
/"

and stood upon the landing that the true state of his mind
382 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
was apparent. Here be said, with a wild smile, inclining his
head towards the chamber in which Eustacia lay rr "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 acquain-
tance 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!"
BOOK SIXTH
AFTERCOURSES
 CHAPTER ,

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 origr
inal 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
meagerness, 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 bereave-
ment dulled, to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet, ir-
rationally 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 mis-
givings 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.
385
386 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Could Thomasin's mournfulness now and Eustaeia's se-
renity 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 somber atmosphere was light itself.
The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and
soothed her; the autumn arrived, and she began to be com-
forted, 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 adminis-
tration 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 ap-
pearance; 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 borne 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.
 AFTERCOURSES 387

But that lie 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 endeavor to con-
struct 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 ex-
cuses 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 givings 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 plow, while the works of these remained.
Yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different
fates awaiting their works. It reminded him that unfore-
seen factors operate in the production of immortality.
Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame
robins, and sparkling starlight. The year previous Thoma-
sin had hardly been conscious of the season's advance; this
year she laid her heart open to external influences of every
kind. The life of this sweet cousin, her baby, and her ser-
vants, came to Clym's senses only in the form of sounds
through a wood partition as he sat over books of exception-
ally large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed
388 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
to these slight noises from the other part of the house that
he almost could witness the scenes they signified. Afaint
beat of half-seconds conjured up Thomasin rocking the
cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the
baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones
raised the picture of Humphrey's, Fairway's, or Sam's heavy
feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen; a light boy-
ish step, and a gay tune in a high key, betokened a visit
from Grandfer Cantle; a sudden break-off in the Grandfer's
utterances implied the application to his lips of a mug of
small beer; a bustling and slamming of doors meant start-
ing to go to market; for Thomasin, in spite of her added
scope for gentility, led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end
that she might save every possible pound for her little
daughter.
One summer day Clym was in the garden, immediately
outside the parlor- window, which was, as usual, open. He
was looking at the pot-flowers on the sill; they had been
revived and restored by Thomasin to the state in which his
mother had left them. He heard a slight scream from
Thomasin, who was sitting inside the room.
"0, how you frightened me!" she said to some one who
had entered. "I thought you were the ghost of yourself."
Clym was curious enough to advance a little further and
look in at the window. To his astonishment there stood
within the room Diggory Venn, no longer a reddleman, but
exhibiting the strangely altered hues of an ordinary Chris-
tian countenance, white shirt-front, light flowered waist-
coat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat. Noth-
ing in this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its
great difference from what he had formerly been. Red,
and all approach to red, was carefully excluded from every
article of clothes upon him; for what is there that persons
just out of harness dread so much as reminders of the trade
which has enriched them?
Yeobright went round to the door and entered.
"I was so alarmed!" said Thomasin, smiling from one
to the other. "I couldn't believe that he had got white of
his own accord ! It seemed supernatural."
 —

AFTERCOURSES 389

"I gave up dealing in reddle last Christmas," said Venn.

"It was a profitable trade, and I found that by that time I
had made enough to take the dairy of fifty cows that my
father had in his lifetime. I always thought of getting to
that place again if I changed at all; and now I am there."
"How did you manage to become white, Diggory?"
Thomasin asked.
"I turned so by degrees, ma'am."
"You look much better than ever you did before."
Venn appeared confused; and Thomasin, seeing how
inadvertently she had spoken to a man who might possibly
have tender feelings for her still, blushed a little. Clym
saw nothing of this, and added good-humoredly
"What shall we have to frighten Thomasin' s baby with,
now you have become a human being again?"
"Sit down, Diggory," said Thomasin, "and stay to tea."
Venn moved as if he would retire to the kitchen, when
Thomasin said with pleasant pertness as she went on with
some sewing, "Of course you must sit down here. And
where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, Mr. Venn?"
—
"At Stickleford about two miles to the right of Alder-
worth, ma'am, where the meads begin. I have thought that
if Mr. Yeobright would like to pay me a visit sometimes he

shouldn't stay away for want of asking. I'll not bide to tea
this afternoon, thank'ee, for I've got something on hand
that must be settled. 'Tis Maypole-day to-morrow, and the
Shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your neighbors
here to have a pole just outside your palings in the heath, as
it is a nice green place." Venn waved his elbow towards
the patch in front of the house. "I have been talking to
Fairway about it," he continued, "and I said to him that
before we put up the pole it would be as well to ask Mrs.
Wildeve."
"I can say nothing against it," she answered. "Our prop-
erty does not reach an inch further than the white palings."
"But you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy
round a stick, under your very nose?"
"I shall have no objection at all."
Venn soon after went away, and in the evening Yeobright
390 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
strolled as far as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely May
sunset, and the birch which grew on this margin of the
trees
vast Egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves, delicate
as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as amber. Beside
Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the
road, and here were now collected all the young people
from within a radius of a couple of miles. The pole lay with
one end supported on a trestle, and women were engaged
in wreathing it from the top downwards with wild-flowers.
The instincts of merry England lingered on here with ex-
ceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition
has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on
Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish ham-
lets are pagan still; in these spots homage to nature, self-
adoration, frantic gayeties, fragments of Teutonic rites to
divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or
other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.
Yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went
home again. The next lnorning, when Thomasin withdrew
the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the May-
pole in the middle of the green, its top cutting into the sky.
It had sprung up in the night, or rather early morning, like
Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get a bet-
ter view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. The
sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the
surrounding air, which, being free from every taint, con-
ducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received
from the spire of blossom in its midst. At the top of the
pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath
these came a milk-white zone of May bloom; then a zone of
bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-
robins, daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached.
Thomasin noticed all these, and was delighted that the
May-revel was to be so near.
When afternoon came people began to gather on the green,
and Yeobright 'was interested enough to look out upon them
from the open window of his room. Soon after this Thoma-
sin walked out from the door immediately below and turned
her eyes up to her cousin's face. She was dressed more
 AFTERCOURSES >, 391

gayly than Yeobright had ever seen her dress since the time
of Wildeve's death, eighteen months before; since the day
of her marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such
advantage.
4
*
How pretty you look to-day, Thomasin " he said. ?Is
!

it because of the Maypole?"

