The Return of the Native
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 evasively, “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.”
“You shall, if necessary. But it is only proper that you should first
tell your husband distinctly that you are without 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, “O 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, Thomasin; 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 opposition
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 unravelling
that now. Sons must be blind if they will. Why is it that a woman can
see from a distance what a man cannot 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 ensure 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 beginning 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
attempting 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 failure 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 endeavoured
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 distance below the inn, and ascended to Mistover by a
circuitous and easy incline. This was the only route on that 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 about 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 heartache 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 offered; 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
standard sort. His might have been called the Rousseau of Egdon.
VII.
The Morning and the Evening of a Day
The wedding morning came. Nobody would have imagined 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 animation 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,
endeavoured 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 Mistover 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 imagining the
scene at the church, which he had by this time approached with his
bride. She pictured the little group of children 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 chancel and kneel; and the service seemed to go on.
She covered her face with her hands. “O, it is a mistake!” 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 marriage Mrs. Yeobright
had shown 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 endeavour
listlessly makes the best of the fact that is. Wildeve, to 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 today. 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.”
“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 morning, on account of Anglebury
Great Market. I believe you have something to give to Thomasin? If you
like, I will 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 whenever 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 colour rose in a quick resentfulness frequent with him.