of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating
position resulting from the event was unimproved. It was only after a
second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her
head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident.
She had not been gone from Blooms-End more than half an hour when
Yeobright came by the meads from the other direction and entered the
house.
"I had an early breakfast," he said to his mother after greeting her.
"Now I could eat a little more."
They sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious
voice, apparently imagining that Thomasin had not yet come downstairs,
"What's this I have heard about Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve?"
"It is true in many points," said Mrs. Yeobright quietly; "but it is
all right now, I hope." She looked at the clock.
"True?"
"Thomasin is gone to him today."
Clym pushed away his breakfast. "Then there is a scandal of some
sort, and that's what's the matter with Thomasin. Was it this that
made her ill?"
"Yes. Not a scandal: a misfortune. I will tell you all about it,
Clym. You must not be angry, but you must listen, and you'll find
that what we have done has been done for the best."
She then told him the circumstances. All that he had known of the
affair before he returned from Paris was that there had existed an
attachment between Thomasin and Wildeve, which his mother had at first
discountenanced, but had since, owing to the arguments of Thomasin,
looked upon in a little more favourable light. When she, therefore,
proceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled.
"And she determined that the wedding should be over before you came
back," said Mrs. Yeobright, "that there might be no chance of her
meeting you, and having a very painful time of it. That's why she has
gone to him; they have arranged to be married this morning."
"But I can't understand it," said Yeobright, rising. "'Tis so unlike
her. I can see why you did not write to me after her unfortunate
return home. But why didn't you let me know when the wedding was
going to be - the first time?"
"Well, I felt vexed with her just then. She seemed to me to be
obstinate; and when I found that you were nothing in her mind I vowed
that she should be nothing in yours. I felt that she was only my
niece after all; I told her she might marry, but that I should take no
interest in it, and should not bother you about it either."
"It wouldn't have been bothering me. Mother, you did wrong."
"I thought it might disturb you in your business, and that you might
throw up your situation, or injure your prospects in some way because
of it, so I said nothing. Of course, if they had married at that time
in a proper manner, I should have told you at once."
"Tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!"
"Yes. Unless some accident happens again, as it did the first time.
It may, considering he's the same man."
"Yes, and I believe it will. Was it right to let her go? Suppose
Wildeve is really a bad fellow?"
"Then he won't come, and she'll come home again."
"You should have looked more into it."
"It is useless to say that," his mother answered with an impatient
look of sorrow. "You don't know how bad it has been here with us all
these weeks, Clym. You don't know what a mortification anything of
that sort is to a woman. You don't know the sleepless nights we've
had in this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed
between us since that Fifth of November. I hope never to pass seven
such weeks again. Tamsin has not gone outside the door, and I have
been ashamed to look anybody in the face; and now you blame me for
letting her do the only thing that can be done to set that trouble
straight."
"No," he said slowly. "Upon the whole I don't blame you. But just
consider how sudden it seems to me. Here was I, knowing nothing; and
then I am told all at once that Tamsie is gone to be married. Well,
I suppose there was nothing better to do. Do you know, mother," he
continued after a moment or two, looking suddenly interested in his
own past history, "I once thought of Tamsin as a sweetheart? Yes, I
did. How odd boys are! And when I came home and saw her this time she
seemed so much more affectionate than usual, that I was quite reminded
of those days, particularly on the night of the party, when she was
unwell. We had the party just the same - was not that rather cruel to
her?"
"It made no difference. I had arranged to give one, and it was not
worth while to make more gloom than necessary. To begin by shutting
ourselves up and telling you of Tamsin's misfortunes would have been
a poor sort of welcome."
Clym remained thinking. "I almost wish you had not had that party,"
he said; "and for other reasons. But I will tell you in a day or two.
We must think of Tamsin now."
They lapsed into silence. "I'll tell you what," said Yeobright again,
in a tone which showed some slumbering feeling still. "I don't think
it kind to Tamsin to let her be married like this, and neither of
us there to keep up her spirits or care a bit about her. She hasn't
disgraced herself, or done anything to deserve that. It is bad enough
that the wedding should be so hurried and unceremonious, without our
keeping away from it in addition. Upon my soul, 'tis almost a shame.
I'll go."
"It is over by this time," said his mother with a sigh; "unless they
were late, or he - "
"Then I shall be soon enough to see them come out. I don't quite like
your keeping me in ignorance, mother, after all. Really, I half hope
he has failed to meet her!"
"And ruined her character?"
"Nonsense: that wouldn't ruin Thomasin."