"Not altogether." And then she blushed and dropped
her eyes, which he did not specially observe, though her
manner seemed to him to be rather peculiar, considering
that she was only addressing himself. Could it be possible
that she had put on her summer clothes to please him?
He recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last
lew weeks, when they had often been working together in
the garden, just as they had formerly done when they were
boy and girl under his mother's eye. What if her interest
in him were not so entirely that of a relative as it had for-
merly been? To Yeobright any possibility of this sort was
a serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought
of it. Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been
etilled during Eustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave
with her. His passion for her had occurred too far on in his
manhood to leave fuel enough on hand for another fire of
that sort, as may happen with more boyish loves. Even
supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be
a plant of slow and labored growth, and in the end only small
and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.
fie was by this new complexity that when
so distressed
the enthusiastic brass band arrived and struck up, which it
did aoout five o'clock, with apparently wind enough among
its members to blow down his house, he withdrew from his
rooms by the back door, went- down the garden, through
the gate m the hedge, and away cut of sight. He could
not bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment to-day,
though he had tried hard.
Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came
back by the same path it was dusk, and the dews were coat-
ing every green thing. The boisterous music had ceased;
but, entering the premises as he did from behind, he could
not see if the Mj*y party had all gone till he had passed
 "

392 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door.
Thomasin was standing within the porch alone.
She looked at him reproachfully. "You went away just
when it began, Clym," she said.
"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with
them, of course?"
"No, I did not."
"You appeared to be dressed on purpose."
"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people were
there. One is there now."
Yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch
beyond the paling, and near the black form of the Maypole
he discerned a shadowy figure, sauntering idly up and down,
"Who is it?" he said.
"Mr. Venn," said Thomasin.
"You might have asked him to come in, I think, Tamsie.
He has been very kind to you first and last."
"I will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse, went
through the wicket to where Venn stood under the May-
pole.
"It is Mr. Venn, think?" she inquired.
I
Venn started as if —
he had not seen her artful man that
—
he was and said, "Yes."
"Will you come in?"
"I am afraid that I —
"I have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the
very best of the girls for your partners. Is it that you won't
come in because you wish to stand here, and think over
the past hours of enjoyment?"
"Well, that's partly it," said Mr. Venn, with ostentatious
sentiment. "But the main reason why I am biding here
like this is that I want to wait till the moon rises."
"To see how pretty the Maypole looks in the moonlight?"
"No. To look for a glove that was dropped by one of the
maidens."
Thomasin was speechless with surprise. That a man who
had to walk some four or five miles to his home should wait
here for such a reason pointed to only one conclusion: the
man must be amazingly interested in that glove's owner.
 AFTERCOURSES 393

"'Were you dancing with her, Diggory?" she isked, in a

voice which revealed that he had made himself considerably
more interesting to her by this disclosure.
"No," he sighed.
"And you not come in, then?"
will
"Not to-night, thank you, ma'am."
"Shall I lend you a lantern to look for the young person's
glove, Mr. Venn?"
"0 no; not necessary, Mrs. Wildeve, thank you.
it is

The moon few minutes."

will rise in a
Thomasin went back to the porch. "Is he coming in?"
said Clym, who had been waiting where she had left him.
"He would rather not to-night," she said, and then passed
by him into the house; whereupon Clym too retired to his
own rooms.
When Clym was gone Thomasin crept upstairs in the
dark, and, just listening by the cot, to assure herself that
the child was asleep, she went to the window, gently lifted
the corner of the white curtain, and looked out. Venn was
still there. She watched the growth of the faint radiance
appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, till presently the
edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley with
light. Diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he
was moving about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning
the grass for the precious missing article, walking in zigzags
right and left till he should have passed over every foot of
the ground.
"How very ridiculous!" Thomasin murmured to her-
self, in a tone which was intended to be satirical "To think
that a man should be so silly as to go moonin fe ^bout like
that for a girl's glove! A respectable dairyman, too, and
a man of money as he is now. What a pity !"
At last Venn appeared to find it; whereupon he stood
up and raised it to his lips. Then placing it in his breast-
—
pocket the nearest receptacle to a man's heart permitted
—
by the modern raiment he ascended the valley in a mathe-
matically direct line towards his distant home in the mead-
ows.
394 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

CHAPTER II

THOMASIN WALKS IN A GREEN PLACE BY THE

ROMAN ROAD
Clym saw little of Thomasin for several days aiter this*
and when they met she was more silent than usual. At
length he asked her what she was thinking of s^ ^ntently.
"I am thoroughly perplexed/' she said candidly. "I can-
not for my life think who it is that Diggory Venn is so much
in love with. None of the girls at the Maypole were good
enough for him, and yet she must have been there."
Clym tried to imagine Venn's choice for a moment; but
ceasing to be interested in the question, he went on again
with his gardening.
No up of the mystery was granted her for some
clearing
time. But one afternoon Thomasin was upstairs getting
ready for a walk, when she had occasion to come to the land-
ing and call "Rachel." Rachel was a girl about thirteen,
who carried the baby out for airings; and she came upstairs
at the call.

"Have you seen one of my last new gloves about the

house, Rachel?" inquired Thomasin. "It is the fellow to
this one."
Rachel did not reply.
"Why don't you answer?" said her mistress.
"I think it is lost, ma'am."
"Lost? Who lost it? I have never worn them but
once."
Rachel appeared as one dreadfully troubled, and at last
began to cry. "Please, ma'am, on the day of the Maypole
I had none to wear, and I seed yours on the table, and I
thought I would borrow 'em. I did not mean to hurt 'em
at all, but one of them got lost. Somebody gave me some
money to buy another pair for you. hut I have not been
able to go anywhere to get 'em."
"Who's somebody?"
"Mr. Venn."
 aFTERCOURSES 395

"Did he know it was my glove?"

