The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

1—A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unen-closed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.

He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it permeated him. The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cart was a reddleman—a person whose vo-cation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obso-lete forms of life and those which generally prevail.

He was young, and his face, if not exactly hand-some, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natu-ral colour. His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive—keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade.

The loads were all laid together, and a py-ramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as Rainbarrow for many miles round.

Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the cur-few is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

"I ha'n't been these three years," said Humphrey; "for I'm so dead sleepy of a Sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get there; and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that I bide at home and don't go at all."

"I hardly blame Thomasin Yeobright and neighbour Wildeve for doing it quiet, if I must own it. A wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour; and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty." "True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth your victuals."

Thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no shoulders, and a great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond his clothes, advanced a step or two by his own will, and was pushed by the will of others half a dozen steps more. He was Grandfer Cantle's youngest son.

'Tis a sad thing for ye, Christian. How'st know the women won't hae thee?" "I've asked 'em." "Sure I should never have thought you had the face. Well, and what did the last one say to ye? Nothing that can't be got over, perhaps, after all?" "'Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' was the woman's words to me." "Not encouraging, I own," said Fairway. "'Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maph-rotight fool,' is rather a hard way of saying No. But even that might be overcome by time and patience, so as to let a few grey hairs show themselves in the hussy's head. How old be you, Christian?" "Thirty-one last tatie-digging, Mister Fair-way."

She was a woman noisily constructed; in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather and in dry, to pre-serve her boots from wear; and when Fairway began to jump about with her, the clicking of the pattens, the creaking of the stays, and her screams of surprise, formed a very audible concert.

"Lord's sake, I thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble us? No slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain't bad-looking in the groundwork, though the finish is queer. My meaning is just to say how curious I felt. I half thought it 'twas the devil or the red ghost the boy told of."

a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel. Her face, encom-passed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed white-ly, and with-out half-lights, like a cameo. She was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features of the type usually found where perspi-cacity is the chief quality enthroned within. At moments she seemed to be regarding issues from a Nebo denied to others around. She had something of an estranged mien; the solitude exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that had risen from it. The air with which she looked at the heathmen betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what might be their opinions of her for walking in that lonely spot at such an hour, thus indirectly implying that in some respect or other they were not up to her level. The explanation lay in the fact that though her husband had been a small farmer she herself was a curate's daughter, who had once dreamt of doing better things.

Persons with any weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits; and the matron who entered now upon the scene could, and usually did, bring her own tone into a company. Her normal manner among the heathfolk had that reticence which results from the consciousness of superior communicative power.

"Is that you, Christian?" said Mrs. Yeo-bright. "What made you hide away from me?" "'Twas that I didn't know you in this light, mis'ess; and being a man of the mournfullest make, I was scared a little, that's all. Oftentimes if you could see how ter-rible down I get in my mind, 'twould make 'ee quite nervous for fear I should die by my hand."

Olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely, was saved by her very simplic-ity from rendering them offensive. Questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with impunity. This accounted for Mrs. Yeobright's acquiescence in the revival of an evidently sore subject.

"She's not there." "How do you know?" "Because she's here. She's in my van," he added slowly. "What new trouble has come?" murmured Mrs. Yeobright, putting her hand over her eyes. "I can't explain much, ma'am. All I know is that, as I was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of Anglebury, I heard something trotting after me like a doe, and looking round there she was, white as death itself. 'Oh, Diggory Venn!' she said, 'I thought 'twas you—will you help me? I am in trouble.'"

A fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. It was be-tween pretty and beautiful.

and they turned towards the inn, known in the neigh-bourhood as the Quiet Woman, the sign of which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her arm, be-neath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known to frequenters of the inn:— SINCE THE WOMAN'S QUIET LET NO MAN BREED A RIOT.(1) (1) The inn which really bore this sign and legend stood some miles to the northwest of the present scene, wherein the house more immediately referred to is now no longer an inn; and the surroundings are much changed. But another inn, some of whose features are also embodied in this description, the RED LION at Winfrith, still remains as a haven for the wayfarer (1912).

