The Return of the Native

8--Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers

While the effigy of Eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fair womanherself was standing on Rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of desolationseldom plumbed by one so young, Yeobright sat lonely at Blooms-End.He had fulfilled his word to Thomasin by sending off Fairway with theletter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience for somesound or signal of her return. Were Eustacia still at Mistover the veryleast he expected was that she would send him back a reply tonight bythe same hand; though, to leave all to her inclination, he had cautionedFairway not to ask for an answer. If one were handed to him he wasto bring it immediately; if not, he was to go straight home withouttroubling to come round to Blooms-End again that night.

But secretly Clym had a more pleasing hope. Eustacia might possiblydecline to use her pen--it was rather her way to work silently--andsurprise him by appearing at his door. How fully her mind was made up todo otherwise he did not know.

To Clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the evening advanced.The wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house, and fillipedthe eavesdroppings like peas against the panes. He walked restlesslyabout the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows anddoors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements and crevices,and pressing together the leadwork of the quarries where it had becomeloosened from the glass. It was one of those nights when cracks in thewalls of old churches widen, when ancient stains on the ceilings ofdecayed manor houses are renewed and enlarged from the size of a man'shand to an area of many feet. The little gate in the palings beforehis dwelling continually opened and clicked together again, but when helooked out eagerly nobody was there; it was as if invisible shapes ofthe dead were passing in on their way to visit him.

Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither Fairway nor anybodyelse came to him, he retired to rest, and despite his anxieties soonfell asleep. His sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of theexpectancy he had given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knockingwhich began at the door about an hour after. Clym arose and looked outof the window. Rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse ofheath before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour. It was toodark to see anything at all.

”Who's there?” he cried.

Light footsteps shifted their position in the porch, and he could justdistinguish in a plaintive female voice the words, ”O Clym, come downand let me in!”

He flushed hot with agitation. ”Surely it is Eustacia!” he murmured. Ifso, she had indeed come to him unawares.

He hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down. On his flingingopen the door the rays of the candle fell upon a woman closely wrappedup, who at once came forward.

”Thomasin!” he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of disappointment. ”Itis Thomasin, and on such a night as this! O, where is Eustacia?”

Thomasin it was, wet, frightened, and panting.

”Eustacia? I don't know, Clym; but I can think,” she said with muchperturbation. ”Let me come in and rest--I will explain this. There is agreat trouble brewing--my husband and Eustacia!”

”What, what?”

”I think my husband is going to leave me or do something dreadful--Idon't know what--Clym, will you go and see? I have nobody to help me butyou; Eustacia has not yet come home?”

”No.”

She went on breathlessly: ”Then they are going to run off together! Hecame indoors tonight about eight o'clock and said in an off-hand way,'Tamsie, I have just found that I must go a journey.' 'When?' Isaid. 'Tonight,' he said. 'Where?' I asked him. 'I cannot tell you atpresent,' he said; 'I shall be back again tomorrow.' He then went andbusied himself in looking up his things, and took no notice of me atall. I expected to see him start, but he did not, and then it came tobe ten o'clock, when he said, 'You had better go to bed.' I didn't knowwhat to do, and I went to bed. I believe he thought I fell asleep, forhalf an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak chest we keepmoney in when we have much in the house and took out a roll of somethingwhich I believe was banknotes, though I was not aware that he had 'emthere. These he must have got from the bank when he went there the otherday. What does he want banknotes for, if he is only going off for a day?When he had gone down I thought of Eustacia, and how he had met her thenight before--I know he did meet her, Clym, for I followed him part ofthe way; but I did not like to tell you when you called, and so make youthink ill of him, as I did not think it was so serious. Then I could notstay in bed; I got up and dressed myself, and when I heard him out inthe stable I thought I would come and tell you. So I came downstairswithout any noise and slipped out.”

”Then he was not absolutely gone when you left?”

”No. Will you, dear Cousin Clym, go and try to persuade him not to go?He takes no notice of what I say, and puts me off with the story of hisgoing on a journey, and will be home tomorrow, and all that; but I don'tbelieve it. I think you could influence him.”

