The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (best e books to read txt) 📕

“Ah, yes; I have heard of it. I blush for my native Egdon. Was it a serious injury you received in church, Miss Vye?”

There was such an abundance of sympathy in Clym’s tone that Eustacia slowly drew up her sleeve and disclosed her round white arm. A bright red spot appeared on its smooth surface, like a ruby on Parian marble.

“There it is,” she said, putting her finger against the spot.

“It was dastardly of the woman,” said Clym. “Will not Captain Vye get her punished?”

“He is gone from home on that very business. I did not know that I had such a magic reputation.”

“And you fainted?” said Clym, looking at the scarlet little puncture as if he would like to kiss it and make it well.

“Yes, it frightened me. I had not been to church for a long time. And now I shall not go again for ever so long—perhaps never. I cannot face their eyes after this. Don’t you think it dreadfully humiliating? I wished I was dead for hours after, but I don’t mind now.”

“I have come to clean away these cobwebs,” said Yeobright. “Would you like to help me—by high-class teaching? We might benefit them much.”

“I don’t quite feel anxious to. I have not much love for my fellow-creatures. Sometimes I quite hate them.”

“Still I think that if you were to hear my scheme you might take an interest in it. There is no use in hating people—if you hate anything, you should hate what produced them.”

“Do you mean Nature? I hate her already. But I shall be glad to hear your scheme at any time.”

The situation had now worked itself out, and the next natural thing was for them to part. Clym knew this well enough, and Eustacia made a move of conclusion; yet he looked at her as if he had one word more to say. Perhaps if he had not lived in Paris it would never have been uttered.

“We have met before,” he said, regarding her with rather more interest than was necessary.

“I do not own it,” said Eustacia, with a repressed, still look.

“But I may think what I like.”

“Yes.”

“You are lonely here.”

“I cannot endure the heath, except in its purple season. The heath is a cruel taskmaster to me.”

“Can you say so?” he asked. “To my mind it is most exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. I would rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world.”

“It is well enough for artists; but I never would learn to draw.”

“And there is a very curious druidical stone just out there.” He threw a pebble in the direction signified. “Do you often go to see it?”

“I was not even aware there existed any such curious druidical stone. I am aware that there are boulevards in Paris.”

Yeobright looked thoughtfully on the ground. “That means much,” he said.

“It does indeed,” said Eustacia.

“I remember when I had the same longing for town bustle. Five years of a great city would be a perfect cure for that.”

“Heaven send me such a cure! Now, Mr. Yeobright, I will go indoors and plaster my wounded hand.”

They separated, and Eustacia vanished in the increasing shade. She seemed full of many things. Her past was a blank, her life had begun. The effect upon Clym of this meeting he did not fully discover till some time after. During his walk home his most intelligible sensation was that his scheme had somehow become glorified. A beautiful woman had been intertwined with it.

On reaching the house he went up to the room which was to be made his study, and occupied himself during the evening in unpacking his books from the boxes and arranging them on shelves. From another box he drew a lamp and a can of oil. He trimmed the lamp, arranged his table, and said, “Now, I am ready to begin.”

He rose early the next morning, read two hours before breakfast by the light of his lamp—read all the morning, all the afternoon. Just when the sun was going down his eyes felt weary, and he leant back in his chair.

His room overlooked the front of the premises and the valley of the heath beyond. The lowest beams of the winter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings, across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale, where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding tree-tops stretched forth in long dark prongs. Having been seated at work all day, he decided to take a turn upon the hills before it got dark; and, going out forthwith, he struck across the heath towards Mistover.

It was an hour and a half later when he again appeared at the garden gate. The shutters of the house were closed, and Christian Cantle, who had been wheeling manure about the garden all day, had gone home. On entering he found that his mother, after waiting a long time for him, had finished her meal.

“Where have you been, Clym?” she immediately said. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were going away at this time?”

“I have been on the heath.”

“You’ll meet Eustacia Vye if you go up there.”

Clym paused a minute. “Yes, I met her this evening,” he said, as though it were spoken under the sheer necessity of preserving honesty.

“I wondered if you had.”

