The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

  II

  The New Course Causes Disappointment

  Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of mostmen was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence.He wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather thanindividuals at the expense of the class. What was more, he was readyat once to be the first unit sacrificed.

  In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediatestages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one ofthose stages is almost sure to be worldly advance. We can hardlyimagine bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims withoutimagining social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's localpeculiarity was that in striving at high thinking he still cleavedto plain living--nay, wild and meagre living in many respects, andbrotherliness with clowns.

  He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentancefor his text. Mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he wasin many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date.Much of this development he may have owed to his studious life inParis, where he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular atthe time.

  In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Yeobright mighthave been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him.A man should be only partially before his time: to be completely tothe vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike sonbeen intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilizationwithout bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that heseemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.

  In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in thecapacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeededbecause the doctrine they bring into form is that which theirlisteners have for some time felt without being able to shape. A manwho advocates aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is onlylikely to be understood by a class to which social effort has become astale matter. To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxuryto the bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attemptto disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accustomed.Yeobright preaching to the Egdon eremites that they might rise toa serene comprehensiveness without going through the process ofenriching themselves, was not unlike arguing to ancient Chaldeans thatin ascending from earth to the pure empyrean it was not necessary topass first into the intervening heaven of ether.

  Was Yeobright's mind well-proportioned? No. A well-proportioned mindis one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safelysay that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman,tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on theother hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet,revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings arehappiness and mediocrity. It produces the poetry of Rogers, thepaintings of West, the statecraft of North, the spiritual guidanceof Tomline; enabling its possessors to find their way to wealth, towind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to die comfortablyin their beds, and to get the decent monument which, in manycases, they deserve. It never would have allowed Yeobright to dosuch a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to benefit hisfellow-creatures.

  He walked along towards home without attending to paths. If anyoneknew the heath well it was Clym. He was permeated with its scenes,with its substance, and with its odours. He might be said to be itsproduct. His eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance allthe first images of his memory were mingled; his estimate of lifehad been coloured by it: his toys had been the flint knives andarrow-heads which he found there, wondering why stones should "grow"to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze;his animal kingdom, the snakes and croppers; his society, its humanhaunters. Take all the varying hates felt by Eustacia Vye towards theheath, and translate them into loves, and you have the heart of Clym.He gazed upon the wide prospect as he walked, and was glad.

  To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped out of itscentury generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this.It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. How could thisbe otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadowswatered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they lookedlike silver gridirons? The farmer, in his ride, who could smile atartificial grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sighwith sadness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distantupland of heath nothing better than a frown. But as for Yeobright,when he looked from the heights on his way he could not help indulgingin a barbarous satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attemptsat reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a yearor two, had receded again in despair, the ferns and furze-tuftsstubbornly reasserting themselves.

  He descended into the valley, and soon reached his home at Blooms-End.His mother was snipping dead leaves from the window-plants. She lookedup at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long staywith her; her face had worn that look for several days. He couldperceive that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cuttinggroup amounted in his mother to concern. But she had asked no questionwith her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that hewas not going to leave her soon. Her silence besought an explanationof him more loudly than words.

  "I am not going back to Paris again, mother," he said. "At least, inmy old capacity. I have given up the business."

  Mrs. Yeobright turned in pained surprise. "I thought something wasamiss, because of the boxes. I wonder you did not tell me sooner."

  "I ought to have done it. But I have been in doubt whether you wouldbe pleased with my plan. I was not quite clear on a few pointsmyself. I am going to take an entirely new course."

  "I am astonished, Clym. How can you want to do better than you'vebeen doing?"

  "Very easily. But I shall not do better in the way you mean; Isuppose it will be called doing worse. But I hate that business ofmine, and I want to do some worthy thing before I die. As aschoolmaster I think to do it--a school-master to the poor andignorant, to teach them what nobody else will."

  "After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, andwhen there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence,you say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. Your fancies will beyour ruin, Clym."

  Mrs. Yeobright spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the wordswas but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. Hedid not answer. There was in his face that hopelessness of beingunderstood which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyondthe reach of a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almosttoo coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument.