”I'll go,” said Clym. ”O, Eustacia!”

Thomasin carried in her arms a large bundle; and having by this timeseated herself she began to unroll it, when a baby appeared as thekernel to the husks--dry, warm, and unconscious of travel or roughweather. Thomasin briefly kissed the baby, and then found time to begincrying as she said, ”I brought baby, for I was afraid what might happento her. I suppose it will be her death, but I couldn't leave her withRachel!”

Clym hastily put together the logs on the hearth, raked abroad theembers, which were scarcely yet extinct, and blew up a flame with thebellows.

”Dry yourself,” he said. ”I'll go and get some more wood.”

”No, no--don't stay for that. I'll make up the fire. Will you go atonce--please will you?”

Yeobright ran upstairs to finish dressing himself. While he was goneanother rapping came to the door. This time there was no delusion thatit might be Eustacia's--the footsteps just preceding it had been heavyand slow. Yeobright thinking it might possibly be Fairway with a note inanswer, descended again and opened the door.

”Captain Vye?” he said to a dripping figure.

”Is my granddaughter here?” said the captain.

”No.”

”Then where is she?”.

”I don't know.”

”But you ought to know--you are her husband.”

”Only in name apparently,” said Clym with rising excitement. ”I believeshe means to elope tonight with Wildeve. I am just going to look to it.”

”Well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour ago. Who'ssitting there?”

”My cousin Thomasin.”

The captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her. ”I only hope it is noworse than an elopement,” he said.

”Worse? What's worse than the worst a wife can do?”

”Well, I have been told a strange tale. Before starting in search of herI called up Charley, my stable lad. I missed my pistols the other day.”

”Pistols?”

”He said at the time that he took them down to clean. He has now ownedthat he took them because he saw Eustacia looking curiously at them; andshe afterwards owned to him that she was thinking of taking her life,but bound him to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thingagain. I hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use oneof them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind; and people whothink of that sort of thing once think of it again.”

”Where are the pistols?”

”Safely locked up. O no, she won't touch them again. But there aremore ways of letting out life than through a bullet-hole. What did youquarrel about so bitterly with her to drive her to all this? You musthave treated her badly indeed. Well, I was always against the marriage,and I was right.”

”Are you going with me?” said Yeobright, paying no attention to thecaptain's latter remark. ”If so I can tell you what we quarrelled aboutas we walk along.”

”Where to?”

”To Wildeve's--that was her destination, depend upon it.”

Thomasin here broke in, still weeping: ”He said he was only going on asudden short journey; but if so why did he want so much money? O, Clym,what do you think will happen? I am afraid that you, my poor baby, willsoon have no father left to you!”

”I am off now,” said Yeobright, stepping into the porch.

”I would fain go with 'ee,” said the old man doubtfully. ”But I begin tobe afraid that my legs will hardly carry me there such a night as this.I am not so young as I was. If they are interrupted in their flightshe will be sure to come back to me, and I ought to be at the house toreceive her. But be it as 'twill I can't walk to the Quiet Woman, andthat's an end on't. I'll go straight home.”

”It will perhaps be best,” said Clym. ”Thomasin, dry yourself, and be ascomfortable as you can.”

With this he closed the door upon her, and left the house in companywith Captain Vye, who parted from him outside the gate, taking themiddle path, which led to Mistover. Clym crossed by the right-hand tracktowards the inn.

Thomasin, being left alone, took off some of her wet garments, carriedthe baby upstairs to Clym's bed, and then came down to the sitting-roomagain, where she made a larger fire, and began drying herself. The firesoon flared up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfortthat was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without,which snapped at the windowpanes and breathed into the chimney strangelow utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy.