"Yes. I told him."
Thomasin was so surprised by the explanation that she
quite forgot to lecture the girl, who glided silently away.
Thomasin did not move further than to turn her eyes upon
the grass-plat where the Maypole had stood. She remained
thinking, then said to herself that she would not go out
that afternoon, but would work hard at the baby's unfin-
ished lovely plaid frock, cut on the cross in the newest fash-
ion. How she managed to work hard, and yet do no more
than she had done at the end of two hours, would have been
a mystery to any one not aware that the recent incident was
of a kind likely to divert her industry from a manual to a
mental channel.
Next day she went her ways as usual, and continued her
custom of walking in the heath with no other companion
than little Eustacia, now of the age when it is a matter of
doubt with such characters whether they are intended to
walk through the world on their hands or on their feet; so
that they get into painful complications by trying both. It
was very pleasant to Thomasin, when she had carried the
child to some lonely place, to give her a little private prac-
ticeon the green turf and shepherd's-thyme, which formed
a soft mat to fall headlong upon when equilibrium was
lost.
Once, when engaged in this system of training, and stoop-
ing to remove bits of stick, fern-stalks, and other such frag-
ments from the child's path, that the journey might not be
brought to an untimely end by some insuperable barrier a
quarter of an inch high, she was alarmed by the discovering
that a man on horseback was almost close beside her, the
soft natural carpet having muffled the horse's tread. The
rider, who was Venn, waved his hat in the air and bowed
g ill an Vr.

"Diggory, give me my glove," said Thomasin, #iiose

manner it was under any circumstances to plunge into the
midst of a subject which engrossed her.
Venn immediately dismounted, put his hand in his breast-
pocket, and handed the glove.
 396 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
" Thank you. It was very good of you to take care of it."
"It is very good of you to say so."
"0 no. I was quite glad to find you had it. Everybody
gets so indifferent that I was surprised to know you thought
of me."
"If you had remembered what I was once you wouldn't
have been surprised."
X'Ah, no," she said quickly. "But men of your character
/are mostly so independent."
/ "What is my character?" he asked.
|
"I don't exactly know," said Thomasin simply, "except
it is to cover up your feelings under a practical manner,
and only to show them when you are alone."
! "Ah, how do you know that?" said Venn strategically.
j
"Because," said she, stopping to put the little girl, who
\ had managed to get herself upside down, right end up again,
\ "because I do."
V "You musn't judge by folks in general," said Venn.
Still I don't know much what feelings are now-a-days.
I have got so mixed up with business of one sort and t'other
that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapor like. Yes,
I am given up body and soul to the making of money.
Money is all my dream."
"0 Diggory, how wicked!" said Thomasin reproachfully,
and looking at him in exact balance between taking his
words seriously and judging them as said to tease her.
"Yes, 'tis rather a rum course," said Venn, in the bland
tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer
overcome.
"You, who used to be so nice!"
"Well, that's an argument I rather like, because what a
man has once been he may be again." Thomasin blushed.
"Except that it is rather harder now," Venn continued.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because you be richer than you were at that time."
—
"0 no not much. I have made it nearly all over to
the baby, as it was my duty to do, except just enough to
live on."
"I am rather glad of that," said Venn softly, and re-
 AFTERCOURSES 397

garding her from the corner of his eye, "for it makes it

easier for us to be friendly."
Thomasin blushed again, and, when a few more words
had been said of a not unpleasing kind, Venn mounted his
horse and rode on.
This conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath
near the old Roman road, a place much frequented by
Thomasin. And it might have been observed that she did
not in future walk that way less often from having met
Venn there now. Whether or not Venn abstained from
riding thither because he had met Thomasin in the same
place might easily have been guessed from her proceedings
about two months later in the same year.

CHAPTER III

THE SERIOUS DISCOURSE OF CLYM WITH HIS

COUSIN
Throughout this period Yeobright had more or less pon-
dered on his duty to his cousin Thomasin. He could aot
help feeling that it would be a pitiful waste of sweet material
if the tender-natured thing should be -doomed from this early

stage of her life onwards to dribble away her winsome

qualities on lonely gorse and fern. But he felt this as an
economist merely, and not as a lover. His passion for
Eustacia had been a sort of conserve of his whole life, and
he had nothing more of that supreme quality left to bestow.
So far the obvious thing was not to entertain any idea of
marriage with Thomasin, even to oblige her.
But this was not all. Years ago there had been in his
mother's mind a great fancy about Thomasin and himself.
It had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had al-
ways been a favorite dream. That they should be man
and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither were en^
dangered thereby, was the fancy in question. So that what
course save one was there now left for any son who rev-
erenced his mother's memory as Yeobright did? It is an
unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents, which
398 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
might have been dispersed by half an hour's conversation
during their lives, becomes sublimated by their deaths into
a fiat the most absolute, with such results to conscientious
children as those parents, had they lived, would have been
the first to decry.
Had only Yeobright's own future been involved he would
have proposed to Thomasin with a ready heart. He had
nothing to lose by carrying out a dead mother's hope. But
he dreaded to contemplate Thomasin wedded to the mere
corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be. He had
but three activities alive in him. One was his almost daily
walk to the little graveyard wherein his mother lay; an-
other, his just as frequent visits by night to the more distant
enclosure which numbered his Eustacia among its dead;
the third was self-preparation for a vocation which alone
—
seemed likely to satisfy his cravings that of an itinerant
preacher of the eleventh commandment. It was difficult
to believe that Thomasin would be cheered by a husband
with such tendencies as these.
Yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for her-
self. It was even with a pleasant sense of doing his duty
that he went downstairs to her one evening for this pur-
pose, when the sun was sending up the valley the same long
shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times
out of number while his mother lived.
Thomasin was not in her room, and he found her in the
front garden. "I have long been wanting, Thomasin," he
began, "to say something about a matter that concerns
both our futures."
"And you are going to say it now? " she remarked quickly,
coloring as she met his gaze. "Do stop a minute, Clym, and
let me speak first, for oddly enough, I have been wanting to
say something to you."
"By all means say on, Tamsie."
"I suppose nobody can overhear us?" she went on, cast-
ing her eyes around and lowering her voice. "Well, first
—
you will promise me this that you won't be angry and
call me anything harsh if you disagree with what I pro-
pose?"
 " "

AFTERCOURSES 399

Yeobright promised, and she continued: "What I want

is your advice, for you are my relation I mean, a sort of —
—
guardian to me aren't you, Clym?"
"Well, yes, I suppose I am; a sort of guardian. In fact,
I am, of course/' he said, altogether perplexed as to her drift.
"I am thinking of marrying, " she then observed blandly.
"But I shall not marry unless you assure me that you arp-
prove of such a step. Why don't you speak?"
"I was taken rather by surprise. But, nevertheless, I am
very glad to hear such news. I shall approve, of course,
dear Tamsie. Who can it be? I am quite at a loss to guess.
—
No, I am not 'tis the old doctor! not that I mean to —
call him old, for he is not very old after all. Ah I noticed —
when he attended you last time!"
"No, no," she said hastily. "Tis Mr. Venn."
Clym's face suddenly became grave.
"There, now, you don't like him, and I wish I hadn't
mentioned him!" she exclaimed almost petulantly. "And
I shouldn't have done it, either, only he keeps on bother-
ing me so till I don't know what to do !

