The Return of the Native
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?”
“I 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 expenditures by an honest
occupation? The outdoor exercise 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 assistance.”
“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 cottage, and borrowed of
him leggings, gloves, a whetstone, and a hook, to use till he should be
able to purchase some for himself. Then he sallied forth with his new
fellow-labourer 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 hardened 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 custom 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 accoutrements,
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
more. 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 labour he was cheerfully disposed and calm.
His daily life was of a curious microscopic sort, his whole world being
limited to a circuit of a few feet from his person. 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-coloured butterflies which
Egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, 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 unskilful 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-dells snakes glided
in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season
immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their
colours 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 thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a
blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen. None of them
feared him.
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 Yeobright sometimes sang to himself, and when obliged
to accompany 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 labour of the day. He did not observe her
approach, and she stood close to him, and heard his undercurrent of
song. 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 à son retour;
L’oiseau reprend doux chant d’amour;
Tout célèbre dans la nature
Le point du jour.
“Le point du jour
Cause parfois, cause douleur extrême;
Que l’espace des nuits est court
Pour le berger brûlant d’amour,
Forcé 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 vehemently. “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 gentleman?”
“Dearest, you must not question me unpleasantly, or it may make me not
love you.”
“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 labour. 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
thing; you are too severe upon me, Clym—I won’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, nor your lips so very sweet to mine? Two months—is it possible?
Yes, ’tis too true!”
“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 should 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 flavour. And so love dies with
good fortune!”
“I cannot listen to this, Clym—it will end bitterly,” she said in a
broken voice. “I will go home.”
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 anyone 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 suffering 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 solemnly 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