“It was no appointment.”

“No; such meetings never are.”

“But you are not angry, Mother?”

“I can hardly say that I am not. Angry? No. But when I consider the usual nature of the drag which causes men of promise to disappoint the world I feel uneasy.”

“You deserve credit for the feeling, Mother. But I can assure you that you need not be disturbed by it on my account.”

“When I think of you and your new crotchets,” said Mrs. Yeobright, with some emphasis, “I naturally don’t feel so comfortable as I did a twelvemonth ago. It is incredible to me that a man accustomed to the attractive women of Paris and elsewhere should be so easily worked upon by a girl in a heath. You could just as well have walked another way.”

“I had been studying all day.”

“Well, yes,” she added more hopefully, “I have been thinking that you might get on as a schoolmaster, and rise that way, since you really are determined to hate the course you were pursuing.”

Yeobright was unwilling to disturb this idea, though his scheme was far enough removed from one wherein the education of youth should be made a mere channel of social ascent. He had no desires of that sort. He had reached the stage in a young man’s life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in England we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be.

The love between the young man and his mother was strangely invisible now. Of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful. It was so with these. Had conversations between them been overheard, people would have said, “How cold they are to each other!”

His theory and his wishes about devoting his future to teaching had made an impression on Mrs. Yeobright. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when he was a part of her—when their discourses were as if carried on between the right and the left hands of the same body? He had despaired of reaching her by argument; and it was almost as a discovery to him that he could reach her by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to yells.

Strangely enough he began to feel now that it would not be so hard to persuade her who was his best friend that comparative poverty was essentially the higher course for him, as to reconcile to his feelings the act of persuading her. From every provident point of view his mother was so undoubtedly right, that he was not without a sickness of heart in finding he could shake her.

She had a singular insight into life, considering that she had never mixed with it. There are instances of persons who, without clear ideas of the things they criticize have yet had clear ideas of the relations of those things. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.

What was the great world to Mrs. Yeobright? A multitude whose tendencies could be perceived, though not its essences. Communities were seen by her as from a distance; she saw them as we see the throngs which cover the canvases of Sallaert, Van Alsloot, and others of that school—vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in definite directions, but whose features are indistinguishable by the very comprehensiveness of the view.

One could see that, as far as it had gone, her life was very complete on its reflective side. The philosophy of her nature, and its limitation by circumstances, was almost written in her movements. They had a majestic foundation, though they were far from being majestic; and they had a groundwork of assurance, but they were not assured. As her once elastic walk had become deadened by time, so had her natural pride of life been hindered in its blooming by her necessities.

The next slight touch in the shaping of Clym’s destiny occurred a few days after. A barrow was opened on the heath, and Yeobright attended the operation, remaining away from his study during several hours. In the afternoon Christian returned from a journey in the same direction, and Mrs. Yeobright questioned him.

“They have dug a hole, and they have found things like flowerpots upside down, Mis’ess Yeobright; and inside these be real charnel bones. They have carried ‘em off to men’s houses; but I shouldn’t like to sleep where they will bide. Dead folks have been known to come and claim their own. Mr. Yeobright had got one pot of the bones, and was going to bring ‘em home—real skellington bones—but ‘twas ordered otherwise. You’ll be relieved to hear that he gave away his pot and all, on second thoughts; and a blessed thing for ye, Mis’ess Yeobright, considering the wind o’ nights.”

“Gave it away?”

“Yes. To Miss Vye. She has a cannibal taste for such churchyard furniture seemingly.”

“Miss Vye was there too?”

“Ay, ‘a b’lieve she was.”

When Clym came home, which was shortly after, his mother said, in a curious tone, “The urn you had meant for me you gave away.”

Yeobright made no reply; the current of her feeling was too pronounced to admit it.

The early weeks of the year passed on. Yeobright certainly studied at home, but he also walked much abroad, and the direction of his walk was always towards some point of a line between Mistover and Rainbarrow.

The month of March arrived, and the heath showed its first signs of awakening from winter trance. The awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness. The pool outside the bank by Eustacia’s dwelling, which seemed as dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and made noises in his observation, would gradually