Eustacia sighed—it was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh which shook her like a shiver. Whenever a flash of reason darted like an electric light upon her lover—as it sometimes would—and showed his imperfections, she shi-vered thus. But it was over in a second, and she loved on. She knew that he trifled with her; but she loved on. She scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and up to her bedroom without a light. Amid the rustles which denoted her to be undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths fre-quently came; and the same kind of shudder occasionally moved through her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her bed asleep.

She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman.

Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, she had handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now.

But celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon. Her power was limited, and the conscious-ness of this limitation had biassed her development. Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto.

"Nothing can em-bellish a beautiful face more than a narrow band drawn over the brow," says Richter.

The next day was passed in mere mechani-cal deeds of preparation, both the women being anxious to immerse themselves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation. Some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew for Thomasin, and remarks on domestic de-tails were frequently made, so as to obscure any inner mis-givings about her future as Wildeve's wife.

The sun, where it could catch it, made a mirror of Thomasin's hair, which she always wore braided. It was braided according to a calendar sys-tem—the more important the day the more numerous the strands in the braid. On ordinary working-days she braided it in threes; on ordinary Sundays in fours; at Maypolings, gip-syings, and the like, she braided it in fives. Years ago she had said that when she married she would braid it in sevens. She had braided it in sevens today.

I thought I would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story when the sky was clear." "You are a practical little woman," said Mrs. Yeobright, smiling. "I wish you and he—no, I don't wish anything. There, it is nine o'clock,"

There, I don't believe in old superstitions, but I'll do it." She threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again. A few steps further, and she looked back. "Did you call me, Aunt?" she tremulously inquired.

Then Mrs. Yeobright saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley—a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope.

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."

"Tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!"

"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."

"Clym," said his mother with firmness, "I have no proofs against her, unfortunately. But if she makes you a good wife, there has never been a bad one."

"Mother," said Clym, "whatever you do, you will always be dear to me—that you know. But one thing I have a right to say, which is, that at my age I am old enough to know what is best for me." Mrs. Yeobright remained for some time silent and shaken, as if she could say no more. Then she rep-lied, "Best? Is it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? Don't you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you? You give up your whole thought—you set your whole soul—to please a woman." "I do. And that woman is you."

"You are unnatural, Clym, and I did not expect it." "Very likely," said he cheerlessly. "You did not know the measure you were going to mete me, and there-fore did not know the measure that would be returned to you again."

If you wished to connect yourself with an unworthy person why did you come home here to do it? Why didn't you do it in Par-is?—it is more the fashion there.

I wish that you would bestow your presence where you bestow your love!" Clym said huskily, "You are my mother. I will say no more—beyond this, that I beg your pardon for having thought this my home. I will no longer inflict myself upon you; I'll go." And he went out with tears in his eyes.

Clym took the hand which was already bared for him—it was a favourite way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand—and led her through the ferns.

All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. There was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. When she was musing she was a kestrel, which hangs in the air by an invisible motion of its wings. When she was in a high wind her light body was blown against trees and banks like a heron's. When she was frightened she darted noiselessly like a kingfisher. When she was serene she skimmed like a swallow, and that is how she was moving now.

Clym and I have not parted in anger; we have parted in a worse way. It is not a passionate quarrel that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and persistence in going wrong that he has shown. O Thomasin, he was so good as a little boy—so tender and kind!"

Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?

To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was Wildeve's nature always.

Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that may be the case here."

To probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure.

He locked up the house and went out into the green patch which merged in heather further on. In front of the white garden-palings the path branched into three like a broad arrow. The road to the right led to the Quiet Woman and its neighbourhood; the middle track led to Mistover Knap; the left-hand track led over the hill to another part of Mistover, where the child lived. On inclining into the latter path Yeobright felt a creeping chilliness, familiar enough to most people, and probably caused by the unsunned morning air. In after days he thought of it as a thing of singular significance.

Before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following letter:— MY DEAR EUSTACIA,—I must obey my heart without consulting my reason too closely. Will you come back to me? Do so, and the past shall never be men-tioned.