Return of the Native

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Return of the Native


He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the
midnight hour must have struck. A very strong doubt had arisen in
his mind if Eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather; yet
knowing her nature he felt that she might. "Poor thing! 'tis like her
ill-luck," he murmured.

At length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch. To his surprise
it was nearly a quarter past midnight. He now wished that he had driven
up the circuitous road to Mistover, a plan not adopted because of the
enormous length of the route in proportion to that of the pedestrian's
path down the open hillside, and the consequent increase of labour for
the horse.

At this moment a footstep approached; but the light of the lamps being
in a different direction the comer was not visible. The step paused,
then came on again.

"Eustacia?" said Wildeve.

The person came forward, and the light fell upon the form of Clym,
glistening with wet, whom Wildeve immediately recognized; but Wildeve,
who stood behind the lamp, was not at once recognized by Yeobright.

He stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could have
anything to do with the flight of his wife or not. The sight of
Yeobright at once banished Wildeve's sober feelings, who saw him again
as the deadly rival from whom Eustacia was to be kept at all hazards.
Hence Wildeve did not speak, in the hope that Clym would pass by without
particular inquiry.

While they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible
above the storm and wind. Its origin was unmistakable--it was the fall
of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point
near the weir.

Both started. "Good God! can it be she?" said Clym.

"Why should it be she?" said Wildeve, in his alarm forgetting that he
had hitherto screened himself.

"Ah!--that's you, you traitor, is it?" cried Yeobright. "Why should it
be she? Because last week she would have put an end to her life if she
had been able. She ought to have been watched! Take one of the lamps and
come with me."

Yeobright seized the one on his side and hastened on; Wildeve did not
wait to unfasten the other, but followed at once along the meadow track
to the weir, a little in the rear of Clym.

Shadwater Weir had at its foot a large circular pool, fifty feet in
diameter, into which the water flowed through ten huge hatches, raised
and lowered by a winch and cogs in the ordinary manner. The sides of the
pool were of masonry, to prevent the water from washing away the bank;
but the force of the stream in winter was sometimes such as to undermine
the retaining wall and precipitate it into the hole. Clym reached the
hatches, the framework of which was shaken to its foundations by the
velocity of the current. Nothing but the froth of the waves could be
discerned in the pool below. He got upon the plank bridge over the race,
and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off, crossed
to the other side of the river. There he leant over the wall and lowered
the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the returning
current.

Wildeve meanwhile had arrived on the former side, and the light from
Yeobright's lamp shed a flecked and agitated radiance across the weir
pool, revealing to the ex-engineer the tumbling courses of the currents
from the hatches above. Across this gashed and puckered mirror a dark
body was slowly borne by one of the backward currents.

"O, my darling!" exclaimed Wildeve in an agonized voice; and, without
showing sufficient presence of mind even to throw off his greatcoat, he
leaped into the boiling caldron.

Yeobright could now also discern the floating body, though but
indistinctly; and imagining from Wildeve's plunge that there was life to
be saved he was about to leap after. Bethinking himself of a wiser plan,
he placed the lamp against a post to make it stand upright, and running
round to the lower part of the pool, where there was no wall, he sprang
in and boldly waded upwards towards the deeper portion. Here he was
taken off his legs, and in swimming was carried round into the centre of
the basin, where he perceived Wildeve struggling.

While these hasty actions were in progress here, Venn and Thomasin had
been toiling through the lower corner of the heath in the direction
of the light. 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
motion 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 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, observed that the
small upper hatches or floats were withdrawn. 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 disengaged 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 distinguished a woman's bonnet
floating alone. His search was now under the left wall, when something
came to the surface almost close beside him. It was not, as he had
expected, 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 remaining 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 footing 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 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 running towards him,
and two men, roused by Thomasin, appeared at the brink above. They ran
to where Venn was, and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned
persons, 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 Wildeve.

"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 footbridge 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 supposing
that any person who had sunk for the last time would be washed down to
this point, for when they had examined to about halfway 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 cart were brought to the nearest point in the road, and it was the
work of a few minutes 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 Wildeve were then brought in and laid on the carpet,
with their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as 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 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 for ever
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 unimpassioned spectator
might think of her loss of such a husband as Wildeve, there could be no
doubt that for the moment she was distracted and horrified by the blow.
As for himself, not being privileged to go to her and comfort her, he
saw no reason for waiting longer in a house where he remained only as a
stranger.

He returned across the heath to his van. The fire was not yet out, and
everything remained as he had left it. Venn now bethought himself of
his clothes, which were saturated with water to the weight of lead. He
changed them, spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep. But
it was more than he could do to rest here while excited by a vivid
imagination of the turmoil they were in at the house he had quitted,
and, blaming himself for coming away, he dressed in another suit,
locked up the door, and again hastened across to the inn. Rain was still
falling heavily when he entered the kitchen. A bright fire was shining
from the hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom was Olly
Dowden.

"Well, how is it going on now?" said Venn in a whisper.

"Mr. Yeobright is better; but Mrs. Yeobright and Mr. Wildeve are dead
and cold. The doctor says they were quite gone before they were out of
the water."

"Ah! I thought as much when I hauled 'em up. And Mrs. Wildeve?"

"She is as well as can be expected. The doctor had her put between
blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the river,
poor young thing. You don't seem very dry, reddleman."

