The Return of the Native
intending to walk in the open air till the party was over, when he
would return to wish Thomasin and her husband good-bye as they
departed. His steps were insensibly bent towards Mistover by the path
that he had followed on that terrible morning when he learnt the
strange news from Susan’s boy.
He did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to an eminence,
whence he could see over the whole quarter that had once been
Eustacia’s home. While he stood observing the darkening scene somebody
came up. Clym, seeing him but dimly, would have let him pass silently,
had not the pedestrian, who was Charley, recognized the young man and
spoken to him.
“Charley, I have not seen you for a length of time,” said Yeobright.
“Do you often walk this way?”
“No,” the lad replied. “I don’t often come outside the bank.”
“You were not at the Maypole.”
“No,” said Charley, in the same listless tone. “I don’t care for that
sort of thing now.”
“You rather liked Miss Eustacia, didn’t you?” Yeobright gently asked.
Eustacia had frequently told him of Charley’s romantic attachment.
“Yes, very much. Ah, I wish—”
“Yes?”
“I wish, Mr. Yeobright, you could give me something to keep that once
belonged to her—if you don’t mind.”
“I shall be very happy to. It will give me very great pleasure,
Charley. Let me think what I have of hers that you would like. But come
with me to the house, and I’ll see.”
They walked towards Blooms-End together. When they reached the front it
was dark, and the shutters were closed, so that nothing of the interior
could be seen.
“Come round this way,” said Clym. “My entrance is at the back for the
present.”
The two went round and ascended the crooked stair in darkness till
Clym’s sitting-room on the upper floor was reached, where he lit a
candle, Charley entering gently behind. Yeobright searched his desk,
and taking out a sheet of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three
undulating locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like black
streams. From these he selected one, wrapped it up, and gave it to the
lad, whose eyes had filled with tears. He kissed the packet, put it in
his pocket, and said in a voice of emotion, “O, Mr. Clym, how good you
are to me!”
“I will go a little way with you,” said Clym. And amid the noise of
merriment from below they descended. Their path to the front led them
close to a little side window, whence the rays of candles streamed
across the shrubs. The window, being screened from general observation
by the bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person in this
private nook could see all that was going on within the room which
contained the wedding guests, except in so far as vision was hindered
by the green antiquity of the panes.
“Charley, what are they doing?” said Clym. “My sight is weaker again
tonight, and the glass of this window is not good.”
Charley wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred with moisture,
and stepped closer to the casement. “Mr. Venn is asking Christian
Cantle to sing,” he replied, “and Christian is moving about in his
chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has
struck up a stave instead of him.”
“Yes, I can hear the old man’s voice,” said Clym. “So there’s to be no
dancing, I suppose. And is Thomasin in the room? I see something moving
in front of the candles that resembles her shape, I think.”
“Yes. She do seem happy. She is red in the face, and laughing at
something Fairway has said to her. O my!”
“What noise was that?” said Clym.
“Mr. Venn is so tall that he knocked his head against the beam in
gieing a skip as he passed under. Mrs. Venn has run up quite frightened
and now she’s put her hand to his head to feel if there’s a lump. And
now they be all laughing again as if nothing had happened.”
“Do any of them seem to care about my not being there?” Clym asked.
“No, not a bit in the world. Now they are all holding up their glasses
and drinking somebody’s health.”
“I wonder if it is mine?”
“No, ’tis Mr. and Mrs. Venn’s, because he is making a hearty sort of
speech. There—now Mrs. Venn has got up, and is going away to put on her
things, I think.”
“Well, they haven’t concerned themselves about me, and it is quite
right they should not. It is all as it should be, and Thomasin at least
is happy. We will not stay any longer now, as they will soon be coming
out to go home.”
He accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home, and, returning
alone to the house a quarter of an hour later, found Venn and Thomasin
ready to start, all the guests having departed in his absence. The
wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which Venn’s
head milker and handy man had driven from Stickleford to fetch them in;
little Eustacia and the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap
behind; and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes
clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of
a body-servant of the last century.
“Now we leave you in absolute possession of your own house again,” said
Thomasin as she bent down to wish her cousin good night. “It will be
rather lonely for you, Clym, after the hubbub we have been making.”
“O, that’s no inconvenience,” said Clym, smiling rather sadly. And then
the party drove off and vanished in the night shades, and Yeobright
entered the house. The ticking of the clock was the only sound that
greeted him, for not a soul remained; Christian, who acted as cook,
valet, and gardener to Clym, sleeping at his father’s house. Yeobright
sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in thought a long
time. His mother’s old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that
evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers. But
to Clym she was almost a presence there, now as always. Whatever she
was in other people’s memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose
radiance even his tenderness for Eustacia could not obscure. But his
heart was heavy, that Mother had _not_ crowned him in the day of his
espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart. And events had
borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of
her care. He should have heeded her for Eustacia’s sake even more than
for his own. “It was all my fault,” he whispered. “O, my mother, my
mother! would to God that I could live my life again, and endure for
you what you endured for me!”
On the Sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was to be seen on
Rainbarrow. From a distance there simply appeared to be a motionless
figure standing on the top of the tumulus, just as Eustacia had stood
on that lonely summit some two years and a half before. But now it was
fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and early
afternoon instead of dull twilight. Those who ascended to the immediate
neighbourhood of the Barrow perceived that the erect form in the
centre, piercing the sky, was not really alone. Round him upon the
slopes of the Barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining or
sitting at their ease. They listened to the words of the man in their
midst, who was preaching, while they abstractedly pulled heather,
stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down the slope. This was the first of
a series of moral lectures or Sermons on the Mount, which were to be
delivered from the same place every Sunday afternoon as long as the
fine weather lasted.
The commanding elevation of Rainbarrow had been chosen for two reasons:
first, that it occupied a central position among the remote cottages
around; secondly, that the preacher thereon could be seen from all
adjacent points as soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him
being thus a convenient signal to those stragglers who wished to draw
near. The speaker was bareheaded, and the breeze at each waft gently
lifted and lowered his hair, somewhat too thin for a man of his years,
these still numbering less than thirty-three. He wore a shade over his
eyes, and his face was pensive and lined; but, though these bodily
features were marked with decay there was no defect in the tones of his
voice, which were rich, musical, and stirring. He stated that his
discourses to people were to be sometimes secular, and sometimes
religious, but never dogmatic; and that his texts would be taken from
all kinds of books. This afternoon the words were as follows:—
“‘And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat
down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother;
and she sat on his right hand. Then she said, I desire one small
petition of thee; I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said unto
her, Ask, on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay.’”
Yeobright had, in fact, found his vocation in the career of an
itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally unimpeachable
subjects; and from this day he laboured incessantly in that office,
speaking not only in simple language on Rainbarrow and in the hamlets
round, but in a more cultivated strain elsewhere—from the steps and
porticoes of town halls, from market-crosses, from conduits, on
esplanades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges, in barns and
outhouses, and all other such places in the neighbouring Wessex towns
and villages. He left alone creeds and systems of philosophy, finding
enough and more than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and
actions common to all good men. Some believed him, and some believed
not; some said that his words were commonplace, others complained of
his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it
was well enough for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do
anything else. But everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of
his life had become generally known.