The Return of the Native
death itself. ‘Oh, Diggory Venn!’ she said, ‘I thought ’twas you—will
you help me? I am in trouble.’”
“How did she know your Christian name?” said Mrs. Yeobright doubtingly.
“I had met her as a lad before I went away in this trade. She asked
then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a faint. I picked her
up and put her in, and there she has been ever since. She has cried a
good deal, but she has hardly spoke; all she has told me being that she
was to have been married this morning. I tried to get her to eat
something, but she couldn’t; and at last she fell asleep.”
“Let me see her at once,” said Mrs. Yeobright, hastening towards the
van.
The reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping up first,
assisted Mrs. Yeobright to mount beside him. On the door being opened
she perceived at the end of the van an extemporized couch, around which
was hung apparently all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to
keep the occupant of the little couch from contact with the red
materials of his trade. A young girl lay thereon, covered with a cloak.
She was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon her features.
A fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest
of wavy chestnut hair. It was between pretty and beautiful. Though her
eyes were closed, one could easily imagine the light necessarily
shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around.
The groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now lay like a
foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. The grief had been there
so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet
but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine. The scarlet
of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still
more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient
colour of her cheek. The lips frequently parted, with a murmur of
words. She seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal—to require viewing
through rhyme and harmony.
One thing at least was obvious: she was not made to be looked at thus.
The reddleman had appeared conscious of as much, and, while Mrs.
Yeobright looked in upon her, he cast his eyes aside with a delicacy
which well became him. The sleeper apparently thought so too, for the
next moment she opened her own.
The lips then parted with something of anticipation, something more of
doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions of thoughts, as signalled
by the changes on her face, were exhibited by the light to the utmost
nicety. An ingenuous, transparent life was disclosed, as if the flow of
her existence could be seen passing within her. She understood the
scene in a moment.
“O yes, it is I, Aunt,” she cried. “I know how frightened you are, and
how you cannot believe it; but all the same, it is I who have come home
like this!”
“Tamsin, Tamsin!” said Mrs. Yeobright, stooping over the young woman
and kissing her. “O my dear girl!”
Thomasin was now on the verge of a sob, but by an unexpected
self-command she uttered no sound. With a gentle panting breath she sat
upright.
“I did not expect to see you in this state, any more than you me,” she
went on quickly. “Where am I, Aunt?”
“Nearly home, my dear. In Egdon Bottom. What dreadful thing is it?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. So near, are we? Then I will get out and
walk. I want to go home by the path.”
“But this kind man who has done so much will, I am sure, take you right
on to my house?” said the aunt, turning to the reddleman, who had
withdrawn from the front of the van on the awakening of the girl, and
stood in the road.
“Why should you think it necessary to ask me? I will, of course,” said
he.
“He is indeed kind,” murmured Thomasin. “I was once acquainted with
him, Aunt, and when I saw him today I thought I should prefer his van
to any conveyance of a stranger. But I’ll walk now. Reddleman, stop the
horses, please.”
The man regarded her with tender reluctance, but stopped them
Aunt and niece then descended from the van, Mrs. Yeobright saying to
its owner, “I quite recognize you now. What made you change from the
nice business your father left you?”
“Well, I did,” he said, and looked at Thomasin, who blushed a little.
“Then you’ll not be wanting me any more tonight, ma’am?”
Mrs. Yeobright glanced around at the dark sky, at the hills, at the
perishing bonfires, and at the lighted window of the inn they had
neared. “I think not,” she said, “since Thomasin wishes to walk. We can
soon run up the path and reach home—we know it well.”
And after a few further words they parted, the reddleman moving onwards
with his van, and the two women remaining standing in the road. As soon
as the vehicle and its driver had withdrawn so far as to be beyond all
possible reach of her voice, Mrs. Yeobright turned to her niece.
“Now, Thomasin,” she said sternly, “what’s the meaning of this
disgraceful performance?”
V.
Perplexity among Honest People
Thomasin looked as if quite overcome by her aunt’s change of manner.
“It means just what it seems to mean: I am—not married,” she replied
faintly. “Excuse me—for humiliating you, Aunt, by this mishap—I am
sorry for it. But I cannot help it.”
“Me? Think of yourself first.”
“It was nobody’s fault. When we got there the parson wouldn’t marry us
because of some trifling irregularity in the license.”
“What irregularity?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Wildeve can explain. I did not think when I went
away this morning that I should come back like this.” It being dark,
Thomasin allowed her emotion to escape her by the silent way of tears,
which could roll down her cheek unseen.
“I could almost say that it serves you right—if I did not feel that you
don’t deserve it,” continued Mrs. Yeobright, who, possessing two
distinct moods in close contiguity, a gentle mood and an angry, flew
from one to the other without the least warning. “Remember, Thomasin,
this business was none of my seeking; from the very first, when you
began to feel foolish about that man, I warned you he would not make
you happy. I felt it so strongly that I did what I would never have
believed myself capable of doing—stood up in the church, and made
myself the public talk for weeks. But having once consented, I don’t
submit to these fancies without good reason. Marry him you must after
this.”