Clym looked out of window. "I like Venn well enough,"

he answered at last. "He is a very honest and at the same
time astute man. He is clever too, as is proved by his hav-
ing got you to favor him. But really, Thomasin, he is not
"
quite
"Gentleman enough for me? That is just wha.t I feel.
I am sorry now
that I asked you, and I won't think any
more of him. At the same time I must marry him if I marry
—
anybody that I will say !

"I don't see that," said Clym, carefully concealing every

clue to his own interrupted intention, which she plainly had
not guessed. "You might marry a professional man, or
somebody of that sort, by going into the town to live and
forming acquaintances there."
—
"I am not fit for town life so very rural and silly as I
always have been. Do not you yourself notice my countri-
fied ways?"
"Well, when I came home from Paris I did, a little; but
I don't now."
 "

400 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

" That's because you have got countrified too. 0, I
couldn't live in a street for the world Egdon is a ridiculous
!

old place; but I have got used to it, and I couldn't be happy
anywhere else at all."
"Neither could I," said Clym.
"Then how could you say that I should marry some
town man? I am sure, say what you will, that I must marry
Diggory, if I marry at all. He has been kinder to me than
anybody else, and has helped me in many ways that I don't
know of " Thomasin almost pouted now.
!

"Yes, he has," said Clym in a neutral tone. "Well, I

wish with all my heart that I could say, marry him. But I
cannot forget what my mother thought on that matter,
and it goes rather against me not to respect her opinion.
There is too much reason why we should do the little we
can to respect it now."
"Very well, then," sighed Thomasin. "I will say no
more."
"But you are not bound to obey my wishes. I merely
say what I think."
"0 no—I don't want to be rebellious in that way," she
said sadly. "I had no business to think of him I ought —
to have thought of my family. What dreadfully bad im-
pulses there are in me " Her lip trembled, and she turned
!

away to hide a tear.

Clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable
,

taste, was in a measure relieved to find that at any rate

the marriage question in relation to himself was shelved.
Through several succeeding days he saw her at different
times from the window of his room moping disconsolately
about the garden. He was half angry with her for choos-
ing Venn; then he was grieved at having put himself in
the way of Venn's happiness, who was, after all, as honest
and persevering a young fellow as any on Egdon, since he
had turned over a new leaf. In short, Clym did not know
what to do.
When next they met she said abruptly, "He is much more
respectable now than he was then
!

"Who? —
yes Diggory Venn."
 AFTERCOURSES 401

"Aunt only objected because he was a reddleman."

"Well, Thomasin, perhaps I don't know all the particulars
of my mother's wish. So you had better use your own dis-
cretion."
"You will always feel that I slighted your mother's
memory."
"No, I will not. I shall think you are convinced that,
had she seen Diggory in his present position, she would
have considered him a fitting husband for you. Now, that's
my real feeling. Don't consult me any more, but do as
you like, Thomasin. I shall be content."
It is to be supposed that Thomasin was convinced; for
a few days after this, when Clym strayed into a part of the
heath that he had not lately visited, Humphrey, who was
at work there, said to him, "I am glad to see that Mrs.
Wildeve and Venn have made it up again, seemingly."
"Have they?" said Clym abstractedly.
"Yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her when-
ever she walks out on fine days with the chiel. But, Mr.
l^obright, I can't help feeling that your cousin ought to
have married you. 'Tis a pity to make two chimley-corners
where there need be only one. You could get her away
from him now, 'tis my belief, if you were only to set about
it."
"How can I have the conscience to marry after having
driven two women to their deaths? Don't think such a.
thing, Humphrey. After my experience I should consider
ittoo much of a burlesque to go to church and take a wife.
In the words of Job, 'I have made a covenant with mine
eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?'
"
"No, Mr. Clym, don't fancy that about driving two*
women to their deaths. You shouldn't say it." )
-

"Well, we'll leave that out," said Yeobright. "But any-

how the times have set a mark upon me which wouldn't
look well in a love-making scene. I have two ideas in my
head, and no others. I azrn*ok*g to keep a night-school;
and I am going to turn preacher 7\ What have you got to
say to that, Humphrey?"*""**
"I'll come and hear ye with all my heart."
402 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
" Thanks. 'Tis all I wish."
As Clym descended into the valley Thomasin came down
by the other path, and met him at the gate. " What do you
think I have to tell you, Clym?" she said, looking archly
over her shoulder at him.
"I can guess," he replied.
She scrutinized his face. "Yes, you guess right. T t is
going to be after all. He thinks I may as well make up my
mind, and I have got to think so too. It is to be on the
twenty-fifth of next month, if you don't object."
"Do what you think right, dear. I am only too glad that
you see your way clear to happiness again. My sex owes
you every amends for the treatment you received in days
gone by."