But the least part of Thomasin was in the house, for her heart being atease about the little girl upstairs she was mentally following Clym onhis journey. Having indulged in this imaginary peregrination forsome considerable interval, she became impressed with a sense of theintolerable slowness of time. But she sat on. The moment then came whenshe could scarcely sit longer, and it was like a satire on her patienceto remember that Clym could hardly have reached the inn as yet. At lastshe went to the baby's bedside. The child was sleeping soundly; but herimagination of possibly disastrous events at her home, the predominancewithin her of the unseen over the seen, agitated her beyond endurance.She could not refrain from going down and opening the door. The rainstill continued, the candlelight falling upon the nearest drops andmaking glistening darts of them as they descended across the throng ofinvisible ones behind. To plunge into that medium was to plunge intowater slightly diluted with air. But the difficulty of returning toher house at this moment made her all the more desirous of doingso--anything was better than suspense. ”I have come here well enough,”she said, ”and why shouldn't I go back again? It is a mistake for me tobe away.”

She hastily fetched the infant, wrapped it up, cloaked herself asbefore, and shoveling the ashes over the fire, to prevent accidents,went into the open air. Pausing first to put the door key in itsold place behind the shutter, she resolutely turned her face to theconfronting pile of firmamental darkness beyond the palings, and steppedinto its midst. But Thomasin's imagination being so actively engagedelsewhere, the night and the weather had for her no terror beyond thatof their actual discomfort and difficulty.

She was soon ascending Blooms-End valley and traversing the undulationson the side of the hill. The noise of the wind over the heath wasshrill, and as if it whistled for joy at finding a night so congenial asthis. Sometimes the path led her to hollows between thickets of talland dripping bracken, dead, though not yet prostrate, which enclosed herlike a pool. When they were more than usually tall she lifted the babyto the top of her head, that it might be out of the reach of theirdrenching fronds. On higher ground, where the wind was brisk andsustained, the rain flew in a level flight without sensible descent, sothat it was beyond all power to imagine the remoteness of the pointat which it left the bosoms of the clouds. Here self-defence wasimpossible, and individual drops stuck into her like the arrows intoSaint Sebastian. She was enabled to avoid puddles by the nebulouspaleness which signified their presence, though beside anything lessdark than the heath they themselves would have appeared as blackness.

Yet in spite of all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started.To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malicein every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were notscorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever,but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, herdislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her viewa windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort,lose the path without care, and possibly catch cold.

If the path is well known the difficulty at such times of keepingtherein is not altogether great, from its familiar feel to the feet; butonce lost it is irrecoverable. Owing to her baby, who somewhat impededThomasin's view forward and distracted her mind, she did at last losethe track. This mishap occurred when she was descending an open slopeabout two-thirds home. Instead of attempting, by wandering hither andthither, the hopeless task of finding such a mere thread, she wentstraight on, trusting for guidance to her general knowledge of thecontours, which was scarcely surpassed by Clym's or by that of theheath-croppers themselves.

At length Thomasin reached a hollow and began to discern through therain a faint blotted radiance, which presently assumed the oblong formof an open door. She knew that no house stood hereabouts, and was soonaware of the nature of the door by its height above the ground.

”Why, it is Diggory Venn's van, surely!” she said.

A certain secluded spot near Rainbarrow was, she knew, often Venn'schosen centre when staying in this neighbourhood; and she guessed atonce that she had stumbled upon this mysterious retreat. The questionarose in her mind whether or not she should ask him to guide her intothe path. In her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would appealto him, notwithstanding the strangeness of appearing before his eyes atthis place and season. But when, in pursuance of this resolve, Thomasinreached the van and looked in she found it to be untenanted; thoughthere was no doubt that it was the reddleman's. The fire was burning inthe stove, the lantern hung from the nail. Round the doorway the floorwas merely sprinkled with rain, and not saturated, which told her thatthe door had not long been opened.

While she stood uncertainly looking in Thomasin heard a footstepadvancing from the darkness behind her, and turning, beheld thewell-known form in corduroy, lurid from head to foot, the lantern beamsfalling upon him through an intervening gauze of raindrops.

”I thought you went down the slope,” he said, without noticing her face.”How do you come back here again?”

”Diggory?” said Thomasin faintly.

