"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."