The Return of the Native
“It is very good of you to say so.”
“O no. I was quite glad to find you had it. Everybody gets so
indifferent that I was surprised to know you thought of me.”
“If you had remembered what I was once you wouldn’t have been
surprised.”
“Ah, no,” she said quickly. “But men of your character are mostly so
independent.”
“What is my character?” he asked.
“I don’t exactly know,” said Thomasin simply, “except it is to cover up
your feelings under a practical manner, and only to show them when you
are alone.”
“Ah, how do you know that?” said Venn strategically.
“Because,” said she, stopping to put the little girl, who had managed
to get herself upside down, right end up again, “because I do.”
“You mustn’t judge by folks in general,” said Venn. “Still I don’t know
much what feelings are nowadays. I have got so mixed up with business
of one sort and t’other that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour
like. Yes, I am given up body and soul to the making of money. Money is
all my dream.”
“O Diggory, how wicked!” said Thomasin reproachfully, and looking at
him in exact balance between taking his words seriously and judging
them as said to tease her.
“Yes, ’tis rather a rum course,” said Venn, in the bland tone of one
comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome.
“You, who used to be so nice!”
“Well, that’s an argument I rather like, because what a man has once
been he may be again.” Thomasin blushed. “Except that it is rather
harder now,” Venn continued.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you be richer than you were at that time.”
“O no—not much. I have made it nearly all over to the baby, as it was
my duty to do, except just enough to live on.”
“I am rather glad of that,” said Venn softly, and regarding her from
the corner of his eye, “for it makes it easier for us to be friendly.”
Thomasin blushed again, and, when a few more words had been said of a
not unpleasing kind, Venn mounted his horse and rode on.
This conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath near the old
Roman road, a place much frequented by Thomasin. And it might have been
observed that she did not in future walk that way less often from
having met Venn there now. Whether or not Venn abstained from riding
thither because he had met Thomasin in the same place might easily have
been guessed from her proceedings about two months later in the same
year.
III.
The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin
Throughout this period Yeobright had more or less pondered on his duty
to his cousin Thomasin. He could not help feeling that it would be a
pitiful waste of sweet material if the tender-natured thing should be
doomed from this early stage of her life onwards to dribble away her
winsome qualities on lonely gorse and fern. But he felt this as an
economist merely, and not as a lover. His passion for Eustacia had been
a sort of conserve of his whole life, and he had nothing more of that
supreme quality left to bestow. So far the obvious thing was not to
entertain any idea of marriage with Thomasin, even to oblige her.
But this was not all. Years ago there had been in his mother’s mind a
great fancy about Thomasin and himself. It had not positively amounted
to a desire, but it had always been a favourite dream. That they should
be man and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither were
endangered thereby, was the fancy in question. So that what course save
one was there now left for any son who reverenced his mother’s memory
as Yeobright did? It is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of
parents, which might have been dispersed by half an hour’s conversation
during their lives, becomes sublimated by their deaths into a fiat the
most absolute, with such results to conscientious children as those
parents, had they lived, would have been the first to decry.
Had only Yeobright’s own future been involved he would have proposed to
Thomasin with a ready heart. He had nothing to lose by carrying out a
dead mother’s hope. But he dreaded to contemplate Thomasin wedded to
the mere corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be. He had but
three activities alive in him. One was his almost daily walk to the
little graveyard wherein his mother lay; another, his just as frequent
visits by night to the more distant enclosure which numbered his
Eustacia among its dead; the third was self-preparation for a vocation
which alone seemed likely to satisfy his cravings—that of an itinerant
preacher of the eleventh commandment. It was difficult to believe that
Thomasin would be cheered by a husband with such tendencies as these.
Yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for herself. It was even
with a pleasant sense of doing his duty that he went downstairs to her
one evening for this purpose, when the sun was printing on the valley
the same long shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times
out of number while his mother lived.
Thomasin was not in her room, and he found her in the front garden. “I
have long been wanting, Thomasin,” he began, “to say something about a
matter that concerns both our futures.”
“And you are going to say it now?” she remarked quickly, colouring as
she met his gaze. “Do stop a minute, Clym, and let me speak first, for
oddly enough, I have been wanting to say something to you.”
“By all means say on, Tamsie.”
“I suppose nobody can overhear us?” she went on, casting her eyes
around and lowering her voice. “Well, first you will promise me
this—that you won’t be angry and call me anything harsh if you disagree
with what I propose?”
Yeobright promised, and she continued: “What I want is your advice, for
you are my relation—I mean, a sort of guardian to me—aren’t you, Clym?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I am; a sort of guardian. In fact, I am, of
course,” he said, altogether perplexed as to her drift.
“I am thinking of marrying,” she then observed blandly. “But I shall
not marry unless you assure me that you approve of such a step. Why
don’t you speak?”
“I was taken rather by surprise. But, nevertheless, I am very glad to
hear such news. I shall approve, of course, dear Tamsie. Who can it be?