CHAPTER IV

CHEERFULNESS AGAIN ASSERTS ITSELF AT BLOOMS-

END, AND CLYM FINDS HIS VOCATION

Anybody w ho had passed through Blooms-End about

T

eleven o'clock on the morning fixed for the w edding would

T

have found that, while Yeobright's house was comparatively

quiet, sounds denoting great activity came from the dwell-
ing of his nearest neighbor, Timothy Fairway. It was
chiefly a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither
over the sanded floor within. One man only was visible
outside, and he seemed to be later at an appointment than
he had intended to be, for he hastened up to the door, lifted
the latch, and walked in without ceremony.
The scene within was not quite the customary one. Stand-
ing about the room was the little knot of men who formed
the chief part of the Egdon coterie, there being present
Fairway himself, Grandfer Cantle, Humphrey, Christian,
and one or two turf-cutters. It was a warm day, and the
men were as a matter of course in their shirt-sleeves, ex-
cept Christian, who had always a nervous fear of parting
with a sc^ap of his clothing when in anybody's house but
 AFTERCOURSES 403

his own. Across the stout oak table in the middle of the
room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which Grandfer
Cantle held down on one side, and Humphrey on the other,
while Fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump, his
face being damp and creased with the effort of the labor.
" Waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the new-comer.
"Yes, Sam," said Grandfer Cantle, as a man too busy
to waste words. "Shall I stretch this corner a shade tighter,
Timothy?"
Fairway replied, and the waxing went on with unabated
vigor. "Tis going to be a good bed, by the look o't," con-
tinued Sam, after an interval of silence. "Who may it be
for?"
"'Tis a present for the new folks that's going to set up
housekeeping," said Christian, who stood helpless and
overcome by the majesty of the proceedings.
"Ah, to be sure; and a valuable one, 'a b'lieve."
"Beds be dear to fokes that don't keep geese, bain't they,
Mister Fairway?" said Christian, as to an omniscient be-
ing.
"Yes," said the furze-dealer, standing up, giving his
forehead a thorough mopping, and handing the beeswax
to Humphrey, who succeeded at the rubbing forthwith.
"Not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well to
show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing vagary
of their lives. I set up both my own daughters in one when
they was married, and there have been feathers enough for
another in the house the last twelve months. Now then,
neighbors, I think we have laid on enough wax. Grandfer
Cantle, you turn the tick the right way outwards, and then
I'll begin to shake in the feathers."

When the bed was in proper trim Fairway and Christian

brought forward vast paper bags, stuffed to the full, but
light as balloons, and began to turn the contents of each
into the receptacle just prepared. As bag after bag was
emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers floated about the
room in increasing quantity till, through a mishap of Chris-
tian's, who shook the contents of one bag outside the tick,
the atmosphere of the room became dense with gigantic
 "

404 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

flakes, which descended upon the workers like a windless
snowstorm.
"I never saw such a clumsy chap as you, Christian/ said 7

Grandfer Cantle severely. "You might have been the son

of a man that's never been outside Blooms-End in his life
for all the wit you have. Really all the soldiering and smart-
ness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing
in forming the nater of the son. As far as that chiel Chris-
tian is concerned I might as well have stayed at home and
seed nothing, like all the rest of ye here. Though, as far
as myself is concerned, a dashing spirit has counted for
sommat, to be sure !

"Don't ye let me down so, father; I feel no bigger than

a ninepin after it. I've made but a bruckle 1 hit, I'm afeard."
"Come, come. Never pitch yerself in such a low key as
that, Christian; you should try more," said Fairway.
"Yes, you should try more," echoed the Grandfer with
insistence, as if he had been the first to make the sugges-
tion. "In common conscience every man ought either to
,
marry or go for a soldier. 'Tis a scandal to the nation to
do neither one nor t'other. I did both, thank God Neither !

—
to raise men nor to lay 'em low that shows a poor do-
nothing spirit indeed."
"I never had the nerve to stand fire," faltered Chris-
tian. "But as to marrying, I own I've asked here and
there, though without much fruit from it. Yes, there's
some house or other that might have had a man for a master
— —
such as he is that's now ruled by a woman alone. Still
it might have been awkward if I had found her; for, d'ye
see, neighbors, there'd have been nobody left at home to
keep down father's spirits to the decent pitch that becomes
& old man."
"And you've your work cut out to do that, my son,"
•said Grandfer Cantle smartly. "I wish that the dread of
infirmities was not so strong in me! I'd start the very —
first thing to-morrow to see the world over again! But
seventy-one, though nothing at home, is a high figure for
.a rover. . Ay, seventy-one last Candlemas-day. Gad,
. .

1 Uncertain, shaky.
 AFTERCOURSES 405

I'd sooner have it in guineas than in years!" and the old

man sighed.
"Don't you be mournful, Grandfer," said Fairway.
"Empt some more feathers into the bed-tick, and keep up
yer heart. Though rather lean in the stalks you be a green-
leaved old man There's time enough left to ye yet to
still.

fillwhole chronicles."
—
" Begad, 111 go to 'em, Timothy to the married pair!"
said Grandfer Cantle in an encouraged voice, and starting
round briskly. "I'll go to 'em to-night and sing a wedding-
song, hey? 'Tis like me to do so, you know; and they'd
see it as such. My 'Down in Cupid's Gardens' was well
liked in four; still, I've got others as good, and even better*
What do you say to my
1
She cal-led to her love
From the lat-tice a-bove,
"O, come in from the fog-gy fog-gy dew."'

'Twould please 'em well at such a time! Really, now 1

come to think of it, I haven't turned my tongue in my head
to the shape of a real good song since Old Midsummer night,
when we had the Barley Mow' at the Woman; and 'tis
l

a pity to neglect your strong point where there's few that

have the compass for such things!"
"So 'tis, so 'tis," said Fairway. "Now gie the bed a
shake down. We've put in seventy pound of best feathers,
and I think that's as many as the tick will fairly hold. A
bit and a drap wouldn't be amiss now, I reckon. Christian,
maul down the vituals from the corner-cupboard if eanst
reach, man, and I'll draw a drap o' sommat to wet it with."
They sat down to a lunch in the midst of their work,
feathers around, above, and below them; the original owners
of which occasionally came to the open door and cackled
begrudgingly at sight of such a quantity of their old clothes.
"Upon my soul I shall be chokt," said Fairway when,
having extracted a feather from his mouth, he found several
others floating on the mug as it was handed round.
"I've swallered several; and one had a tolerable quill/*
said Sam placidly from the corner.
 "

406 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

— —
" Hullo what's that wheels I hear coming?" Grandfer
Cantle exclaimed, jumping up and hastening to the door.
"Why, 'tis they back again: I didn't expect 'em yet this
half-hour. To be sure, how quick marrying can be done
when you are in the mind for't !

