The Return of the Native

“No? Now, I thought we must. I must, or ‘twould be very unlike me – the first in every spree that’s going!

“Do thou’ put on’ a fri’-ar’s coat’,
And I’ll’ put on’ a-no’-ther,
And we’ will to’ Queen Ele’anor go’,
Like Fri’ar and’ his bro’ther.

I met Mis’ess Yeobright, the young bride’s aunt, last night, and she told me that her son Clym was coming home a’ Christmas. Wonderful clever, ‘a believe – ah, I should like to have all that’s under that young man’s hair. Well, then, I spoke to her in my well-known merry way, and she said, ‘O that what’s shaped so venerable should talk like a fool!’ – that’s what she said to me. I don’t care for her, be jowned if I do, and so I told her. ‘Be jowned if I care for ‘ee,’ I said. I had her there – hey?”

“I rather think she had you,” said Fairway.

“No,” said Grandfer Cantle, his countenance slightly flagging. “‘Tisn’t so bad as that with me?”

“Seemingly ‘tis, however, is it because of the wedding that Clym is coming home a’ Christmas – to make a new arrangement because his mother is now left in the house alone?”

“Yes, yes – that’s it. But, Timothy, hearken to me,” said the Grandfer earnestly. “Though known as such a joker, I be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and I am serious now. I can tell ‘ee lots about the married couple. Yes, this morning at six o’clock they went up the country to do the job, and neither vell nor mark have been seen of ‘em since, though I reckon that this afternoon has brought ‘em home again man and woman – wife, that is. Isn’t it spoke like a man, Timothy, and wasn’t Mis’ess Yeobright wrong about me?”

“Yes, it will do. I didn’t know the two had walked together since last fall, when her aunt forbad the banns. How long has this new set-to been in mangling then? Do you know, Humphrey?”

“Yes, how long?” said Grandfer Cantle smartly, likewise turning to Humphrey. “I ask that question.”

“Ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might have the man after all,” replied Humphrey, without removing his eyes from the fire. He was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the Philistine’s greaves of brass. “That’s why they went away to be married, I count. You see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch and forbidding the banns ‘twould have made Mis’ess Yeobright seem foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if she’d never gainsaid it.”

“Exactly – seem foolish-like; and that’s very bad for the poor things that be so, though I only guess as much, to be sure,” said Grandfer Cantle, still strenuously preserving a sensible bearing and mien.

“Ah, well, I was at church that day,” said Fairway, “which was a very curious thing to happen.”

“If ‘twasn’t my name’s Simple,” said the Grandfer emphatically. “I ha’n’t been there to-year; and now the winter is a-coming on I won’t say I shall.”

“I ha’n’t been these three years,” said Humphrey; “for I’m so dead sleepy of a Sunday; and ‘tis so terrible far to get there; and when you do get there ‘tis such a mortal poor chance that you’ll be chose for up above, when so many bain’t, that I bide at home and don’t go at all.”

“I not only happened to be there,” said Fairway, with a fresh collection of emphasis, “but I was sitting in the same pew as Mis’ess Yeobright. And though you may not see it as such, it fairly made my blood run cold to hear her. Yes, it is a curious thing; but it made my blood run cold, for I was close at her elbow.” The speaker looked round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive moderation.

“‘Tis a serious job to have things happen to ‘ee there,” said a woman behind.

“‘Ye are to declare it,’ was the parson’s words,” Fairway continued. “And then up stood a woman at my side – a-touching of me. ‘Well, be damned if there isn’t Mis’ess Yeobright a-standing up,’ I said to myself. Yes, neighbours, though I was in the temple of prayer that’s what I said. ‘Tis against my conscience to curse and swear in company, and I hope any woman here will overlook it. Still what I did say I did say, and ‘twould be a lie if I didn’t own it.”

“So ‘twould, neighbour Fairway.”

“‘Be damned if there isn’t Mis’ess Yeobright a-standing up,’ I said,” the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word with the same passionless severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with the iteration. “And the next thing I heard was, ‘I forbid the banns,’ from her. ‘I’ll speak to you after the service,’ said the parson, in quite a homely way – yes, turning all at once into a common man no holier than you or I. Ah, her face was pale! Maybe you can call to mind that monument in Weatherbury church – the cross-legged soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the schoolchildren? Well, he would about have matched that woman’s face, when she said, ‘I forbid the banns.’”

The audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks into the fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to give themselves time to weigh the moral of the story.

