The Return of the Native
2--A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding
Clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. His strengthreturned, and a month after the visit of Thomasin he might have beenseen walking about the garden. Endurance and despair, equanimity andgloom, the tints of health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdlyin his face. He was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past thatrelated to his mother; and though Eustacia knew that he was thinkingof it none the less, she was only too glad to escape the topic ever tobring it up anew. When his mind had been weaker his heart had led him tospeak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank intotaciturnity.
One evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedlyspudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner ofthe house and came up to him.
Christian, isn't it? said Clym. I am glad you have found me out. Ishall soon want you to go to Blooms-End and assist me in putting thehouse in order. I suppose it is all locked up as I left it?
Yes, Mister Clym.
Have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?
Yes, without a drop o' rain, thank God. But I was coming to tell 'ee ofsomething else which is quite different from what we have lately had inthe family. I am sent by the rich gentleman at the Woman, that we usedto call the landlord, to tell 'ee that Mrs. Wildeve is doing well of agirl, which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon, or a few minutesmore or less; and 'tis said that expecting of this increase is what havekept 'em there since they came into their money.
And she is getting on well, you say?
Yes, sir. Only Mr. Wildeve is twanky because 'tisn't a boy--that's whatthey say in the kitchen, but I was not supposed to notice that.
Christian, now listen to me.
Yes, sure, Mr. Yeobright.
Did you see my mother the day before she died?
No, I did not.
Yeobright's face expressed disappointment.
But I zeed her the morning of the same day she died.
Clym's look lighted up. That's nearer still to my meaning, he said.
Yes, I know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'I be going to see him,Christian; so I shall not want any vegetables brought in for dinner.'
See whom?
See you. She was going to your house, you understand.
Yeobright regarded Christian with intense surprise. Why did you nevermention this? he said. Are you sure it was my house she was comingto?
O yes. I didn't mention it because I've never zeed you lately. And asshe didn't get there it was all nought, and nothing to tell.
And I have been wondering why she should have walked in the heath onthat hot day! Well, did she say what she was coming for? It is a thing,Christian, I am very anxious to know.
Yes, Mister Clym. She didn't say it to me, though I think she did toone here and there.
Do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?
There is one man, please, sir, but I hope you won't mention my nameto him, as I have seen him in strange places, particular in dreams. Onenight last summer he glared at me like Famine and Sword, and it mademe feel so low that I didn't comb out my few hairs for two days. He wasstanding, as it might be, Mister Yeobright, in the middle of the path toMistover, and your mother came up, looking as pale--
Yes, when was that?
Last summer, in my dream.
Pooh! Who's the man?
Diggory, the reddleman. He called upon her and sat with her the eveningbefore she set out to see you. I hadn't gone home from work when he cameup to the gate.
I must see Venn--I wish I had known it before, said Clym anxiously. Iwonder why he has not come to tell me?
He went out of Egdon Heath the next day, so would not be likely to knowyou wanted him.
Christian, said Clym, you must go and find Venn. I am otherwiseengaged, or I would go myself. Find him at once, and tell him I want tospeak to him.
I am a good hand at hunting up folk by day, said Christian, lookingdubiously round at the declining light; but as to night-time, never issuch a bad hand as I, Mister Yeobright.
Search the heath when you will, so that you bring him soon. Bring himtomorrow, if you can.
Christian then departed. The morrow came, but no Venn. In the eveningChristian arrived, looking very weary. He had been searching all day,and had heard nothing of the reddleman.
Inquire as much as you can tomorrow without neglecting your work, saidYeobright. Don't come again till you have found him.
The next day Yeobright set out for the old house at Blooms-End, which,with the garden, was now his own. His severe illness had hindered allpreparations for his removal thither; but it had become necessary thathe should go and overlook its contents, as administrator to his mother'slittle property; for which purpose he decided to pass the next night onthe premises.
He journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in the slow walkof one who has been awakened from a stupefying sleep. It was earlyafternoon when he reached the valley. The expression of the place, thetone of the hour, were precisely those of many such occasions in daysgone by; and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusion thatshe, who was there no longer, would come out to welcome him. The gardengate was locked and the shutters were closed, just as he himself hadleft them on the evening after the funeral. He unlocked the gate, andfound that a spider had already constructed a large web, tying the doorto the lintel, on the supposition that it was never to be opened again.When he had entered the house and flung back the shutters he set abouthis task of overhauling the cupboards and closets, burning papers, andconsidering how best to arrange the place for Eustacia's reception,until such time as he might be in a position to carry out hislong-delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive.