"0 yes, it can soon be done," said Fairway, as if some-

thing should be added to make the statement complete.
He arose and followed the Grandfer, and the rest also
went to the door. In a moment an open fly was driven past,
in which sat Venn and Krs. Venn, Yeobright, and a grand
relative of Venn's who had come from Budmouth for the
occasion. The fly had been hired at the nearest town, re-
gardless of distance and cost, there being nothing on Eg-
don Heath, in Venn's opinion, dignified enough for such
an event when such a woman as Thomasin was the bride;
and the church was too remote for a walking bridal-party.
As the fly passed the group which had run out from the
homestead they shouted " Hurrah!" and waved their hands;
feathers and down from their hair, their sleeves,
floating
and the garments at every motion, and Grand-
folds of their
fer Cantle's seals dancing merrily in the sunlight as he twirled
himself about. The driver of the fly turned a supercilious
gaze upon them; he even treated the wedded pair them-
selves with something of condescension; for in what other
state than heathen could people, rich or poor, exist who
were doomed to abide in such a world's end as Egdon?
Thomasin showed no such superiority to the group at the
door, fluttering her hand as quickly as a bird's wing towards
them, and asking Diggory, with tears in her eyes, if they
ought not to alight and speak to these kind neighbors. Venn,
however, suggested that, as they were all coming to the
house in the evening, this was hardly necessary.
After this excitement the saluting party returned to their
occupation, and the stuffing and sewing was soon afterwards
finished, when Fairway harnessed a horse, wrapped up the
cumbrous present, and drove off with it in the cart to Venn's
house at Stickleford.

Yeobright, having filled the office at the wedding-service

.which naturally fell to his hands, and afterwords returned
 AFTERCOURSES 407

to the house with the husband and wife, was indisposed to

take part in the feasting and dancing that wound up the
evening. Thomasin was disappointed.
"I wish I could be there without dashing your spirits/'
he said. "But I might be too much like the skull at the
'
banquet.'
"No, no."
"Well, dear, apart from that, if you would excuse me, I
should be glad. I know it seems unkind; but, dear Thom-
asin, I fear I should not be happy in the company —
there,
that's the truth of it. I shall always be coming to see you
at your new home, you know, so that my absence now will
not much matter."
"Then I give in. Do whatever will be most comfortable
to yourself."
Clym retired to his lodging at the housetop much re-
lieved, and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting
down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to in-
itiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme that
had originally brought him hither, and that he had so long
kept in view under various modifications, and through evil
and good report. He had tested and weighed his convic-
tions again and again, and saw no reason to alter them,
though he had considerably lessened his plan. His eye-
sight, by long humoring in his native air, had grown stronger,
but not sufficiently strong to warrant his attempting his
extensive educational project. Yet he did not repine: there
was still more than enough of an unambitious sort to tax all
his energies and occupy all his hours.
Evening drew on, and sounds of life and movement in
the lower part of the domicile became more pronounced,
the gate in the palings clicking incessantly. The party was
to be an early one, and all the guests were assembled long
before it was dark. Yeobright went down the back stair-
case and into the heath by another path than that in front,
intending to walk in the open air till the party was over,
when he would return to wish Thomasin and her husband
good-bye as they departed. His steps were insensibly bent
towards Mistover by the path that he had followed on that
40S THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
terrible morning when he learnt the strange news from
Susan's boy.
He did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to
an eminence, whence he could see over the whole quarter
that had once been Eustacia's home. While he stood ob-
serving the darkening scene somebody came up. Clym,
seeing him but dimly, would have let him pass by silently,
had not the pedestrian, who was Charley, recognized the
yoUng man and spoken to him.
"Charley, I have not seen you for a length of time," said
Yeobright. "Do you often walk this way?"
"No," the lad replied. "I don't often come outside the
bank."
"You were not at the Maypole."
"No," said Charley, in the same listless tone. "I don't
care for that sort of thing now."
"You rather liked Miss Eustacia, didn't you?" Yeo-
bright gently asked. Eustacia had frequently told him of
Charley's romantic attachment.
"
"Yes, very much. Ah, I wish
"Yes?"
"I wish, Mr. Yeobright, you could give me something
—
to keep that once belonged to her if you don't mind."
"I shall be very happy to. It will give me very great
pleasure, Charley. Let me think what I have of hers that
you would like. But come with me to the house, and I'll
see."
They walked towards Blooms-End together. When they
reached the front it was dark, and the shutters were closed,
so that nothing of the interior could be seen.
"Come round this way," said Clym. "My entrance is at
the back for the present."
The two went round and ascended the crooked stair in
darkness till Clym's sitting-room on the upper floor was
reached, where he lit a candle, Charley entering gently be-
hind. Yeobright searched his des^k, and taking out a sheet
of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three undulating
locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like black
streams. From these he selected one, wrapped it up, and
 "

AFTERCOURSES 409

gave it to the lad, whose eyes had filled with tears. He

kissed the packet, put it and said in a voice
in his pocket,
of emotion, "O, Mr. Clym, how good you are to me!"
"I will go a little way with you," said Clym. And amid
the noise of merriment from below they descended. Their
path to the front led them close to a little side-window,
whence the rays of candles streamed across the shrubs. The
window, being screened from general observation by the
bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person in this
private nook could see all that was going on within the room
which contained the wedding-guests, except in so far as
vision was hindered by the green antiquity of the panes.
''Charley, what are they doing ?" said Clym. "My sight
is weaker again to-night, and the glass of this window is not
good."
Charley wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred
with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement. "Mr.
Venn is asking Christian Cantle to sing," he replied; "and
Christian is moving about in his chair as if he were much
frightened at the question, and his father has struck up a
stave instead of him."
"Yes, I can hear the old man's voice," said Clym. "So
there's to be no dancing, I suppose. And is Thomasin in
the room? I see something moving in front of the candles
that resembles her shape, I think."
"Yes. She do seem happy. She is red in the face, and
laughing at something Fairway has said to her. my !"
"What noise was that?" said Clym.
"Mr. Venn is so tall that he has knocked his head against
the beam in gieing a skip as he passed under. Mrs. Venn
hev run up quite frightened and now she's put her hand to
his head to a lump. And now they be all
feel if there's
laughing again as nothing had happened."
if

"Do any of them seem to care about my not being there?