“I’m sure when I heard they’d been forbid I felt as glad as if anybody had gied me sixpence,” said an earnest voice – that of Olly Dowden, a woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. Her nature was to be civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting her remain alive.

“And now the maid have married him just the same,” said Humphrey.

“After that Mis’ess Yeobright came round and was quite agreeable,” Fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show that his words were no appendage to Humphrey’s, but the result of independent reflection.

“Supposing they were ashamed, I don’t see why they shouldn’t have done it here-right,” said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned. “‘Tis well to call the neighbours together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well be when there’s a wedding as at tide-times. I don’t care for close ways.”

“Ah, now, you’d hardly believe it, but I don’t care for gay weddings,” said Timothy Fairway, his eyes again travelling round. “I hardly blame Thomasin Yeobright and neighbour Wildeve for doing it quiet, if I must own it. A wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour; and they do a man’s legs no good when he’s over forty.”

“True. Once at the woman’s house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth your victuals.”

“You be bound to dance at Christmas because ‘tis the time o’ year; you must dance at weddings because ‘tis the time o’ life. At christenings folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if ‘tis no further on than the first or second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you’ve got to sing… For my part I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. You’ve as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. And it don’t wear your legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow’s ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.”

“Nine folks out of ten would own ‘twas going too far to dance then, I suppose?” suggested Grandfer Cantle.

“‘Tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at after the mug have been round a few times.”

“Well, I can’t understand a quiet ladylike little body like Tamsin Yeobright caring to be married in such a mean way,” said Susan Nunsuch, the wide woman, who preferred the original subject. “‘Tis worse than the poorest do. And I shouldn’t have cared about the man, though some may say he’s good-looking.”

“To give him his due he’s a clever, learned fellow in his way – a’most as clever as Clym Yeobright used to be. He was brought up to better things than keeping the Quiet Woman. An engineer – that’s what the man was, as we know; but he threw away his chance, and so ‘a took a public house to live. His learning was no use to him at all.”

“Very often the case,” said Olly, the besom-maker. “And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn’t use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot – what do I say? – why, almost without a desk to lean their stomachs and elbows upon.”

“True – ‘tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to,” said Humphrey.

“Why, afore I went a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called), in the year four,” chimed in Grandfer Cantle brightly, “I didn’t know no more what the world was like than the commonest man among ye. And now, jown it all, I won’t say what I bain’t fit for, hey?”

“Couldst sign the book, no doubt,” said Fairway, “if wast young enough to join hands with a woman again, like Wildeve and Mis’ess Tamsin, which is more than Humph there could do, for he follows his father in learning. Ah, Humph, well I can mind when I was married how I zid thy father’s mark staring me in the face as I went to put down my name. He and your mother were the couple married just afore we were and there stood they father’s cross with arms stretched out like a great banging scarecrow. What a terrible black cross that was – thy father’s very likeness in en! To save my soul I couldn’t help laughing when I zid en, though all the time I was as hot as dog-days, what with the marrying, and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with Jack Changley and a lot more chaps grinning at me through church window. But the next moment a strawmote would have knocked me down, for I called to mind that if thy father and mother had had high words once, they’d been at it twenty times since they’d been man and wife, and I zid myself as the next poor stunpoll to get into the same mess… Ah – well, what a day ‘twas!”

“Wildeve is older than Tamsin Yeobright by a good-few summers. A pretty maid too she is. A young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her smock for a man like that.”

The speaker, a peat- or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labour, and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire.

“A hundred maidens would have had him if he’d asked ‘em,” said the wide woman.

“Didst ever know a man, neighbour, that no woman at all would marry?” inquired Humphrey.

“I never did,” said the turf-cutter.

“Nor I,” said another.

“Nor I,” said Grandfer Cantle.

“Well, now, I did once,” said Timothy Fairway, adding more firmness to one of his legs. “I did know of such a man. But only once, mind.” He gave his throat a thorough rake round, as if it were the duty of every person not to be mistaken through thickness of voice. “Yes, I knew of such a man,” he said.

“And what ghastly gallicrow might the poor fellow have been like, Master Fairway?” asked the turf-cutter.

“Well, ‘a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor a blind man. What ‘a was I don’t say.”

“Is he known in these parts?” said Olly Dowden.

“Hardly,” said Timothy; “but I name no name… Come, keep the fire up there, youngsters.”

“Whatever is Christian Cantle’s teeth a-chattering for?” said a boy from amid the smoke and shades on the other side of the blaze. “Be ye a-cold, Christian?”