As he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined for thealterations which would have to be made in the time-honoured furnishingof his parents and grandparents, to suit Eustacia's modern ideas. Thegaunt oak-cased clock, with the picture of the Ascension on thedoor panel and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes on the base; hisgrandmother's corner cupboard with the glass door, through which thespotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea trays; thehanging fountain with the brass tap--whither would these venerablearticles have to be banished?
He noticed that the flowers in the window had died for want of water,and he placed them out upon the ledge, that they might be taken away.While thus engaged he heard footsteps on the gravel without, andsomebody knocked at the door.
Yeobright opened it, and Venn was standing before him.
Good morning, said the reddleman. Is Mrs. Yeobright at home?
Yeobright looked upon the ground. Then you have not seen Christian orany of the Egdon folks? he said.
No. I have only just returned after a long stay away. I called here theday before I left.
And you have heard nothing?
Nothing.
My mother is--dead.
Dead! said Venn mechanically.
Her home now is where I shouldn't mind having mine.
Venn regarded him, and then said, If I didn't see your face I couldnever believe your words. Have you been ill?
I had an illness.
Well, the change! When I parted from her a month ago everything seemedto say that she was going to begin a new life.
And what seemed came true.
You say right, no doubt. Trouble has taught you a deeper vein of talkthan mine. All I meant was regarding her life here. She has died toosoon.
Perhaps through my living too long. I have had a bitter experience onthat score this last month, Diggory. But come in; I have been wanting tosee you.
He conducted the reddleman into the large room where the dancing hadtaken place the previous Christmas, and they sat down in the settletogether. There's the cold fireplace, you see, said Clym. When thathalf-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little hasbeen changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creeps like a snail.
How came she to die? said Venn.
Yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness and death, andcontinued: After this no kind of pain will ever seem more than anindisposition to me. I began saying that I wanted to ask you something,but I stray from subjects like a drunken man. I am anxious to know whatmy mother said to you when she last saw you. You talked with her a longtime, I think?
I talked with her more than half an hour.
About me?
Yes. And it must have been on account of what we said that she was onthe heath. Without question she was coming to see you.
But why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly against me?There's the mystery.
Yet I know she quite forgave 'ee.
But, Diggory--would a woman, who had quite forgiven her son, say,when she felt herself ill on the way to his house, that she wasbroken-hearted because of his ill-usage? Never!
What I know is that she didn't blame you at all. She blamed herself forwhat had happened, and only herself. I had it from her own lips.
You had it from her lips that I had NOT ill-treated her; and at thesame time another had it from her lips that I HAD ill-treated her? Mymother was no impulsive woman who changed her opinion every hour withoutreason. How can it be, Venn, that she should have told such differentstories in close succession?
I cannot say. It is certainly odd, when she had forgiven you, and hadforgiven your wife, and was going to see ye on purpose to make friends.
If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was thisincomprehensible thing!... Diggory, if we, who remain alive, were onlyallowed to hold conversation with the dead--just once, a bare minute,even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison--what wemight learn! How many who now ride smiling would hide their heads! Andthis mystery--I should then be at the bottom of it at once. But thegrave has forever shut her in; and how shall it be found out now?
No reply was returned by his companion, since none could be given; andwhen Venn left, a few minutes later, Clym had passed from the dullnessof sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude.
He continued in the same state all the afternoon. A bed was made up forhim in the same house by a neighbour, that he might not have to returnagain the next day; and when he retired to rest in the deserted place itwas only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the same thoughts. Howto discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed a query of moreimportance than highest problems of the living. There was housed in hismemory a vivid picture of the face of a little boy as he entered thehovel where Clym's mother lay. The round eyes, eager gaze, the pipingvoice which enunciated the words, had operated like stilettos on hisbrain.
A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning newparticulars; though it might be quite unproductive. To probe a child'smind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child hadseen and understood, but to get at those which were in their naturebeyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel isblocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There was nothing elseleft to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyssof undiscoverable things.
It was about daybreak when he had reached this decision, and he at oncearose. He locked up the house and went out into the green patch whichmerged in heather further on. In front of the white garden-palings thepath branched into three like a broad arrow. The road to the rightled to the Quiet Woman and its neighbourhood; the middle track led toMistover Knap; the left-hand track led over the hill to another partof Mistover, where the child lived. On inclining into the latter pathYeobright felt a creeping chilliness, familiar enough to most people,and probably caused by the unsunned morning air. In after days hethought of it as a thing of singular significance.