I am quite at a loss to guess. No I am not—’tis the old doctor!—not
that I mean to call him old, for he is not very old after all. Ah—I
noticed when he attended you last time!”
“No, no,” she said hastily. “’Tis Mr. Venn.”
Clym’s face suddenly became grave.
“There, now, you don’t like him, and I wish I hadn’t mentioned him!”
she exclaimed almost petulantly. “And I shouldn’t have done it, either,
only he keeps on bothering me so till I don’t know what to do!”
Clym looked at the heath. “I like Venn well enough,” he answered at
last. “He is a very honest and at the same time astute man. He is
clever too, as is proved by his having got you to favour him. But
really, Thomasin, he is not quite—”
“Gentleman enough for me? That is just what I feel. I am sorry now that
I asked you, and I won’t think any more of him. At the same time I must
marry him if I marry anybody—that I _will_ say!”
“I don’t see that,” said Clym, carefully concealing every clue to his
own interrupted intention, which she plainly had not guessed. “You
might marry a professional man, or somebody of that sort, by going into
the town to live and forming acquaintances there.”
“I am not fit for town life—so very rural and silly as I always have
been. Do not you yourself notice my countrified ways?”
“Well, when I came home from Paris I did, a little; but I don’t now.”
“That’s because you have got countrified too. O, I couldn’t live in a
street for the world! Egdon is a ridiculous old place; but I have got
used to it, and I couldn’t be happy anywhere else at all.”
“Neither could I,” said Clym.
“Then how could you say that I should marry some town man? I am sure,
say what you will, that I must marry Diggory, if I marry at all. He has
been kinder to me than anybody else, and has helped me in many ways
that I don’t know of!” Thomasin almost pouted now.
“Yes, he has,” said Clym in a neutral tone. “Well, I wish with all my
heart that I could say, marry him. But I cannot forget what my mother
thought on that matter, and it goes rather against me not to respect
her opinion. There is too much reason why we should do the little we
can to respect it now.”
“Very well, then,” sighed Thomasin. “I will say no more.”
“But you are not bound to obey my wishes. I merely say what I think.”
“O no—I don’t want to be rebellious in that way,” she said sadly. “I
had no business to think of him—I ought to have thought of my family.
What dreadfully bad impulses there are in me!” Her lips trembled, and
she turned away to hide a tear.
Clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste, was in a
measure relieved to find that at any rate the marriage question in
relation to himself was shelved. Through several succeeding days he saw
her at different times from the window of his room moping
disconsolately about the garden. He was half angry with her for
choosing Venn; then he was grieved at having put himself in the way of
Venn’s happiness, who was, after all, as honest and persevering a young
fellow as any on Egdon, since he had turned over a new leaf. In short,
Clym did not know what to do.
When next they met she said abruptly, “He is much more respectable now
than he was then!”
“Who? O yes—Diggory Venn.”
“Aunt only objected because he was a reddleman.”
“Well, Thomasin, perhaps I don’t know all the particulars of my
mother’s wish. So you had better use your own discretion.”
“You will always feel that I slighted your mother’s memory.”
“No, I will not. I shall think you are convinced that, had she seen
Diggory in his present position, she would have considered him a
fitting husband for you. Now, that’s my real feeling. Don’t consult me
any more, but do as you like, Thomasin. I shall be content.”
It is to be supposed that Thomasin was convinced; for a few days after
this, when Clym strayed into a part of the heath that he had not lately
visited, Humphrey, who was at work there, said to him, “I am glad to
see that Mrs. Wildeve and Venn have made it up again, seemingly.”
“Have they?” said Clym abstractedly.
“Yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she walks out on
fine days with the chiel. But, Mr. Yeobright, I can’t help feeling that
your cousin ought to have married you. ’Tis a pity to make two
chimleycorners where there need be only one. You could get her away
from him now, ’tis my belief, if you were only to set about it.”
“How can I have the conscience to marry after having driven two women
to their deaths? Don’t think such a thing, Humphrey. After my
experience I should consider it too much of a burlesque to go to church
and take a wife. In the words of Job, ‘I have made a covenant with mine
eyes; when then should I think upon a maid?’”
“No, Mr. Clym, don’t fancy that about driving two women to their
deaths. You shouldn’t say it.”
“Well, we’ll leave that out,” said Yeobright. “But anyhow God has set a
mark upon me which wouldn’t look well in a love-making scene. I have
two ideas in my head, and no others. I am going to keep a night-school;
and I am going to turn preacher. What have you got to say to that,
Humphrey?”
“I’ll come and hear ’ee with all my heart.”
“Thanks. ’Tis all I wish.”
As Clym descended into the valley Thomasin came down by the other path,
and met him at the gate. “What do you think I have to tell you, Clym?”
she said, looking archly over her shoulder at him.
“I can guess,” he replied.
She scrutinized his face. “Yes, you guess right. It is going to be
after all. He thinks I may as well make up my mind, and I have got to
think so too. It is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you
don’t object.”