The Return of the Native

“He must be a fine fellow by this time,” said Fairway.

“He is a man now,” she replied quietly.

“‘Tis very lonesome for ‘ee in the heth tonight, mis’ess,” said Christian, coming from the seclusion he had hitherto maintained. “Mind you don’t get lost. Egdon Heth is a bad place to get lost in, and the winds do huffle queerer tonight than ever I heard ‘em afore. Them that know Egdon best have been pixy-led here at times.”

“Is that you, Christian?” said Mrs. Yeobright. “What made you hide away from me?”

“‘Twas that I didn’t know you in this light, mis’ess; and being a man of the mournfullest make, I was scared a little, that’s all. Oftentimes if you could see how terrible down I get in my mind, ‘twould make ‘ee quite nervous for fear I should die by my hand.”

“You don’t take after your father,” said Mrs. Yeobright, looking towards the fire, where Grandfer Cantle, with some want of originality, was dancing by himself among the sparks, as the others had done before.

“Now, Grandfer,” said Timothy Fairway, “we are ashamed of ye. A reverent old patriarch man as you be – seventy if a day – to go hornpiping like that by yourself!”

“A harrowing old man, Mis’ess Yeobright,” said Christian despondingly. “I wouldn’t live with him a week, so playward as he is, if I could get away.”

“‘Twould be more seemly in ye to stand still and welcome Mis’ess Yeobright, and you the venerablest here, Grandfer Cantle,” said the besom-woman.

“Faith, and so it would,” said the reveller checking himself repentantly. “I’ve such a bad memory, Mis’ess Yeobright, that I forget how I’m looked up to by the rest of ‘em. My spirits must be wonderful good, you’ll say? But not always. ‘Tis a weight upon a man to be looked up to as commander, and I often feel it.”

“I am sorry to stop the talk,” said Mrs. Yeobright. “But I must be leaving you now. I was passing down the Anglebury Road, towards my niece’s new home, who is returning tonight with her husband; and seeing the bonfire and hearing Olly’s voice among the rest I came up here to learn what was going on. I should like her to walk with me, as her way is mine.”

“Ay, sure, ma’am, I’m just thinking of moving,” said Olly.

“Why, you’ll be safe to meet the reddleman that I told ye of,” said Fairway. “He’s only gone back to get his van. We heard that your niece and her husband were coming straight home as soon as they were married, and we are going down there shortly, to give ‘em a song o’ welcome.”

“Thank you indeed,” said Mrs. Yeobright.

“But we shall take a shorter cut through the furze than you can go with long clothes; so we won’t trouble you to wait.”

“Very well – are you ready, Olly?”

“Yes, ma’am. And there’s a light shining from your niece’s window, see. It will help to keep us in the path.”

She indicated the faint light at the bottom of the valley which Fairway had pointed out; and the two women descended the tumulus.

4 – The Halt on the Turnpike Road

Down, downward they went, and yet further down – their descent at each step seeming to outmeasure their advance. Their skirts were scratched noisily by the furze, their shoulders brushed by the ferns, which, though dead and dry, stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter weather having as yet arrived to beat them down. Their Tartarean situation might by some have been called an imprudent one for two unattended women. But these shaggy recesses were at all seasons a familiar surrounding to Olly and Mrs. Yeobright; and the addition of darkness lends no frightfulness to the face of a friend.

“And so Tamsin has married him at last,” said Olly, when the incline had become so much less steep that their foot-steps no longer required undivided attention.

Mrs. Yeobright answered slowly, “Yes; at last.”

“How you will miss her – living with ‘ee as a daughter, as she always have.”

“I do miss her.”

Olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely, was saved by her very simplicity from rendering them offensive. Questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with impunity. This accounted for Mrs. Yeobright’s acquiescence in the revival of an evidently sore subject.

“I was quite strook to hear you’d agreed to it, ma’am, that I was,” continued the besom-maker.