  No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. His motherthen began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "Itdisturbs me, Clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughtsas those. I hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward inthe world by your own free choice. Of course, I have always supposedyou were going to push straight on, as other men do--all who deservethe name--when they have been put in a good way of doing well."

  "I cannot help it," said Clym, in a troubled tone. "Mother, I hatethe flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any mandeserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he seeshalf the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to andteach them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up everymorning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain,as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glitteringsplendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and panderingto the meanest vanities--I, who have health and strength enough foranything. I have been troubled in my mind about it all the year, andthe end is that I cannot do it any more."

  "Why can't you do it as well as others?"

  "I don't know, except that there are many things other people carefor which I don't; and that's partly why I think I ought to do this.For one thing, my body does not require much of me. I cannot enjoydelicacies; good things are wasted u
pon me. Well, I ought to turnthat defect to advantage, and by being able to do without what otherpeople require I can spend what such things cost upon anybody else."

  Now, Yeobright, having inherited some of these very instincts fromthe woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in herthrough her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she mightfor his good. She spoke with less assurance. "And yet you might havebeen a wealthy man if you had only persevered. Manager to that largediamond establishment--what better can a man wish for? What a post oftrust and respect! I suppose you will be like your father; like him,you are getting weary of doing well."

  "No," said her son, "I am not weary of that, though I am weary of whatyou mean by it. Mother, what is doing well?"

  Mrs. Yeobright was far too thoughtful a woman to be content with readydefinitions, and, like the "What is wisdom?" of Plato's Socrates, andthe "What is truth?" of Pontius Pilate, Yeobright's burning questionreceived no answer.

  The silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a tap at thedoor, and its opening. Christian Cantle appeared in the room in hisSunday clothes.

  It was the custom on Egdon to begin the preface to a story beforeabsolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body ofthe narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face.Christian had been saying to them while the door was leaving itslatch, "To think that I, who go from home but once in a while, andhardly then, should have been there this morning!"

  "'Tis news you have brought us, then, Christian?" said Mrs. Yeobright.

  "Ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o' day; for,says I, 'I must go and tell 'em, though they won't have half donedinner.' I assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. Do ye thinkany harm will come o't?"

  "Well--what?"

  "This morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa'son said,'Let us pray.' 'Well,' thinks I, 'one may as well kneel as stand';so down I went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing tooblige the man as I. We hadn't been hard at it for more than a minutewhen a most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebodyhad just gied up their heart's blood. All the folk jumped up andthen we found that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a longstocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as soon as ever she couldget the young lady to church, where she don't come very often. She'vewaited for this chance for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put anend to the bewitching of Susan's children that has been carried on solong. Sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon asshe could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my lady'sarm."

  "Good heaven, how horrid!" said Mrs. Yeobright.

  "Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I wasafeard there might be some tumult among us, I got behind the bass-violand didn't see no more. But they carried her out into the air, 'tissaid; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone. What a screamthat girl gied, poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surpliceholding up his hand and saying, 'Sit down, my good people, sit down!'But the deuce a bit would they sit down. O, and what d'ye think Ifound out, Mrs. Yeobright? The pa'son wears a suit of clothes underhis surplice!--I could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm."

  "'Tis a cruel thing," said Yeobright.

  "Yes," said his mother.

  "The nation ought to look into it," said Christian. "Here's Humphreycoming, I think."

  In came Humphrey. "Well, have ye heard the news? But I see you have.'Tis a very strange thing that whenever one of Egdon folk goes tochurch some rum job or other is sure to be doing. The last time oneof us was there was when neighbour Fairway went in the fall; and thatwas the day you forbad the banns, Mrs. Yeobright."

  "Has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?" said Clym.

  "They say she got better, and went home very well. And now I've toldit I must be moving homeward myself."

  "And I," said Humphrey. "Truly now we shall see if there's anythingin what folks say about her."

  When they were gone into the heath again Yeobright said quietly to hismother, "Do you think I have turned teacher too soon?"

  "It is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, andall such men," she replied. "But it is right, too, that I should tryto lift you out of this life into something richer, and that youshould not come back again, and be as if I had not tried at all."