by Thomas Hardy
BOOK SIXTHAFTERCOURSES
I
The Inevitable Movement Onward
The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was told throughoutEgdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. All the knownincidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, andmodified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance tothe counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues. Yet, upon thewhole, neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death.Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratichistories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many,attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through longyears of wrinkles, neglect, and decay.
On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different.Strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of onemore; but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginingsamount to appreciable preparation for it. The very suddenness ofher bereavement dulled, to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet,irrationally enough, a consciousness that the husband she had lostought to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning at all.On the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off the dead husbandin his young wife's eyes, and to be the necessary cloud to therainbow.
But the horrors of the unknown had passed. Vague misgivings about herfuture as a deserted wife were at an end. The worst had once beenmatter of trembling conjecture; it was now matter of reason only,a limited badness. Her chief interest, the little Eustacia, stillremained. There was humility in her grief, no defiance in herattitude; and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to bestilled.
Could Thomasin's mournfulness now and Eustacia's serenity during lifehave been reduced to common measure, they would have touched the samemark nearly. But Thomasin's former brightness made shadow of thatwhich in a sombre atmosphere was light itself.
The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; theautumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl wasstrong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day. Outwardevents flattered Thomasin not a little. Wildeve had died intestate,and she and the child were his only relatives. When administrationhad been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue of her husband'suncle's property had come into her hands, it was found that the sumwaiting to be invested for her own and the child's benefit was littleless than ten thousand pounds.
Where should she live? The obvious place was Blooms-End. The oldrooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of afrigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-caseshe brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobson its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as therooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared toher by every early recollection. Clym very gladly admitted her as atenant, confining his own existence to two rooms at the top of theback staircase, where he lived on quietly, shut off from Thomasin andthe three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now that shewas a mistress of money, going his own ways, and thinking his ownthoughts.
His sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance; and yetthe alteration was chiefly within. It might have been said that hehad a wrinkled mind. He had no enemies, and he could get nobody toreproach him, which was why he so bitterly reproached himself.
He did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune, so far asto say that to be born is a palpable dilemma, and that instead ofmen aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate howto retreat out of it without shame. But that he and his had beensarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such irons thrust intotheir souls he did not maintain long. It is usually so, except withthe sternest of men. Human beings, in their generous endeavour toconstruct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, havealways hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral qualitythan their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the watersof Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts theirtears.
Thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in his presence, hefound relief in a direction of his own choosing when left to himself.For a man of his habits the house and the hundred and twenty pounds ayear which he had inherited from his mother were enough to supply allworldly needs. Resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but uponthe proportion of spendings to takings.
He frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized uponhim with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to itstale. His imagination would then people the spot with its ancientinhabitants: forgotten Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him,and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and seethem standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouchedand perfect as at the time of their erection. Those of the dyedbarbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparisonwith those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper besidewriters on parchment. Their records had perished long ago by theplough, while the works of these remained. Yet they all had livedand died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics.It reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution ofimmortality.
Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, andsparkling starlight. The year previous Thomasin had hardly beenconscious of the season's advance; this year she laid her heart opento external influences of every kind. The life of this sweet cousin,her baby, and her servants, came to Clym's senses only in the form ofsounds through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionallylarge type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slightnoises from the other part of the house that he almost could witnessthe scenes they signified. A faint beat of half-seconds conjured upThomasin rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singingthe baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raisedthe picture of Humphrey's, Fairway's, or Sam's heavy feet crossing thestone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a gay tune in ahigh key, betokened a visit from Grandfer Cantle; a sudden break-offin the Grandfer's utterances implied the application to his lips of amug of small beer, a bustling and slamming of doors meant starting togo to market; for Thomasin, in spite of her added scope of gentility,led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save everypossible pound for her little daughter.
One summer day Clym was in the garden, immediately outside the parlourwindow, which was as usual open. He was looking at the pot-flowers onthe sill; they had been revived and restored by Thomasin to the statein which his mother had left them. He heard a slight scream fromThomasin, who was sitting inside the room.
"O, how you frightened me!" she said to some one who had entered. "Ithought you were the ghost of yourself."
Clym was curious enough to advance a little further and look in at thewindow. To his astonishment there stood within the room Diggory Venn,no longer a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues ofan ordinary Christian countenance, white shirt-front, light floweredwaistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat. Nothingin this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its greatdifference from what he had formerly been. Red, and all approach tored, was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him;for what is there that persons just out of harness dread so much asreminders of the trade which has enriched them?
Yeobright went round to the door and entered.
"I was so alarmed!" said Thomasin, smiling from one to the other. "Icouldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! It seemedsupernatural."
"I gave up dealing in reddle last Christmas," said Venn. "It was aprofitable trade, and I found that by that time I had made enough totake the dairy of fifty cows that my father had in his lifetime. Ialways thought of getting to that place again if I changed at all, andnow I am there."
"How did you manage to become white, Diggory?" Thomasin asked.
"I turned so by degrees, ma'am."
"You look much better than ever you did before."
Venn appeared confused; and Thomasin, seeing how inadvertently shehad spoken to a man who
might possibly have tender feelings forher still, blushed a little. Clym saw nothing of this, and addedgood-humouredly--
"What shall we have to frighten Thomasin's baby with, now you havebecome a human being again?"
"Sit down, Diggory," said Thomasin, "and stay to tea."
Venn moved as if he would retire to the kitchen, when Thomasin saidwith pleasant pertness as she went on with some sewing, "Of courseyou must sit down here. And where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, Mr.Venn?"