“You were not more struck by it than I should have been last year this time, Olly. There are a good many sides to that wedding. I could not tell you all of them, even if I tried.”

“I felt myself that he was hardly solid-going enough to mate with your family. Keeping an inn – what is it? But ‘a’s clever, that’s true, and they say he was an engineering gentleman once, but has come down by being too outwardly given.”

“I saw that, upon the whole, it would be better she should marry where she wished.”

“Poor little thing, her feelings got the better of her, no doubt. ‘Tis nature. Well, they may call him what they will – he’ve several acres of heth-ground broke up here, besides the public house, and the heth-croppers, and his manners be quite like a gentleman’s. And what’s done cannot be undone.”

“It cannot,” said Mrs. Yeobright. “See, here’s the wagon-track at last. Now we shall get along better.”

The wedding subject was no further dwelt upon; and soon a faint diverging path was reached, where they parted company, Olly first begging her companion to remind Mr. Wildeve that he had not sent her sick husband the bottle of wine promised on the occasion of his marriage. The besom-maker turned to the left towards her own house, behind a spur of the hill, and Mrs. Yeobright followed the straight track, which further on joined the highway by the Quiet Woman Inn, whither she supposed her niece to have returned with Wildeve from their wedding at Anglebury that day.

She first reached Wildeve’s Patch, as it was called, a plot of land redeemed from the heath, and after long and laborious years brought into cultivation. The man who had discovered that it could be tilled died of the labour; the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilizing it. Wildeve came like Amerigo Vespucci, and received the honours due to those who had gone before.

When Mrs. Yeobright had drawn near to the inn, and was about to enter, she saw a horse and vehicle some two hundred yards beyond it, coming towards her, a man walking alongside with a lantern in his hand. It was soon evident that this was the reddleman who had inquired for her. Instead of entering the inn at once, she walked by it and towards the van.

The conveyance came close, and the man was about to pass her with little notice, when she turned to him and said, “I think you have been inquiring for me? I am Mrs. Yeobright of Blooms-End.”

The reddleman started, and held up his finger. He stopped the horses, and beckoned to her to withdraw with him a few yards aside, which she did, wondering.

“You don’t know me, ma’am, I suppose?” he said.

“I do not,” said she. “Why, yes, I do! You are young Venn – your father was a dairyman somewhere here?”

“Yes; and I knew your niece, Miss Tamsin, a little. I have something bad to tell you.”

“About her – no! She has just come home, I believe, with her husband. They arranged to return this afternoon – to the inn beyond here.”

“She’s not there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s here. She’s in my van,” he added slowly.

“What new trouble has come?” murmured Mrs. Yeobright, putting her hand over her eyes.

“I can’t explain much, ma’am. All I know is that, as I was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of Anglebury, I heard something trotting after me like a doe, and looking round there she was, white as death itself. ‘Oh, Diggory Venn!’ she said, ‘I thought ‘twas you – will you help me? I am in trouble.’”

“How did she know your Christian name?” said Mrs. Yeobright doubtingly.

“I had met her as a lad before I went away in this trade. She asked then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a faint. I picked her up and put her in, and there she has been ever since. She has cried a good deal, but she has hardly spoke; all she has told me being that she was to have been married this morning. I tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn’t; and at last she fell asleep.”

“Let me see her at once,” said Mrs. Yeobright, hastening towards the van.

The reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping up first, assisted Mrs. Yeobright to mount beside him. On the door being opened she perceived at the end of the van an extemporized couch, around which was hung apparently all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to keep the occupant of the little couch from contact with the red materials of his trade. A young girl lay thereon, covered with a cloak. She was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon her features.

A fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. It was between pretty and beautiful. Though her eyes were closed, one could easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around. The groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now I ay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. The grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine. The scarlet of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient colour of her cheek. The lips frequently parted, with a murmur of words. She seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal – to require viewing through rhyme and harmony.