When Yeobright reached the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, the mother of theboy he sought, he found that the inmates were not yet astir. But inupland hamlets the transition from a-bed to abroad is surprisingly swiftand easy. There no dense partition of yawns and toilets divides humanityby night from humanity by day. Yeobright tapped at the upper windowsill,which he could reach with his walking stick; and in three or fourminutes the woman came down.
It was not till this moment that Clym recollected her to be the personwho had behaved so barbarously to Eustacia. It partly explained theinsuavity with which the woman greeted him. Moreover, the boy had beenailing again; and Susan now, as ever since the night when he hadbeen pressed into Eustacia's service at the bonfire, attributed hisindispositions to Eustacia's influence as a witch. It was one of thosesentiments which lurk like moles underneath the visible surface ofmanners, and may have been kept alive by Eustacia's entreaty to thecaptain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute Susan for thepricking in church, to let the matter drop; which he accordingly haddone.
Yeobright overcame his repugnance, for Susan had at least borne hismother no ill-will. He asked kindly for the boy; but her manner did notimprove.
I wish to see him, continued Yeobright, with some hesitation, to askhim if he remembers anything more of his walk with my mother than whathe has previously told.
She regarded him in a peculiar and criticizing manner. To anybody but ahalf-blind man it would have said, You want another of the knocks whichhave already laid you so low.
She called the boy downstairs, asked Clym to sit down on a stool, andcontinued, Now, Johnny, tell Mr. Yeobright anything you can call tomind.
You have not forgotten how you walked with the poor lady on that hotday? said Clym.
No, said the boy.
And what she said to you?
The boy repeated the exact words he had used on entering the hut.Yeobright rested his elbow on the table and shaded his face with hishand; and the mother looked as if she wondered how a man could want moreof what had stung him so deeply.
She was going to Alderworth when you first met her?
No; she was coming away.
That can't be.
Yes; she walked along with me. I was coming away, too.
Then where did you first see her?
At your house.
Attend, and speak the truth! said Clym sternly.
Yes, sir; at your house was where I seed her first.
Clym started up, and Susan smiled in an expectant way which did notembellish her face; it seemed to mean, Something sinister is coming!
What did she do at my house?
She went and sat under the trees at the Devil's Bellows.
Good God! this is all news to me!
You never told me this before? said Susan.
No, Mother; because I didn't like to tell 'ee I had been so far. I waspicking blackhearts, and went further than I meant.
What did she do then? said Yeobright.
Looked at a man who came up and went into your house.
That was myself--a furze-cutter, with brambles in his hand.
No; 'twas not you. 'Twas a gentleman. You had gone in afore.
Who was he?
I don't know.
Now tell me what happened next.
The poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the lady with blackhair looked out of the side window at her.
The boy's mother turned to Clym and said, This is something you didn'texpect?
Yeobright took no more notice of her than if he had been of stone. Goon, go on, he said hoarsely to the boy.
And when she saw the young lady look out of the window the old ladyknocked again; and when nobody came she took up the furze-hook andlooked at it, and put it down again, and then she looked at thefaggot-bonds; and then she went away, and walked across to me, andblowed her breath very hard, like this. We walked on together, she andI, and I talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much, becauseshe couldn't blow her breath.
O! murmured Clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head. Let's havemore, he said.
She couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her face was, O soqueer!
How was her face?
Like yours is now.
The woman looked at Yeobright, and beheld him colourless, in a coldsweat. Isn't there meaning in it? she said stealthily. What do youthink of her now?
Silence! said Clym fiercely. And, turning to the boy, And then youleft her to die?
No, said the woman, quickly and angrily. He did not leave her to die!She sent him away. Whoever says he forsook her says what's not true.
Trouble no more about that, answered Clym, with a quivering mouth.What he did is a trifle in comparison with what he saw. Door keptshut, did you say? Kept shut, she looking out of window? Good heart ofGod!--what does it mean?
The child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner.
He said so, answered the mother, and Johnny's a God-fearing boy andtells no lies.
'Cast off by my son!' No, by my best life, dear mother, it is not so!But by your son's, your son's--May all murderesses get the torment theydeserve!
With these words Yeobright went forth from the little dwelling. Thepupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness, were vaguely litwith an icy shine; his mouth had passed into the phase more or lessimaginatively rendered in studies of Oedipus. The strangest deeds werepossible to his mood. But they were not possible to his situation.Instead of there being before him the pale face of Eustacia, and amasculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenanceof the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries,reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildestturmoil of a single man.