“Do you think I wish to do otherwise for one moment?” said Thomasin,
with a heavy sigh. “I know how wrong it was of me to love him, but
don’t pain me by talking like that, Aunt! You would not have had me
stay there with him, would you?—and your house is the only home I have
to return to. He says we can be married in a day or two.”
“I wish he had never seen you.”
“Very well; then I will be the miserablest woman in the world, and not
let him see me again. No, I won’t have him!”
“It is too late to speak so. Come with me. I am going to the inn to see
if he has returned. Of course I shall get to the bottom of this story
at once. Mr. Wildeve must not suppose he can play tricks upon me, or
any belonging to me.”
“It was not that. The license was wrong, and he couldn’t get another
the same day. He will tell you in a moment how it was, if he comes.”
“Why didn’t he bring you back?”
“That was me!” again sobbed Thomasin. “When I found we could not be
married I didn’t like to come back with him, and I was very ill. Then I
saw Diggory Venn, and was glad to get him to take me home. I cannot
explain it any better, and you must be angry with me if you will.”
“I shall see about that,” said Mrs. Yeobright; and they turned towards
the inn, known in the neighbourhood as the Quiet Woman, the sign of
which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her
arm. The front of the house was towards the heath and Rainbarrow, whose
dark shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. Upon the door was a
neglected brass plate, bearing the unexpected inscription, “Mr.
Wildeve, Engineer”—a useless yet cherished relic from the time when he
had been started in that profession in an office at Budmouth by those
who had hoped much from him, and had been disappointed. The garden was
at the back, and behind this ran a still deep stream, forming the
margin of the heath in that direction, meadow-land appearing beyond the
stream.
But the thick obscurity permitted only skylines to be visible of any
scene at present. The water at the back of the house could be heard,
idly spinning whirpools in its creep between the rows of dry
feather-headed reeds which formed a stockade along each bank. Their
presence was denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly,
produced by their rubbing against each other in the slow wind.
The window, whence the candlelight had shone up the vale to the eyes of
the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but the sill lay too high for a
pedestrian on the outside to look over it into the room. A vast shadow,
in which could be dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted
half the ceiling.
“He seems to be at home,” said Mrs. Yeobright.
“Must I come in, too, Aunt?” asked Thomasin faintly. “I suppose not; it
would be wrong.”
“You must come, certainly—to confront him, so that he may make no false
representations to me. We shall not be five minutes in the house, and
then we’ll walk home.”
Entering the open passage, she tapped at the door of the private
parlour, unfastened it, and looked in.
The back and shoulders of a man came between Mrs. Yeobright’s eyes and
the fire. Wildeve, whose form it was, immediately turned, arose, and
advanced to meet his visitors.
He was quite a young man, and of the two properties, form and motion,
the latter first attracted the eye in him. The grace of his movement
was singular—it was the pantomimic expression of a lady-killing career.
Next came into notice the more material qualities, among which was a
profuse crop of hair impending over the top of his face, lending to his
forehead the high-cornered outline of an early Gothic shield; and a
neck which was smooth and round as a cylinder. The lower half of his
figure was of light build. Altogether he was one in whom no man would
have seen anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen
anything to dislike.
He discerned the young girl’s form in the passage, and said, “Thomasin,
then, has reached home. How could you leave me in that way, darling?”
And turning to Mrs. Yeobright—“It was useless to argue with her. She
would go, and go alone.”
“But what’s the meaning of it all?” demanded Mrs. Yeobright haughtily.
“Take a seat,” said Wildeve, placing chairs for the two women. “Well,
it was a very stupid mistake, but such mistakes will happen. The
license was useless at Anglebury. It was made out for Budmouth, but as
I didn’t read it I wasn’t aware of that.”
“But you had been staying at Anglebury?”
“No. I had been at Budmouth—till two days ago—and that was where I had
intended to take her; but when I came to fetch her we decided upon
Anglebury, forgetting that a new license would be necessary. There was
not time to get to Budmouth afterwards.”
“I think you are very much to blame,” said Mrs. Yeobright.
“It was quite my fault we chose Anglebury,” Thomasin pleaded. “I
proposed it because I was not known there.”
“I know so well that I am to blame that you need not remind me of it,”
replied Wildeve shortly.
“Such things don’t happen for nothing,” said the aunt. “It is a great
slight to me and my family; and when it gets known there will be a very
unpleasant time for us. How can she look her friends in the face
tomorrow? It is a very great injury, and one I cannot easily forgive.
It may even reflect on her character.”
“Nonsense,” said Wildeve.
Thomasin’s large eyes had flown from the face of one to the face of the