The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

  VIII

  Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers

  While the effigy of Eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fairwoman herself was standing on Rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss ofdesolation seldom plumbed by one so young, Yeobright sat lonely atBlooms-End. He had fulfilled his word to Thomasin by sending offFairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increasedimpatience for some sound or signal of her return. Were Eustaciastill at Mistover the very least he expected was that she would sendhim back a reply tonight by the same hand; though, to leave all to herinclination, he had cautioned Fairway not to ask for an answer. Ifone were handed to him he was to bring it immediately; if not, he wasto go straight home without troubling to come round to Blooms-Endagain 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 upto do otherwise he did not know.

  To Clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the eveningadvanced. The wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house,and filliped the eavesdroppings like peas against the panes. Hewalked restlessly about the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noisesin windows and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casementsand crevices, and pressing together the lead-work of the quarrieswhere it had become loosened from the glass. It was one of thosenights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen, when ancientstains on the ceilings of decayed manor houses are renewed andenlarged from the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet. Thelittle gate in the palings before his dwelling continually opened andclicked together again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody wasthere; it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in ontheir way to visit him.

  Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither Fairway noranybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and despite hisanxieties soon fell asleep. His sleep, however, was not very sound,by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easilyawakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after.Clym arose and looked out of the window. Rain was still fallingheavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subduedhiss under the downpour. It was too dark 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.If so, she had indeed come to him unawares.

  He hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down. On hisflinging open the door the rays of the candle fell upon a womanclosely wrapped up, who at once came forward.

  "Thomasin!" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of disappointment."It is 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. Thereis a great 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 mebut you! 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?' I said.'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'tknow what to do, and I went to bed. I believe he thought I fellasleep, for half an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oakchest we keep money in when we have much in the house and took out aroll of something which I believe was bank-notes, though I was notaware that he had 'em there. These he must have got from the bankwhen he went there the other day. What does he want bank-notes for,if he is only going off for a day? When he had gone down I thought ofEustacia, and how he had met her the night before--I know he did meether, Clym, for I followed him part of the way; but I did not like totell you when you called, and so make you think ill of him, as I didnot think it was so serious. Then I could not stay in bed; I got upand dressed myself, and when I heard him out in the stable I thoughtI would come and tell you. So I came downstairs without any noise andslipped 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 ofhis going on a journey, and will be home tomorrow, and all that; but Idon't believe 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 tobegin crying as she said, "I brought baby, for I was afraid what mighthappen to her. I suppose it will be her death, but I couldn't leaveher with Rachel!"

  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 delusionthat it might be Eustacia's: the footsteps just preceding it had beenheavy and slow. Yeobright thinking it might possibly be Fairway witha note in answer, 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. "Ibelieve she means to elope tonight with Wildeve. I am just going tolook 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 ofher I called up Charley, my stable lad. I missed my pistols the otherday."

  "Pistols?"

  "He said at the time that he took them down to clean. He has nowowned that he took them because he saw Eustacia looking curiously atthem; and she afterwards owned to him that she was thinking of takingher life, but bound him to secrecy, and promised never to think ofsuch a thing again. I hardly suppose she will ever have bravadoenough to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in hermind; and people who think of that sort of thing once think of itagain."

  "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 didyou quarrel about so bitterly with her to drive her to all this? Youmust have treated her badly indeed. Well, I was always against themarriage, 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 quarrelledabout as 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 ona sudden 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 poorbaby, will soon 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 beginto be afraid that my legs will hardly carry me there such a night asthis. I am not so young as I was. If they are interrupted in theirflight she will be sure to come back to me, and I ought to be at thehouse to receive her. But be it as 'twill I can't walk to the QuietWoman, and that's an end on't. I'll go straight home."

  "It will perhaps be best," said Clym. "Thomasin, dry yourself, and beas comfortable 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-handtrack towards the inn.

  Thomasin, being left alone, took off some of her wet garments,carried the baby upstairs to Clym's bed, and then came down to thesitting-room again, where she made a larger fire, and began dryingherself. The fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room anappearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drummingof the storm without, which snapped at the window-panes and breathedinto the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologueto some tragedy.

  But the least part of Thomasin was in the house, for her heart beingat ease about the little girl upstairs she was mentally following Clymon his 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 camewhen she could scarcely sit longer; and it was like a satire on herpatience to remember that Clym could hardly have reached the inn asyet. At last she went to the baby's bedside. The child was sleepingsoundly; but her imagination of possibly disastrous events at herhome, the predominance within her of the unseen over the seen,agitated her beyond endurance. She could not refrain from going downand opening the door. The rain still continued, the candlelightfalling upon the nearest drops and making glistening darts of them asthey descended across the throng of invisible ones behind. To plungeinto that medium was to plunge into water slightly diluted with air.But the difficulty of returning to her house at this moment made herall the more desirous of doing so: anything was better than suspense."I have come here well enough," she said, "and why shouldn't I go backagain? It is a mistake for me to be 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, andstepped into its midst. But Thomasin's imagination being so activelyengaged elsewhere, the night and the weather had for her no terrorbeyond that of their actual discomfort and difficulty.