Return of the Native

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Return of the Native


Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole shining
throng. It lay in a direction precisely 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 perceptible here.

"To be sure, how near that fire is!" said Fairway. "Seemingly. I can see
a fellow of some sort walking round it. Little 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, you can't, my sonnies. That fire is not much less than a mile
off, for all that 'a seems so near."

"'Tis in the heath, but no 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 Mistover. 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 Vye has been for a long walk today, 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 granddaughter," 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 herself, and such
things please her," said Susan.

"She's a well-favoured 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 think we'd better get
home-along, neighbours? The heth isn't haunted, I know; but we'd better
get home....Ah, what was that?"

"Only the wind," said the turf-cutter.

"I don't think Fifth-of-Novembers ought to be kept up by night except in
towns. It should be by day in outstep, 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-favoured you be still, though so many summers have passed since
your husband, a son of a witch, snapped you up from me."

This was addressed to Susan Nunsuch; and the next circumstance 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 completely 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 Fairway began to jump about with her, the
clicking of the pattens, the creaking of the stays, and her screams of
surprise, formed a very audible concert.

"I'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy 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 before, from
walking through that prickly furze, and now you must make 'em worse with
these vlankers!"

The vagary of Timothy Fairway was infectious. The turf-cutter seized old
Olly Dowden, and, somewhat more gently, poussetted with her likewise.
The young men were not slow to imitate the example of their elders, and
seized the maids; Grandfer Cantle and his stick jigged in the form of a
three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute 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 pattens, Olly 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 here."

"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'ess Yeobright'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, neighbours, 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 pick along wi' care.
Have ye brought your cart far up, neighbour 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 saw him!" he added to the whole group, the reddleman included.
"Lord's sake, I thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble
us? No slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain't bad-looking in the
groundwork, though the finish is queer. My meaning is just to say how
curious I felt. I half thought it '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 reddleman, 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 reddleman had not been gone more than a few minutes when another
person approached the partially revived bonfire. It proved to be a
well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which
can only be expressed 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 heathmen 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 explanation 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 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 tonight, 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 tonight than ever I heard 'em afore. Them that
know Egdon best have been pixy-led 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 being a man of
the mournfullest make, I was scared a little, that's all. Oftentimes if
you could see 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 reverent
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 playward 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 reveller checking himself
repentantly. "I've such a bad memory, Mis'ess Yeobright, 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 was passing down the Anglebury Road, towards my
niece's new home, who is returning tonight with her husband; and seeing
the bonfire and hearing Olly's voice among the rest I came up here to
learn what was going on. I should like her to walk with me, as her way
is mine."

"Ay, sure, ma'am, I'm just thinking of moving," said Olly.

"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."

"Very well--are you ready, Olly?"

"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 faint light at the bottom of the valley which Fairway
had pointed out; and the two women descended the tumulus.




4--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 shoulders brushed by the ferns, which,
though dead and dry, stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter
weather having 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 Olly and Mrs. Yeobright; and the addition of
darkness lends no frightfulness to the face of a friend.

"And so Tamsin has married him at last," said Olly, 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 'ee as a daughter, as she always
have."

"I do miss her."

Olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely,
was saved by her very simplicity from rendering them offensive.
Questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with
impunity. This accounted 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, Olly. There are a good many sides to 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 'a's clever, that's true, and
they say he was an engineering gentleman once, but has come down by
being too outwardly given."

"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, besides the public house, and the
heth-croppers, and his manners 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 company, Olly first
begging her companion to remind Mr. Wildeve 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 have returned with Wildeve from their
wedding at Anglebury 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 discovered that it could be tilled died of
the labour; the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in
fertilizing it. Wildeve came like Amerigo Vespucci, and received the
honours 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 walking alongside with a lantern in his hand. It
was soon evident that this was the reddleman who had inquired for her.
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. Yeobright 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. Yeobright, 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, and looking round there she was, white as
death itself. 'Oh, Diggory Venn!' she said, 'I thought 'twas you--will
you help me? I am 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 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
materials 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, reposing 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 I ay 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, and 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 neighbouring and more transient
colour 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 harmony.

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 own.

The lips then parted with something of anticipation, something more of
doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions of thoughts, as signalled
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.

"O yes, it is I, Aunt," she cried. "I know how frightened 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. "O my dear girl!"

Thomasin was now on the verge of a sob, but by an unexpected
self-command she uttered no sound. With a gentle 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. So near, are we? Then I will get out and
walk. I want to go home by the path."

"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 today I thought I should prefer his van to any
conveyance of a stranger. But I'll walk now. Reddleman, stop the horses,
please."

The man regarded her with tender reluctance, but stopped them

Aunt and niece then descended from the van, Mrs. Yeobright saying to its
owner, "I quite recognize you now. What made you change from the nice
business your father left you?"

"Well, I did," he said, and looked at Thomasin, who blushed a little.
"Then you'll not be wanting me any more tonight, ma'am?"

Mrs. Yeobright glanced around at the dark sky, at the 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 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 meaning of this
disgraceful performance?"




5--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 humiliating 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 emotion to escape her by the silent way of tears, which
could roll down her cheek 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 without the least warning. "Remember, Thomasin,
this business 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."

"Do you think I wish to do otherwise for one moment?" said Thomasin,
with a heavy sigh. "I know how wrong it was 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 is too late to speak so. Come with me. I am going 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?"

"That was me!" again sobbed Thomasin. "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 neighbourhood as the Quiet Woman, the sign of
which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her
arm, beneath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known
to frequenters of the inn:--


SINCE THE WOMAN'S QUIET LET NO MAN BREED A RIOT.(1)

(1) The inn which really bore this sign and legend stood
some miles to the northwest of the present scene, wherein
the house more immediately referred to is now no longer an
inn; and the surroundings are much changed. But another inn,
some of whose features are also embodied in this
description, the RED LION at Winfrith, still remains as a
haven for the wayfarer (1912).