Clym asked.
"No, not a bit in the world. Now they are all holding
up their glasses and drinking somebody's health."
"I wonder if it is mine?"
"No, 'tis Mr. and Mrs, Venn's, because he is making a
410 THE KETURN OF THE NATIVE
—
hearty sort of speech. There now Mrs. Venn has got up,
and is going away to put on her things, I think ."
"Well, they haven't concerned themselves about me, and
it is quite right they should not. It is all as it should be,
and Thomasin at least is happy. W^ will not stay any
longer now, as they will soon be coming out to go home."
He accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home,
and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an hour later,
found Venn and Thomasin ready to start, all the guests hav-
ing departed in his absence. The wedded pair took their
seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which Venn's head milker
and handy man had driven from Stickleford to fetch them
in; little Eustacia and the nurse were packed securely upon
the open flap behind; and the milker, on an ancient over-
stepping pony, whose shoes clashed like cymbals at every
tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of a body-servant of
the last century.
"Now we leave you in absolute possession of your own
house again," said Thomasin as she bent down to wish her
cousin good-night. "It will be rather lonely for you, Clym,
after the hubbub we have been making."
"0, that's no inconvenience," said Clym, smiling rather
sadly. And then the party drove off and vanished in the
night-shades, and Yeobright entered the house. The tick-
ing of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for
not a soul remained; Christian, who acted as cook, valet,
and gardener to Clym, sleeping at his father's house. Yeo-
bright sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in
thought a long time. His mother's old chair was opposite;
it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely

remembered it ever was hers. But to Clym she was almost

a presence there, now as always. Whatever she was in
other people's memories, in his she was the sublime saint
whose r*adiance even his tenderness for Eustacia could not
obscure. But his heart was heavy; that mother had not
crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the clay of the
gladness of his heart. And events had borne out the accu-
racy of her judgment, and proved the devoteciness of her
care. He should have heeded her for Eustacia's sake even
 — "

AFTERCOURSES 411

more than for his own. "It was all my fault ," he whispered.
"0, my mother, my mother! would to God that I could live
my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me !

On the Sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was

to be seen on Rainbarrow. From a distance there simply
appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top of
the tumulus, just as Eustacia had stood on that lonely sum-
mit some two years and a half before. But now it was fine
warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and
early afternoon instead of dull twilight. Those who as-
cended to the immediate neighborhood of the Barrow per-
ceived that the erect form in the center, piercing the sky,
was not really alone. Round him upon the slopes of the
Barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining
or sitting at their ease. They listened to the words of the
man in their midst, who was preaching, while they abstract-
edly pulled heather, stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down
the slope. This was the first of a series of moral lectures
or Sermons on the Mount, which were to be delivered from
the same place every Sunday afternoon as long as the fine
weather lasted.
The commanding elevation of Rainbarrow had been
chosen for two reasons: first, that it occupied a central po-
sition among the remote cottages around; secondly, that the
preacher thereon could be seen from all adjacent points as
soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him being thus a
convenient signal to those stragglers who wished to draw
near. The speaker was bareheaded, and the breeze at each
waft gently lifted and lowered his hair, somewhat too thin
for a man of his years, these still numbering less than thirty-
three. He wore a shade over his eyes, and his face was
pensive and lined; but, though these bodily features were
marked with decay there was no defect in the tones of his
voice, which were rich, musical, and stirring. He stated that
his discourses to people were to be sometimes secular, and
sometimes religious, but never dogmatic; and that his texts
would be taken from all kinds of books. This afternoon the
words were as follows:
 "

412 THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"'And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself
unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be
set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand.
Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray
thee say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on,
my mother: for I will not say thee nay.'
fact, found his vocation in the career
Yeobright had, in
of an itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally
unimpeachable subjects; and from this day he labored in-
cessantly in that speaking not only in simple language
office,

on Rainbarrow and in the hamlets round,but in a more

—
cultivated strain elsewhere from the steps and porticoes of
town-halls, from market-crosses, from conduits, on espla-
nades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges, in barns
and outhouses, and all other such places in the neighboring
Wessex towns and villages. He left alone creeds and sys-
tems of philosophy, finding enough and more than enough
to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions common
to all good men. Some believed him, and some believed
not; some said that his words were commonplace, others
complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others
again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take
to preaching who could not see to do anything else. But
everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his life
had become generally known.

The End
ar !

The Modern
Student's Library
NOVELS
AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
With an introduction by William Dean Howells
BUN Y AN: The Pilgrim's Progress
With an introduction by Samuel McChord Crothers
COOPER: The Spy
With an introduction by Tremaine McDowell, Associate Professor of
English, University of Minnesota
ELIOT: Adam Bede
With an introduction by Laura Johnson Wylie. formerly Professor of
English, Vassar College
FIELDING: The Adventures Joseph Andrews
of
With an introduction by Bruce McCullough, Associate Professor of Eng-
lish, New York University
GALSWORTHY: The Patrician
With an introduction by Bliss Perry, Professor of English Literature,
Harvard University
HARDY: The Return of the Native
With an introduction by J. W. Cunliffe, Professor of English, Columbia
University
HAWTHORNE: The Scarlet Letter
With an introduction by Stuart
1

P. Sherman, late Literary Editor of the

New York Herald Tribune
MEREDITH: Evan Harrington
With an introduction by George F. Reynolds, Professor of English Lit-
erature, University of Colorado
MEREDITH: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
With an introduction by Frank W. Chandler, Professor of English and
Comparative Literature, and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Uni-
versity of Cincinnati
SCOTT: The Heart of Midlothian
With an introduction by William P. Trent, Professor of English Litera-
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STEVENSON: The Master of Ballantrae
With an introduction by H. S. Canby, Assistant Editor of the Yale Review
and Editor of the Saturday Review
THACKERAY: The History of Pendennis
With an introduction by Robert Morss Lovett, Professor of English,
University of Chicago. 2 vols.; $1.50 per set
TROLLOPE: Barchester Towers
With an introduction by Clarence D. Stevens, Professor of English, Uni-
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WHARTON: Ethan Frome
With a special introduction by Edith Wharton
THREE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ROMANCES: The Castle of Otran-
to, Vathek, The Romance of the Forest
With an introduction by Harrison R. Steeves, Professor of English, Co-
lumbia University
POETRY
BROWNING: Poems and Plays
Edited by Hewette E. Joyce, Assistant Professor of English, Dartmouth
College
BROWNING: The Ring and the Book
Edited by Frederick Morgan Padelford, Professor of English, Univer-
sity of Washington
 THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY
TENNYSON: Poems
Edited by J. F. A. Pyre, Professor of English* University of Wisconsin
WHITMAN Leaves of Grass
:

