The Return of the Native

BOOK ONE — THE THREE WOMEN-4

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?”

A thin jibbering voice was heard to reply, “No, not at all.”

“Come forward, Christian, and show yourself. I didn’t know you were here,” said Fairway, with a humane look across towards that quarter.

Thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no shoulders, and a great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond his clothes, advanced a step or two by his own will, and was pushed by the will of others half a dozen steps more. He was Grandfer Cantle’s youngest son.

“What be ye quaking for, Christian?” said the turf-cutter kindly.

“I’m the man.”

“What man?”

“The man no woman will marry.”

“The deuce you be!” said Timothy Fairway, enlarging his gaze to cover Christian’s whole surface and a great deal more, Grandfer Cantle meanwhile staring as a hen stares at the duck she has hatched.

“Yes, I be he; and it makes me afeard,” said Christian. “D’ye think ‘twill hurt me? I shall always say I don’t care, and swear to it, though I do care all the while.”

“Well, be damned if this isn’t the queerest start ever I know’d,” said Mr. Fairway. “I didn’t mean you at all. There’s another in the country, then! Why did ye reveal yer misfortune, Christian?”

“’Twas to be if ‘twas, I suppose. I can’t help it, can I?” He turned upon them his painfully circular eyes, surrounded by concentric lines like targets.

“No, that’s true. But ‘tis a melancholy thing, and my blood ran cold when you spoke, for I felt there were two poor fellows where I had thought only one. ‘Tis a sad thing for ye, Christian. How’st know the women won’t hae thee?”

“I’ve asked ‘em.”

“Sure I should never have thought you had the face. Well, and what did the last one say to ye? Nothing that can’t be got over, perhaps, after all?”

“’Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,’ was the woman’s words to me.”

“Not encouraging, I own,” said Fairway. “’Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,’ is rather a hard way of saying No. But even that might be overcome by time and patience, so as to let a few grey hairs show themselves in the hussy’s head. How old be you, Christian?”

“Thirty-one last tatie-digging, Mister Fairway.”

“Not a boy—not a boy. Still there’s hope yet.”

“That’s my age by baptism, because that’s put down in the great book of the Judgment that they keep in church vestry; but Mother told me I was born some time afore I was christened.”

“Ah!”

“But she couldn’t tell when, to save her life, except that there was no moon.”

“No moon—that’s bad. Hey, neighbours, that’s bad for him!”

“Yes, ‘tis bad,” said Grandfer Cantle, shaking his head.

“Mother know’d ‘twas no moon, for she asked another woman that had an almanac, as she did whenever a boy was born to her, because of the saying, ‘No moon, no man,’ which made her afeard every man-child she had. Do ye really think it serious, Mister Fairway, that there was no moon?”

“Yes. ‘No moon, no man.’ ‘Tis one of the truest sayings ever spit out. The boy never comes to anything that’s born at new moon. A bad job for thee, Christian, that you should have showed your nose then of all days in the month.”

“I suppose the moon was terrible full when you were born?” said Christian, with a look of hopeless admiration at Fairway.

“Well, ‘a was not new,” Mr. Fairway replied, with a disinterested gaze.

“I’d sooner go without drink at Lammas-tide than be a man of no moon,” continued Christian, in the same shattered recitative. “’Tis said I be only the rames of a man, and no good for my race at all; and I suppose that’s the cause o’t.”

“Ay,” said Grandfer Cantle, somewhat subdued in spirit; “and yet his mother cried for scores of hours when ‘a was a boy, for fear he should outgrow hisself and go for a soldier.”

“Well, there’s many just as bad as he.” said Fairway.

“Wethers must live their time as well as other sheep, poor soul.”

“So perhaps I shall rub on? Ought I to be afeared o’ nights, Master Fairway?”

“You’ll have to lie alone all your life; and ‘tis not to married couples but to single sleepers that a ghost shows himself when ‘a do come. One has been seen lately, too. A very strange one.”

“No—don’t talk about it if ‘tis agreeable of ye not to! ‘Twill make my skin crawl when I think of it in bed alone. But you will—ah, you will, I know, Timothy; and I shall dream all night o’t! A very strange one? What sort of a spirit did ye mean when ye said, a very strange one, Timothy?—no, no—don’t tell me.”

“I don’t half believe in spirits myself. But I think it ghostly enough—what I was told. ‘Twas a little boy that zid it.”