He took up his hat and hastily left the house. Mrs. Yeobright looked
rather unhappy, and sat still, deep in thought. But she was not long
left alone. A few minutes later Clym came back again, and in his
company came Diggory Venn.
"I find there isn't time for me to get there," said Clym.
"Is she married?" Mrs. Yeobright inquired, turning to the reddleman
a face in which a strange strife of wishes, for and against, was
apparent.
Venn bowed. "She is, ma'am."
"How strange it sounds," murmured Clym.
"And he didn't disappoint her this time?" said Mrs. Yeobright.
"He did not. And there is now no slight on her name. I was hastening
ath'art to tell you at once, as I saw you were not there."
"How came you to be there? How did you know it?" she asked.
"I have been in that neighbourhood for some time, and I saw them go
in," said the reddleman. "Wildeve came up to the door, punctual as
the clock. I didn't expect it of him." He did not add, as he might
have added, that how he came to be in that neighbourhood was not by
accident; that, since Wildeve's resumption of his right to Thomasin,
Venn, with the thoroughness which was part of his character, had
determined to see the end of the episode.
"Who was there?" said Mrs. Yeobright.
"Nobody hardly. I stood right out of the way, and she did not see
me." The reddleman spoke huskily, and looked into the garden.
"Who gave her away?"
"Miss Vye."
"How very remarkable! Miss Vye! It is to be considered an honour,
I suppose?"
"Who's Miss Vye?" said Clym.
"Captain Vye's granddaughter, of Mistover Knap."
"A proud girl from Budmouth," said Mrs. Yeobright. "One not much to
my liking. People say she's a witch, but of course that's absurd."
The reddleman kept to himself his acquaintance with that fair
personage, and also that Eustacia was there because he went to fetch
her, in accordance with a promise he had given as soon as he learnt
that the marriage was to take place. He merely said, in continuation
of the story -
"I was sitting on the churchyard wall when they came up, one from one
way, the other from the other; and Miss Vye was walking thereabouts,
looking at the head-stones. As soon as they had gone in I went to
the door, feeling I should like to see it, as I knew her so well. I
pulled off my boots because they were so noisy, and went up into the
gallery. I saw then that the parson and clerk were already there."
"How came Miss Vye to have anything to do with it, if she was only on
a walk that way?"
"Because there was nobody else. She had gone into the church just
before me, not into the gallery. The parson looked round before
beginning, and as she was the only one near he beckoned to her, and
she went up to the rails. After that, when it came to signing the
book, she pushed up her veil and signed; and Tamsin seemed to thank
her for her kindness." The reddleman told the tale thoughtfully,
for there lingered upon his vision the changing colour of Wildeve,
when Eustacia lifted the thick veil which had concealed her from
recognition and looked calmly into his face. "And then," said Diggory
sadly, "I came away, for her history as Tamsin Yeobright was over."
"I offered to go," said Mrs. Yeobright regretfully. "But she said it
was not necessary."
"Well, it is no matter," said the reddleman. "The thing is done at
last as it was meant to be at first, and God send her happiness. Now
I'll wish you good morning."
He placed his cap on his head and went out.
From that instant of leaving Mrs. Yeobright's door, the reddleman was
seen no more in or about Egdon Heath for a space of many months. He
vanished entirely. The nook among the brambles where his van had been
standing was as vacant as ever the next morning, and scarcely a sign
remained to show that he had been there, excepting a few straws, and a
little redness on the turf, which was washed away by the next storm of
rain.
The report that Diggory had brought of the wedding, correct as far
as it went, was deficient in one significant particular, which had
escaped him through his being at some distance back in the church.
When Thomasin was tremblingly engaged in signing her name Wildeve had
flung towards Eustacia a glance that said plainly, "I have punished
you now." She had replied in a low tone - and he little thought how
truly - "You mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your
wife today."
BOOK THIRD
THE FASCINATION
I
"My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"
In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance
of the future. Should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its
Pheidias may produce such faces. The view of life as a thing to be
put up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense
in early civilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the
constitution of the advanced races that its facial expression will
become accepted as a new artistic departure. People already feel that
a man who lives without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting
a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed
from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type. Physically beautiful
men - the glory of the race when it was young - are almost an
anachronism now; and we may wonder whether, at some time or other,
physically beautiful women may not be an anachronism likewise.
The truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries has
permanently displaced the Hellenic idea of life, or whatever it may
be called. What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their
Aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned
revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as we
uncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is
in by their operation.