"Oh, 'tis not much. I have changed my things. This is only a little
dampness I've got coming through the rain again."

"Stand by the fire. Mis'ess says you be to have whatever you want, and
she was sorry when she was told that you'd gone away."

Venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an absent
mood. The steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney with the
smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs. Two were corpses,
one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow.
The last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace was when
the raffle was in progress; when Wildeve was alive and well; Thomasin
active and smiling in the next room; Yeobright and Eustacia just made
husband and wife, and Mrs. Yeobright living at Blooms-End. It had seemed
at that time that the then position of affairs was good for at least
twenty years to come. Yet, of all the circle, he himself was the only
one whose situation had not materially changed.

While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs. It was the nurse,
who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper. The woman was so
engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw Venn. She took from a
cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace,
tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward
for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them
one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line.

"What be they?" said Venn.

"Poor master's banknotes," she answered. "They were found in his pocket
when they undressed him."

"Then he was not coming back again for some time?" said Venn.

"That we shall never know," said she.

Venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under
this roof. As nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except
the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not
remain. So he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used
to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row
of banknotes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the
chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout.
Then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together,
carried the handful upstairs. Presently the doctor appeared from above
with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his gloves,
went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon
the road.

At four o'clock there was a gentle knock at the door. It was from
Charley, who had been sent by Captain Vye to inquire if anything had
been heard of Eustacia. The girl who admitted him looked in his face as
if she did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to where
Venn was seated, saying to the reddleman, "Will you tell him, please?"

Venn told. Charley's only utterance was a feeble, indistinct sound. He
stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, "I shall see her
once more?"

"I dare say you may see her," said Diggory gravely. "But hadn't you
better run and tell Captain Vye?"

"Yes, yes. Only I do hope I shall see her just once again."

"You shall," said a low voice behind; and starting round they beheld
by the dim light, a thin, pallid, almost spectral form, wrapped in a
blanket, and looking like Lazarus coming from the tomb.

It was Yeobright. Neither Venn nor Charley spoke, and Clym continued,
"You shall see her. There will be time enough to tell the captain when
it gets daylight. You would like to see her too--would you not, Diggory?
She looks very beautiful now."

Venn assented by rising to his feet, and with Charley he followed Clym
to the foot of the staircase, where he took off his boots; Charley did
the same. They followed Yeobright upstairs to the landing, where there
was a candle burning, which Yeobright took in his hand, and with it led
the way into an adjoining room. Here he went to the bedside and folded
back the sheet.

They stood silently looking upon Eustacia, who, as she lay there still
in death, eclipsed all her living phases. Pallor did not include all
the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was
almost light. The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant,
as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking.
Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between
fervour and resignation. Her black hair was looser now than either of
them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest. The
stateliness of look which had been almost too marked for a dweller in a
country domicile had at last found an artistically happy background.

Nobody spoke, till at length Clym covered her and turned aside. "Now
come here," he said.

They went to a recess in the same room, and there, on a smaller bed,
lay another figure--Wildeve. Less repose was visible in his face than
in Eustacia's, but the same luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the
least sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that he
was born for a higher destiny than this. The only sign upon him of his
recent struggle for life was in his fingertips, which were worn and
sacrificed in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face of the
weir-wall.

Yeobright's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so few syllables
since his reappearance, that Venn imagined him resigned. It was only
when they had left the room and stood upon the landing that the true
state of his mind was apparent. Here he said, with a wild smile,
inclining his head towards the chamber in which Eustacia lay, "She is
the second woman I have killed this year. I was a great cause of my
mother's death, and I am the chief cause of hers."

"How?" said Venn.

"I spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house. I did not invite her
back till it was too late. It is I who ought to have drowned myself. It
would have been a charity to the living had the river overwhelmed me and
borne her up. But I cannot die. Those who ought to have lived lie dead;
and here am I alive!"

"But you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way," said Venn. "You
may as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder by the child,
for without the parents the child would never have been begot."

"Yes, Venn, that is very true; but you don't know all the circumstances.
If it had pleased God to put an end to me it would have been a good
thing for all. But I am getting used to the horror of my existence. They
say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance
with it. Surely that time will soon come to me!"

"Your aim has always been good," said Venn. "Why should you say such
desperate things?"

"No, they are not desperate. They are only hopeless; and my great regret
is that for what I have done no man or law can punish me!"




BOOK SIX -- AFTERCOURSES




1--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 original 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 meagreness, 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 bereavement
dulled, to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet irrationally 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 misgivings 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.

Could Thomasin's mournfulness now and Eustacia's serenity 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 sombre atmosphere was light itself.

The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the
autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, 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 administration 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 appearance; 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 born 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. But that he 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 endeavour to construct 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 excuses 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 spendings 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 plough, while the works of these
remained. Yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different
fates awaiting their relics. It reminded him that unforeseen factors
operate in the evolution of immortality.

Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and
sparkling starlight. The year previous Thomasin 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 servants, came to Clym's senses only in the form of sounds
through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally large
type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight noises
from the other part of the house that he almost could witness the
scenes they signified. A faint 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 boyish 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 starting to go to
market; for Thomasin, in spite of her added scope of gentility, led a
ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save every possible
pound for her little daughter.