Edited by Stuart P. Sherman, late Literary Editor of the New York

Herald Tribune
WORDSWORTH: Poems
Edited by George M. Harper, Professor of English, Princeton University
AMERICAN SONGS AND BALLADS
Edited by Louise Pound, Professor of English, University of Nebraska
ENGLISH POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Edited by Ernest Bernbaum, Professor of English, University of Illinois
MINOR VICTORIAN POETS
Edited by John D. Cooke, Professor of English, University of Southern
California
ROMANTIC POETRY OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
Edited by Arthur Beatty, Professor of English, University of Wisconsin

ESSAYS AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE

ADDISON AND STEELE: Selections
Edited by Will D. Howe, formerly head of the Department of English,
Indiana University
ARNOLD: Prose and Poetry
Edited by Archibald L. Bouton, Professor of English and Dean of the
Graduate School, New York University
BACON: Essays
Edited by Mary Augusta Scott, late Professor of the English Language
and Literature, Smith College
BROWNELL American Prose Masters
:

Edited by Stuart P. Sherman, late Literary Editorof the New York

Herald Tribune
BURKE: Selections
Edited by Leslie Nathan Broughton, Assistant Professor of English,
Cornell University
CARLYLE: Past and Present
Edited by Edwin Mims, Professor of English, Vandcrbilt University
CARLYLE: Sartor Resartus
Edited by Ashley II. Thokndikk, Professor of English, Columbia University
EMERSON Essays and Poems
:

Edited by Arthur Houson Q\ iinn, Professor of English, University of

Pennsylvania
FRANKLIN AND EDWARDS: Selections
Edited by Carl Van Dor en. Associate Professor of English, Columbia
University
HAZLITT: Essays
Edited by Pun y V. D. Shelly, Professor of English, University of Penn-
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LINCOLN: Selections
Edited by Nathaniel
"
Wriuht Stephenson, author of "Lincoln: His
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MACAULAY: Historical Essays
Edited by Charles Dovynkk Ha/en, Professor of History. Columbia
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MEREDITH: An Es*ny on Comedy
Edited l>v Lv^k CooiMCK, Protestor of the English Language and Litera-
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PARKMAN: The Oregon Trail
Edited by Iamks Cioyd Bowman, Prnfrnsior of English, Northern State
Normal College, Marquette, Mich.
POL: Tales
Edited by James Southall Wiison, Edgar Allan I 'or I'mb-isoi «>( l',ngli<di (

University of Virginia
RUSK IN: Selections tind Ennys
Edited by FhilUlkm k Wiiiiam Hon, ProfeiBor of Knglish, Umvurtily <A
Wisconsin
 THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY
STEVENSON: Essays
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SWIFT: Selections
Edited by Hardin Craig, Professor of English, University of Iowa
THOREAU A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
:

Edited by Odell Shepard, James J. Goodwin Professor of English, Trin-

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CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS
Edited by Odell Shepard, James J. Goodwin Professor of English, Trin-
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CRITICAL ESSAYS OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
Edited by Raymond M. Alden, late Professor of English, Leland Stanford
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SELECTIONS FROM THE FEDERALIST
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NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS
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ROMANTIC PROSE OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
Edited by Carl H. Grabo, Professor of English, University of Chicago
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ESSAYS
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BIOGRAPHY
BOSWELL: Life of Johnson
Abridged and Edited by Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Professor of Eng-
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CROCKETT: Autobiography of David Crockett
Edited by Hamlin Garland
PHILOSOPHY SERIES
Editor, Ralph Barton Perry
Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
ARISTOTLE: Selections
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Oxford
BACON: Selections
Edited by Matthew Thompson McClure, Professor of Philosophy, Univer-
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BERKELEY: Selections
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DESCARTES: Selectioas
Edited by Ralph M. Eaton, late Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Har-
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HEGEL: Selections
Edited b> Jacob Loewenberg, Professor of Philosophy, University of
California
HOBBES: Selections
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HUME: Selections
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KANT: Selections
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LOCKE: Selections
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 THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY
PLATO: The Republic
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PLATO: Selections
Edited by Raphael Demos, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Harvard
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SCHOPENHAUER: Selections
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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
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FRENCH SERIES
Editor, Horatio Smith
Professor of French Language and Literature, Brown University
BALZAC: Le Pere Goriot
With an introduction by Horatio Smith, Brown University
CORNEILLE: Le Cid, Horace, Polyeucte, Le Menteur
Edited by C. H. C. Wright, Professor of French Language and Litera-
ture, Harvard University
FLAUBERT: Madame Bovary
With an introduction by Christian Gauss, Dean of the College, Princeton
University
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE: La Princesse de
Cleves
With an introduction by H. Ashton, Professor of French Language and
Literature, University of British Columbia
MOLIERE Les Precieuses Ridicules, Le Tartuff e, Le Misanthrope
:

Edited by William A. Nitze and Hilda L. Norman, University of Chicago

PREVOST: Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut
With an introduction by Louis Landr£, Associate Professor of French,
Brown University
RACINE: Andromaque, Britannicus, PhSdre
Edited by H. Carrington Lancaster, Professor of French Literature,
Johns Hopkins University, and Edmond A. M£ras, Professor of French
Literature, Adelphi College
GEORGE SAND: Indiana
With an introduction by Hermann H. Thornton, Associate Professor of
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STENDHAL: Le Rouge et le Noir
With an introduction by Paul Hazard, College de France
VOLTAIRE: Candide and Other Philosophical Tales
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FRENCH ROMANTIC PROSE
Edited by W. W. Comfort, President, Haverford College
FOUR FRENCH COMEDIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Le-
"Le jeu de F amour et du hasard,"
sage's "Turcaret," Marivaux's
Sedaine's "Le philosophe sans le savoir," Beaumarchais's "Le
barbier de Seville"
Edited by Casimir D. Zdanowicz, Professor of French, University of
Wisconsin
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Commercial Replacement
On Order, Preservation

MAR 2001

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