The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this
new recognition will probably be akin to those of Yeobright. The
observer's eye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by
his face as a page; not by what it was, but by what it recorded.
His features were attractive in the light of symbols, as sounds
intrinsically common become attractive in language, and as shapes
intrinsically simple become interesting in writing.
He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had
been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that
he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable.
The only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand
still in the circumstances amid which he was born.
Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen,
the listener said, "Ah, Clym Yeobright: what is he doing now?" When
the instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is
felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in
particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading
some region of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that he
is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it.
Half a dozen comfortable marketmen, who were habitual callers at the
Quiet Woman as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the
topic. In fact, though they were not Egdon men, they could hardly
avoid it while they sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the
heath through the window. Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in
his boyhood that hardly anybody could look upon it without thinking of
him. So the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name,
so much the better for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the
world, so much the better for a narrative.
The fact was that Yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extent
before he left home. "It is bad when your fame outruns your means,"
said the Spanish Jesuit Gracian. At the age of six he had asked a
Scripture riddle: "Who was the first man known to wear breeches?"
and applause had resounded from the very verge of the heath. At
seven he painted the Battle of Waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and
black-currant juice, in the absence of water-colours. By the time
he reached twelve he had in this manner been heard of as artist
and scholar for at least two miles round. An individual whose fame
spreads three or four thousand yards in the time taken by the fame
of others similarly situated to travel six or eight hundred, must of
necessity have something in him. Possibly Clym's fame, like Homer's,
owed something to the accidents of his situation; nevertheless famous
he was.
He grew up and was helped out in life. That waggery of fate which
started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a
surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished
the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with
the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory.
The details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessary
to give. At the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had
kindly undertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form
of sending him to Budmouth. Yeobright did not wish to go there, but
it was the only feasible opening. Thence he went to London; and
thence, shortly after, to Paris, where he had remained till now.
Something being expected of him, he had not been at home many days
before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to
arise in the heath. The natural term of a holiday had passed, yet
he still remained. On the Sunday morning following the week of
Thomasin's marriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at
a hair-cutting before Fairway's house. Here the local barbering was
always done at this hour on this day, to be followed by the great
Sunday wash of the inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed
by the great Sunday dressing an hour later. On Egdon Heath Sunday
proper did not begin till dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat
battered specimen of the day.
These Sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by Fairway; the
victim sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a
coat, and the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks
of hair as they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out
of sight to the four quarters of the heavens. Summer and winter the
scene was the same, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous,
when the stool was shifted a few feet round the corner. To complain
of cold in sitting out of doors, hatless and coatless, while Fairway
told true stories between the cuts of the scissors, would have been
to pronounce yourself no man at once. To flinch, exclaim, or move a
muscle of the face at the small stabs under the ear received from
those instruments, or at scarifications of the neck by the comb, would
have been thought a gross breach of good manners, considering that
Fairway did it all for nothing. A bleeding about the poll on Sunday
afternoons was amply accounted for by the explanation. "I have had my
hair cut, you know."
The conversation on Yeobright had been started by a distant view of
the young man rambling leisurely across the heath before them.
"A man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three
weeks for nothing," said Fairway. "He's got some project in's
head - depend upon that."
"Well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here," said Sam.
"I don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he
had not been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the
Lord in heaven knows."
Before many more surmises could be indulged in Yeobright had come
near; and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them.
Marching up, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he
said, without introduction, "Now, folks, let me guess what you have
been talking about."
"Ay, sure, if you will," said Sam.
"About me."
"Now, it is a thing I shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise,"
said Fairway in a tone of integrity; "but since you have named it,
Master Yeobright, I'll own that we was talking about 'ee. We were
wondering what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you
have made such a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack
trade - now, that's the truth o't."
"I'll tell you," said Yeobright, with unexpected earnestness. "I am
not sorry to have the opportunity. I've come home because, all things
considered, I can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else.
But I have only lately found this out. When I first got away from
home I thought this place was not worth troubling about. I thought
our life here was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking
them, to dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush: was there
ever anything more ridiculous? I said."
"So 'tis; so 'tis!"
"No, no - you are wrong; it isn't."
"Beg your pardon, we thought that was your maning?"
"Well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. I found
that I was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common
with myself. I was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for
another sort of life, which was not better than the life I had known
before. It was simply different."
"True; a sight different," said Fairway.
"Yes, Paris must be a taking place," said Humphrey. "Grand
shop-winders, trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all
winds and weathers - "
"But you mistake me," pleaded Clym. "All this was very depressing.
