The Return of the Native

1--Tidings of the Comer

On the fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certainephemeral operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling way, themajestic calm of Egdon Heath. They were activities which, beside thoseof a town, a village, or even a farm, would have appeared as the fermentof stagnation merely, a creeping of the flesh of somnolence. But here,away from comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which merewalking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man could imaginehimself to be Adam without the least difficulty, they attracted theattention of every bird within eyeshot, every reptile not yet asleep,and set the surrounding rabbits curiously watching from hillocks at asafe distance.

The performance was that of bringing together and building into a stackthe furze faggots which Humphrey had been cutting for the captain'suse during the foregoing fine days. The stack was at the end of thedwelling, and the men engaged in building it were Humphrey and Sam, theold man looking on.

It was a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the wintersolstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused thehour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here toremind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of thesky as a dial. In the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advancedits quarters from northeast to southeast, sunset had receded fromnorthwest to southwest; but Egdon had hardly heeded the change.

Eustacia was indoors in the dining-room, which was really more like akitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chimney-corner. The air wasstill, and while she lingered a moment here alone sounds of voices inconversation came to her ears directly down the chimney. She enteredthe recess, and, listening, looked up the old irregular shaft, with itscavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on its way to thesquare bit of sky at the top, from which the daylight struck down with apallid glare upon the tatters of soot draping the flue as seaweed drapesa rocky fissure.

She remembered: the furze-stack was not far from the chimney, and thevoices were those of the workers.

Her grandfather joined in the conversation. ”That lad ought never tohave left home. His father's occupation would have suited him best, andthe boy should have followed on. I don't believe in these new moves infamilies. My father was a sailor, so was I, and so should my son havebeen if I had had one.”

”The place he's been living at is Paris,” said Humphrey, ”and they tellme 'tis where the king's head was cut off years ago. My poor mother usedto tell me about that business. 'Hummy,' she used to say, 'I was a youngmaid then, and as I was at home ironing Mother's caps one afternoon theparson came in and said, ”They've cut the king's head off, Jane; andwhat 'twill be next God knows.”'”

”A good many of us knew as well as He before long,” said the captain,chuckling. ”I lived seven years under water on account of it in myboyhood--in that damned surgery of the Triumph, seeing men brought downto the cockpit with their legs and arms blown to Jericho.... And so theyoung man has settled in Paris. Manager to a diamond merchant, or somesuch thing, is he not?”

”Yes, sir, that's it. 'Tis a blazing great business that he belongs to,so I've heard his mother say--like a king's palace, as far as dimentsgo.”

”I can well mind when he left home,” said Sam.

”'Tis a good thing for the feller,” said Humphrey. ”A sight of timesbetter to be selling diments than nobbling about here.”

”It must cost a good few shillings to deal at such a place.”

”A good few indeed, my man,” replied the captain. ”Yes, you may makeaway with a deal of money and be neither drunkard nor glutton.”

”They say, too, that Clym Yeobright is become a real perusing man, withthe strangest notions about things. There, that's because he went toschool early, such as the school was.”

”Strange notions, has he?” said the old man. ”Ah, there's too much ofthat sending to school in these days! It only does harm. Every gatepostand barn's door you come to is sure to have some bad word or otherchalked upon it by the young rascals--a woman can hardly pass for shamesometimes. If they'd never been taught how to write they wouldn't havebeen able to scribble such villainy. Their fathers couldn't do it, andthe country was all the better for it.”

”Now, I should think, Cap'n, that Miss Eustacia had about as much in herhead that comes from books as anybody about here?”

”Perhaps if Miss Eustacia, too, had less romantic nonsense in her headit would be better for her,” said the captain shortly; after which hewalked away.

”I say, Sam,” observed Humphrey when the old man was gone, ”she and ClymYeobright would make a very pretty pigeon-pair--hey? If they wouldn'tI'll be dazed! Both of one mind about niceties for certain, and learnedin print, and always thinking about high doctrine--there couldn't be abetter couple if they were made o' purpose. Clym's family is as good ashers. His father was a farmer, that's true; but his mother was a sortof lady, as we know. Nothing would please me better than to see them twoman and wife.”

”They'd look very natty, arm-in-crook together, and their best clotheson, whether or no, if he's at all the well-favoured fellow he used tobe.”

”They would, Humphrey. Well, I should like to see the chap terrible muchafter so many years. If I knew for certain when he was coming I'd strollout three or four miles to meet him and help carry anything for'n;though I suppose he's altered from the boy he was. They say he can talkFrench as fast as a maid can eat blackberries; and if so, depend upon itwe who have stayed at home shall seem no more than scroff in his eyes.”

”Coming across the water to Budmouth by steamer, isn't he?”

”Yes; but how he's coming from Budmouth I don't know.”

”That's a bad trouble about his cousin Thomasin. I wonder such anice-notioned fellow as Clym likes to come home into it. What anunnywatch we were in, to be sure, when we heard they weren't marriedat all, after singing to 'em as man and wife that night! Be dazed ifI should like a relation of mine to have been made such a fool of by aman. It makes the family look small.”

”Yes. Poor maid, her heart has ached enough about it. Her health issuffering from it, I hear, for she will bide entirely indoors. We neversee her out now, scampering over the furze with a face as red as a rose,as she used to do.”

”I've heard she wouldn't have Wildeve now if he asked her.”

”You have? 'Tis news to me.”

While the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus Eustacia'sface gradually bent to the hearth in a profound reverie, her toeunconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay burning at her feet.

The subject of their discourse had been keenly interesting to her. Ayoung and clever man was coming into that lonely heath from, of allcontrasting places in the world, Paris. It was like a man coming fromheaven. More singular still, the heathmen had instinctively coupled herand this man together in their minds as a pair born for each other.

That five minutes of overhearing furnished Eustacia with visions enoughto fill the whole blank afternoon. Such sudden alternations from mentalvacuity do sometimes occur thus quietly. She could never have believedin the morning that her colourless inner world would before night becomeas animated as water under a microscope, and that without the arrival ofa single visitor. The words of Sam and Humphrey on the harmony betweenthe unknown and herself had on her mind the effect of the invadingBard's prelude in the Castle of Indolence, at which myriads ofimprisoned shapes arose where had previously appeared the stillness of avoid.

Involved in these imaginings she knew nothing of time. When she becameconscious of externals it was dusk. The furze-rick was finished; the menhad gone home. Eustacia went upstairs, thinking that she would take awalk at this her usual time; and she determined that her walk should bein the direction of Blooms-End, the birthplace of young Yeobright andthe present home of his mother. She had no reason for walking elsewhere,and why should she not go that way? The scene of the daydream issufficient for a pilgrimage at nineteen. To look at the palings beforethe Yeobrights' house had the dignity of a necessary performance.Strange that such a piece of idling should have seemed an importanterrand.

She put on her bonnet, and, leaving the house, descended the hill on theside towards Blooms-End, where she walked slowly along the valley for adistance of a mile and a half. This brought her to a spot in which thegreen bottom of the dale began to widen, the furze bushes to recedeyet further from the path on each side, till they were diminished toan isolated one here and there by the increasing fertility of the soil.Beyond the irregular carpet of grass was a row of white palings, whichmarked the verge of the heath in this latitude. They showed upon thedusky scene that they bordered as distinctly as white lace on velvet.Behind the white palings was a little garden; behind the garden an old,irregular, thatched house, facing the heath, and commanding a full viewof the valley. This was the obscure, removed spot to which was aboutto return a man whose latter life had been passed in the Frenchcapital--the centre and vortex of the fashionable world.