"At Stickleford--about two miles to the right of Alderworth, ma'am,where the meads begin. I have thought that if Mr. Yeobright wouldlike to pay me a visit sometimes he shouldn't stay away for want ofasking. I'll not bide to tea this afternoon, thank'ee, for I've gotsomething on hand that must be settled. 'Tis Maypole-day tomorrow,and the Shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your neighbours hereto have a pole just outside your palings in the heath, as it is a nicegreen place." Venn waved his elbow towards the patch in front of thehouse. "I have been talking to Fairway about it," he continued, "andI said to him that before we put up the pole it would be as well toask Mrs. Wildeve."
"I can say nothing against it," she answered. "Our property does notreach an inch further than the white palings."
"But you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy round astick, under your very nose?"
"I shall have no objection at all."
Venn soon after went away, and in the evening Yeobright strolled asfar as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely May sunset, and the birchtrees which grew on this margin of the vast Egdon wilderness had puton their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous asamber. Beside Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from theroad, and here were now collected all the young people from within aradius of a couple of miles. The pole lay with one end supported on atrestle, and women were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwardswith wildflowers. The instincts of merry England lingered on herewith exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which traditionhas attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon.Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are paganstill: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, franticgaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names areforgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaevaldoctrine.
Yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went home again.The next morning, when Thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroomwindow, there stood the Maypole in the middle of the green, its topcutting into the sky. It had sprung up in the night, or rather earlymorning, like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get abetter view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. The sweetperfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air,which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a fullmeasure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in itsmidst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with smallflowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom; then a zoneof bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins,daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached. Thomasinnoticed all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be sonear.
When afternoon came people began to gather on the green, and Yeobrightwas interested enough to look out upon them from the open windowof his room. Soon after this Thomasin walked out from the doorimmediately below and turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. Shewas dressed more gaily than Yeobright had ever seen her dressed sincethe time of Wildeve's death, eighteen months before; since the day ofher marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such advantage.
"How pretty you look today, Thomasin!" he said. "Is it because of theMaypole?"
"Not altogether." And then she blushed and dropped her eyes, whichhe did not specially observe, though her manner seemed to him to berather peculiar, considering that she was only addressing himself.Could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to pleasehim?
He recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last few weeks,when they had often been working together in the garden, just as theyhad formerly done when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye.What if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative asit had formerly been? To Yeobright any possibility of this sort wasa serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought of it.Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled duringEustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave with her. His passion forher had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough onhand for another fire of that sort, as may happen with more boyishloves. Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would bea plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small andsickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.
He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiasticbrass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock,with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house,he withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden,through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. He could notbear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had triedhard.
Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came back by the samepath it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. Theboisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did frombehind, he could not see if the May party had all gone till he hadpassed through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door.Thomasin was standing within the porch alone.
She looked at him reproachfully. "You went away just when it began,Clym," she said.
"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with them, of course?"
"No, I did not."
"You appeared to be dressed on purpose."
"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people were there. One isthere now."
Yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch beyond thepaling, and near the black form of the Maypole he discerned a shadowyfigure, sauntering idly up and down. "Who is it?" he said.
"Mr. Venn," said Thomasin.
"You might have asked him to come in, I think, Tamsie. He has beenvery kind to you first and last."
"I will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse, went through thewicket to where Venn stood under the Maypole.
"It is Mr. Venn, I think?" she inquired.
Venn started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he was--andsaid, "Yes."
"Will you come in?"
"I am afraid that I--"
"I have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the very best ofthe girls for your partners. Is it that you won't come in because youwish to stand here, and think over the past hours of enjoyment?"
"Well, that's partly it," said Mr. Venn, with ostentatious sentiment."But the main reason why I am biding here like this is that I want towait till the moon rises."
"To see how pretty the Maypole looks in the moonlight?"
"No. To look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens."
Thomasin was speechless with surprise. That a man who had to walksome four or five miles to his home should wait here for such a reasonpointed to only one conclusion: the man must be amazingly interestedin that glove's owner.
"Were you dancing with her, Diggory?" she asked, in a voice whichrevealed that he had made himself considerably more interesting to herby this disclosure.
"No," he sighed.
"And you will not come in, then?"
"Not tonight, thank you, ma'am."
"Shall I lend you a lantern to look for the young person's glove, Mr.Venn?"
"O no; it is not necessary, Mrs. Wildeve, thank you. The moon willrise in a few minutes."
Thomasin went back to the porch. "Is he coming in?" said Clym, whohad been waiting where she had left him.
"He would rather not tonight," she said, and then passed by him intothe house; whereupon Clym too retired to his own rooms.
When Clym was gone Thomasin crept upstairs in the dark, and, justlistening by the cot, to assure herself that the child was asle
ep, shewent to the window, gently lifted the corner of the white curtain,and looked out. Venn was still there. She watched the growth ofthe faint radiance appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, tillpresently the edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valleywith light. Diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he wasmoving about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning the grass for theprecious missing article, walking in zigzags right and left till heshould have passed over every foot of the ground.
"How very ridiculous!" Thomasin murmured to herself, in a tone whichwas intended to be satirical. "To think that a man should be so sillyas to go mooning about like that for a girl's glove! A respectabledairyman, too, and a man of money as he is now. What a pity!"
At last Venn appeared to find it; whereupon he stood up and raisedit to his lips. Then placing it in his breast-pocket--the nearestreceptacle to a man's heart permitted by modern raiment--he ascendedthe valley in a mathematically direct line towards his distant home inthe meadows.
