The Return of the Native
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. “If you
think you can marry him, do so. And since Mr. Wildeve 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 Anglebury.” She continued, half in
bitterness, “I may almost ask, why do you consult me in the matter at
all? If you had gone and married him without saying a word to me, I
could hardly have been angry—simply because, 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 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 preparation, both
the women being anxious to immerse themselves 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 frequently 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 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
calendar 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 Maypolings, gipsyings, 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
today.
“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 up 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.
Wildeve 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.” 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. “O—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 Wildeve had been so
timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness 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 by the meads 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 today.”
Clym pushed away his breakfast. “Then there is 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 done for the best.”
She then told him the circumstances. All that he had known of the
affair before he 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 favourable light. When she, therefore,
proceeded 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 first time. It
may, considering he’s the same man.”
“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 bad 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 between 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 or two, looking suddenly interested in his own
past history, “I once thought of Tamsin as a sweetheart? Yes, I did.
How odd boys are! And when I came home and saw her this time she seemed
so much more affectionate 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 Tamsin’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 Yeobright again,
in a tone which showed some slumbering feeling still. “I don’t think it