But not so depressing as something I next perceived - that my business
was the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man
could be put to. That decided me: I would give it up and try to
follow some rational occupation among the people I knew best, and
to whom I could be of most use. I have come home; and this is how I
mean to carry out my plan. I shall keep a school as near to Egdon as
possible, so as to be able to walk over here and have a night-school
in my mother's house. But I must study a little at first, to get
properly qualified. Now, neighbours, I must go."
And Clym resumed his walk across the heath.
"He'll never carry it out in the world," said Fairway. "In a few weeks
he'll learn to see things otherwise."
"'Tis good-hearted of the young man," said another. "But, for my
part, I think he had better mind his business."
II
The New Course Causes Disappointment
Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of most
men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence.
He wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather than
individuals at the expense of the class. What was more, he was ready
at once to be the first unit sacrificed.
In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate
stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of
those stages is almost sure to be worldly advance. We can hardly
imagine bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without
imagining social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's local
peculiarity was that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved
to plain living - nay, wild and meagre living in many respects, and
brotherliness with clowns.
He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentance
for his text. Mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was
in many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date.
Much of this development he may have owed to his studious life in
Paris, where he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at
the time.
In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Yeobright might
have been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him.
A man should be only partially before his time: to be completely to
the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son
been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization
without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he
seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.
In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the
capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded
because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their
listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man
who advocates aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only
likely to be understood by a class to which social effort has become a
stale matter. To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury
to the bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt
to disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accustomed.
Yeobright preaching to the Egdon eremites that they might rise to
a serene comprehensiveness without going through the process of
enriching themselves, was not unlike arguing to ancient Chaldeans that
in ascending from earth to the pure empyrean it was not necessary to
pass first into the intervening heaven of ether.
Was Yeobright's mind well-proportioned? No. A well-proportioned mind
is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely
say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman,
tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the
other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet,
revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are
happiness and mediocrity. It produces the poetry of Rogers, the
paintings of West, the statecraft of North, the spiritual guidance
of Tomline; enabling its possessors to find their way to wealth, to
wind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to die comfortably
in their beds, and to get the decent monument which, in many
cases, they deserve. It never would have allowed Yeobright to do
such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to benefit his
fellow-creatures.
He walked along towards home without attending to paths. If anyone
knew the heath well it was Clym. He was permeated with its scenes,
with its substance, and with its odours. He might be said to be its
product. His eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all
the first images of his memory were mingled; his estimate of life
had been coloured by it: his toys had been the flint knives and
arrow-heads which he found there, wondering why stones should "grow"
to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze;
his animal kingdom, the snakes and croppers; his society, its human
haunters. Take all the varying hates felt by Eustacia Vye towards the
heath, and translate them into loves, and you have the heart of Clym.
He gazed upon the wide prospect as he walked, and was glad.
To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped out of its
century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this.
It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. How could this
be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadows
watered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they looked
like silver gridirons? The farmer, in his ride, who could smile at
artificial grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh
with sadness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant
upland of heath nothing better than a frown. But as for Yeobright,
when he looked from the heights on his way he could not help indulging
in a barbarous satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attempts
at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year
or two, had receded again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts
stubbornly reasserting themselves.
He descended into the valley, and soon reached his home at Blooms-End.
His mother was snipping dead leaves from the window-plants. She looked
up at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long stay
with her; her face had worn that look for several days. He could
perceive that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting
group amounted in his mother to concern. But she had asked no question
with her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that he
was not going to leave her soon. Her silence besought an explanation
of him more loudly than words.
"I am not going back to Paris again, mother," he said. "At least, in
my old capacity. I have given up the business."
Mrs. Yeobright turned in pained surprise. "I thought something was
amiss, because of the boxes. I wonder you did not tell me sooner."
"I ought to have done it. But I have been in doubt whether you would
be pleased with my plan. I was not quite clear on a few points
myself. I am going to take an entirely new course."
"I am astonished, Clym. How can you want to do better than you've
been doing?"
"Very easily. But I shall not do better in the way you mean; I
suppose it will be called doing worse. But I hate that business of
mine, and I want to do some worthy thing before I die. As a
schoolmaster I think to do it - a school-master to the poor and
ignorant, to teach them what nobody else will."
"After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and
when there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence,
you say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. Your fancies will be
your ruin, Clym."
Mrs. Yeobright spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the words
was but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. He
did not answer. There was in his face that hopelessness of being
understood which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyond
the reach of a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almost
too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument.