”Who are you?” said Venn, still unperceiving. ”And why were you cryingso just now?”

”O, Diggory! don't you know me?” said she. ”But of course you don't,wrapped up like this. What do you mean? I have not been crying here, andI have not been here before.”

Venn then came nearer till he could see the illuminated side of herform.

”Mrs. Wildeve!” he exclaimed, starting. ”What a time for us to meet!And the baby too! What dreadful thing can have brought you out on such anight as this?”

She could not immediately answer; and without asking her permission hehopped into his van, took her by the arm, and drew her up after him.

”What is it?” he continued when they stood within.

”I have lost my way coming from Blooms-End, and I am in a great hurry toget home. Please show me as quickly as you can! It is so silly of me notto know Egdon better, and I cannot think how I came to lose the path.Show me quickly, Diggory, please.”

”Yes, of course. I will go with 'ee. But you came to me before this,Mrs. Wildeve?”

”I only came this minute.”

”That's strange. I was lying down here asleep about five minutes ago,with the door shut to keep out the weather, when the brushing of awoman's clothes over the heath-bushes just outside woke me up, for Idon't sleep heavy, and at the same time I heard a sobbing or crying fromthe same woman. I opened my door and held out my lantern, and just asfar as the light would reach I saw a woman; she turned her head whenthe light sheened on her, and then hurried on downhill. I hung up thelantern, and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her a fewsteps, but I could see nothing of her any more. That was where I hadbeen when you came up; and when I saw you I thought you were the sameone.”

”Perhaps it was one of the heathfolk going home?”

”No, it couldn't be. 'Tis too late. The noise of her gown over the he'thwas of a whistling sort that nothing but silk will make.”

”It wasn't I, then. My dress is not silk, you see.... Are we anywhere ina line between Mistover and the inn?”

”Well, yes; not far out.”

”Ah, I wonder if it was she! Diggory, I must go at once!”

She jumped down from the van before he was aware, when Venn unhooked thelantern and leaped down after her. ”I'll take the baby, ma'am,” he said.”You must be tired out by the weight.”

Thomasin hesitated a moment, and then delivered the baby into Venn'shands. ”Don't squeeze her, Diggory,” she said, ”or hurt her little arm;and keep the cloak close over her like this, so that the rain may notdrop in her face.”

”I will,” said Venn earnestly. ”As if I could hurt anything belonging toyou!”

”I only meant accidentally,” said Thomasin.

”The baby is dry enough, but you are pretty wet,” said the reddlemanwhen, in closing the door of his cart to padlock it, he noticed on thefloor a ring of water drops where her cloak had hung from her.

Thomasin followed him as he wound right and left to avoid the largerbushes, stopping occasionally and covering the lantern, while he lookedover his shoulder to gain some idea of the position of Rainbarrow abovethem, which it was necessary to keep directly behind their backs topreserve a proper course.

”You are sure the rain does not fall upon baby?”

”Quite sure. May I ask how old he is, ma'am?”

”He!” said Thomasin reproachfully. ”Anybody can see better than that ina moment. She is nearly two months old. How far is it now to the inn?”

”A little over a quarter of a mile.”

”Will you walk a little faster?”

”I was afraid you could not keep up.”

”I am very anxious to get there. Ah, there is a light from the window!”

”'Tis not from the window. That's a gig-lamp, to the best of my belief.”

”O!” said Thomasin in despair. ”I wish I had been there sooner--give methe baby, Diggory--you can go back now.”

”I must go all the way,” said Venn. ”There is a quag between us andthat light, and you will walk into it up to your neck unless I take youround.”

”But the light is at the inn, and there is no quag in front of that.”

”No, the light is below the inn some two or three hundred yards.”

”Never mind,” said Thomasin hurriedly. ”Go towards the light, and nottowards the inn.”

”Yes,” answered Venn, swerving round in obedience; and, after a pause,”I wish you would tell me what this great trouble is. I think you haveproved that I can be trusted.”

”There are some things that cannot be--cannot be told to--” And then herheart rose into her throat, and she could say no more.