No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. His mother
then began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "It
disturbs me, Clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughts
as those. I hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in
the world by your own free choice. Of course, I have always supposed
you were going to push straight on, as other men do - all who deserve
the name - when they have been put in a good way of doing well."
"I cannot help it," said Clym, in a troubled tone. "Mother, I hate
the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any man
deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees
half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and
teach them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up every
morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain,
as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering
splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering
to the meanest vanities - I, who have health and strength enough for
anything. I have been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and
the end is that I cannot do it any more."
"Why can't you do it as well as others?"
"I don't know, except that there are many things other people care
for which I don't; and that's partly why I think I ought to do this.
For one thing, my body does not require much of me. I cannot enjoy
delicacies; good things are wasted upon me. Well, I ought to turn
that defect to advantage, and by being able to do without what other
people require I can spend what such things cost upon anybody else."
Now, Yeobright, having inherited some of these very instincts from
the woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in her
through her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she might
for his good. She spoke with less assurance. "And yet you might have
been a wealthy man if you had only persevered. Manager to that large
diamond establishment - what better can a man wish for? What a post of
trust and respect! I suppose you will be like your father; like him,
you are getting weary of doing well."
"No," said her son, "I am not weary of that, though I am weary of what
you mean by it. Mother, what is doing well?"
Mrs. Yeobright was far too thoughtful a woman to be content with ready
definitions, and, like the "What is wisdom?" of Plato's Socrates, and
the "What is truth?" of Pontius Pilate, Yeobright's burning question
received no answer.
The silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a tap at the
door, and its opening. Christian Cantle appeared in the room in his
Sunday clothes.
It was the custom on Egdon to begin the preface to a story before
absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of
the narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face.
Christian had been saying to them while the door was leaving its
latch, "To think that I, who go from home but once in a while, and
hardly then, should have been there this morning!"
"'Tis news you have brought us, then, Christian?" said Mrs. Yeobright.
"Ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o' day; for,
says I, 'I must go and tell 'em, though they won't have half done
dinner.' I assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. Do ye think
any harm will come o't?"
"Well - what?"
"This morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa'son said,
'Let us pray.' 'Well,' thinks I, 'one may as well kneel as stand';
so down I went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing to
oblige the man as I. We hadn't been hard at it for more than a minute
when a most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody
had just gied up their heart's blood. All the folk jumped up and
then we found that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a long
stocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could
get the young lady to church, where she don't come very often. She've
waited for this chance for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an
end to the bewitching of Susan's children that has been carried on so
long. Sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon as
she could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my lady's
arm."
"Good heaven, how horrid!" said Mrs. Yeobright.
"Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I was
afeard there might be some tumult among us, I got behind the bass-viol
and didn't see no more. But they carried her out into the air, 'tis
said; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone. What a scream
that girl gied, poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surplice
holding up his hand and saying, 'Sit down, my good people, sit down!'
But the deuce a bit would they sit down. O, and what d'ye think I
found out, Mrs. Yeobright? The pa'son wears a suit of clothes under
his surplice! - I could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm."
"'Tis a cruel thing," said Yeobright.
"Yes," said his mother.
"The nation ought to look into it," said Christian. "Here's Humphrey
coming, I think."
In came Humphrey. "Well, have ye heard the news? But I see you have.
'Tis a very strange thing that whenever one of Egdon folk goes to
church some rum job or other is sure to be doing. The last time one
of us was there was when neighbour Fairway went in the fall; and that
was the day you forbad the banns, Mrs. Yeobright."
"Has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?" said Clym.
"They say she got better, and went home very well. And now I've told
it I must be moving homeward myself."
"And I," said Humphrey. "Truly now we shall see if there's anything
in what folks say about her."
When they were gone into the heath again Yeobright said quietly to his
mother, "Do you think I have turned teacher too soon?"
"It is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, and
all such men," she replied. "But it is right, too, that I should try
to lift you out of this life into something richer, and that you
should not come back again, and be as if I had not tried at all."
Later in the day Sam, the turf-cutter, entered. "I've come
a-borrowing, Mrs. Yeobright. I suppose you have heard what's been
happening to the beauty on the hill?"
"Yes, Sam: half a dozen have been telling us."
"Beauty?" said Clym.
"Yes, tolerably well-favoured," Sam replied. "Lord! all the country
owns that 'tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a
woman should have come to live up there."
"Dark or fair?"
"Now, though I've seen her twenty times, that's a thing I cannot call
to mind."
"Darker than Tamsin," murmured Mrs. Yeobright.
"A woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say."
"She is melancholy, then?" inquired Clym.
"She mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the people."
"Is she a young lady inclined for adventures?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some sort of
excitement in this lonely place?"
"No."
"Mumming, for instance?"
"No. Her notions be different. I should rather say her thoughts were
far away from here, with lords and ladies she'll never know, and
mansions she'll never see again."
Observing that Clym appeared singularly interested Mrs. Yeobright said
rather uneasily to Sam, "You see more in her than most of us do. Miss
Vye is to my mind too idle to be charming. I have never heard that
she is of any use to herself or to other people. Good girls don't get
treated as witches even on Egdon."
"Nonsense - that proves nothing either way," said Yeobright.
"Well, of course I don't understand such niceties," said Sam,
withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument; "and what she is we
must wait for time to tell us. The business that I have really called
about is this, to borrow the longest and strongest rope you have. The
captain's bucket has dropped into the well, and they are in want of
water; and as all the chaps are at home today we think we can get it
out for him. We have three cart-ropes already, but they won't reach
to the bottom."
Mrs. Yeobright told him that he might have whatever ropes he could
find in the outhouse, and Sam went out to search. When he passed by
the door Clym joined him, and accompanied him to the gate.
"Is this young witch-lady going to stay long at Mistover?" he asked.
"I should say so."
"What a cruel shame to ill-use her, She must have suffered
greatly - more in mind than in body."
"'Twas a graceless trick - such a handsome girl, too. You ought to see
her, Mr. Yeobright, being a young man come from far, and with a little
more to show for your years than most of us."
"Do you think she would like to teach children?" said Clym.
Sam shook his head. "Quite a different sort of body from that, I
reckon."
"O, it was merely something which occurred to me. It would of course
be necessary to see her and talk it over - not an easy thing, by the
way, for my family and hers are not very friendly."
"I'll tell you how you mid see her, Mr. Yeobright," said Sam. "We are
going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house,
and you could lend a hand. There's five or six coming, but the well is
deep, and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that
shape. She's sure to be walking round."
"I'll think of it," said Yeobright; and they parted.
He thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said about Eustacia
inside the house at that time. Whether this romantic martyr to
superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the
full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem.
III
The First Act in a Timeworn Drama
The afternoon was fine, and Yeobright walked on the heath for an hour
with his mother. When they reached the lofty ridge which divided the
valley of Blooms-End from the adjoining valley they stood still and
looked round. The Quiet Woman Inn was visible on the low margin of the
heath in one direction, and afar on the other hand rose Mistover Knap.
"You mean to call on Thomasin?" he inquired.
"Yes. But you need not come this time," said his mother.
"In that case I'll branch off here, mother. I am going to Mistover."
Mrs. Yeobright turned to him inquiringly.
"I am going to help them get the bucket out of the captain's well," he
continued. "As it is so very deep I may be useful. And I should like
to see this Miss Vye - not so much for her good looks as for another
reason."
"Must you go?" his mother asked.
"I thought to."
And they parted. "There is no help for it," murmured Clym's mother
gloomily as he withdrew. "They are sure to see each other. I wish
Sam would carry his news to other houses than mine."
Clym's retreating figure got smaller and smaller as it rose and fell
over the hillocks on his way. "He is tender-hearted," said Mrs.
Yeobright to herself while she watched him; "otherwise it would matter
little. How he's going on!"
He was, indeed, walking with a will over the furze, as straight as a
line, as if his life depended upon it. His mother drew a long breath,
and, abandoning the visit to Thomasin, turned back. The evening films
began to make nebulous pictures of the valleys, but the high lands
still were raked by the declining rays of the winter sun, which
glanced on Clym as he walked forward, eyed by every rabbit and
fieldfare around, a long shadow advancing in front of him.
On drawing near to the furze-covered bank and ditch which fortified
the captain's dwelling he could hear voices within, signifying that
operations had been already begun. At the side-entrance gate he
stopped and looked over.
Half a dozen able-bodied men were standing in a line from the
well-mouth, holding a rope which passed over the well-roller into the
depths below. Fairway, with a piece of smaller rope round his body,
made fast to one of the standards, to guard against accidents, was
leaning over the opening, his right hand clasping the vertical rope
that descended into the well.
"Now, silence, folks," said Fairway.
The talking ceased, and Fairway gave a circular motion to the rope, as