Chapter: <CHAPTER>
5--Perplexity among Honest People


Thomasin looked as if quite overcome by her aunt's change of manner.
"It means just what it seems to mean: I am--not married," she replied
faintly. "Excuse me--for humiliating you, Aunt, by this mishap--I am
sorry for it. But I cannot help it."

"Me? Think of yourself first."

"It was nobody's fault. When we got there the parson wouldn't marry us
because of some trifling irregularity in the license."

"What irregularity?"

"I don't know. Mr. Wildeve can explain. I did not think when I went away
this morning that I should come back like this." It being dark, Thomasin
allowed her emotion to escape her by the silent way of tears, which
could roll down her cheek unseen.

"I could almost say that it serves you right--if I did not feel that
you don't deserve it," continued Mrs. Yeobright, who, possessing two
distinct moods in close contiguity, a gentle mood and an angry, flew
from one to the other without the least warning. "Remember, Thomasin,
this business was none of my seeking; from the very first, when you
began to feel foolish about that man, I warned you he would not make you
happy. I felt it so strongly that I did what I would never have believed
myself capable of doing--stood up in the church, and made myself the
public talk for weeks. But having once consented, I don't submit to
these fancies without good reason. Marry him you must after this."

"Do you think I wish to do otherwise for one moment?" said Thomasin,
with a heavy sigh. "I know how wrong it was of me to love him, but don't
pain me by talking like that, Aunt! You would not have had me stay there
with him, would you?--and your house is the only home I have to return
to. He says we can be married in a day or two."

"I wish he had never seen you."

"Very well; then I will be the miserablest woman in the world, and not
let him see me again. No, I won't have him!"

"It is too late to speak so. Come with me. I am going to the inn to see
if he has returned. Of course I shall get to the bottom of this story
at once. Mr. Wildeve must not suppose he can play tricks upon me, or any
belonging to me."

"It was not that. The license was wrong, and he couldn't get another the
same day. He will tell you in a moment how it was, if he comes."

"Why didn't he bring you back?"

"That was me!" again sobbed Thomasin. "When I found we could not be
married I didn't like to come back with him, and I was very ill. Then
I saw Diggory Venn, and was glad to get him to take me home. I cannot
explain it any better, and you must be angry with me if you will."

"I shall see about that," said Mrs. Yeobright; and they turned towards
the inn, known in the neighbourhood as the Quiet Woman, the sign of
which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her
arm, beneath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known
to frequenters of the inn:--


SINCE THE WOMAN'S QUIET LET NO MAN BREED A RIOT.(1)

     (1) The inn which really bore this sign and legend stood
     some miles to the northwest of the present scene, wherein
     the house more immediately referred to is now no longer an
     inn; and the surroundings are much changed. But another inn,
     some of whose features are also embodied in this
     description, the RED LION at Winfrith, still remains as a
     haven for the wayfarer (1912).

The front of the house was towards the heath and Rainbarrow, whose dark
shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. Upon the door was a neglected
brass plate, bearing the unexpected inscription, "Mr. Wildeve,
Engineer"--a useless yet cherished relic from the time when he had been
started in that profession in an office at Budmouth by those who had
hoped much from him, and had been disappointed. The garden was at the
back, and behind this ran a still deep stream, forming the margin of the
heath in that direction, meadow-land appearing beyond the stream.

But the thick obscurity permitted only skylines to be visible of any
scene at present. The water at the back of the house could be
heard, idly spinning whirpools in its creep between the rows of dry
feather-headed reeds which formed a stockade along each bank. Their
presence was denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly,
produced by their rubbing against each other in the slow wind.

The window, whence the candlelight had shone up the vale to the eyes
of the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but the sill lay too high for a
pedestrian on the outside to look over it into the room. A vast shadow,
in which could be dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted
half the ceiling.

"He seems to be at home," said Mrs. Yeobright.

"Must I come in, too, Aunt?" asked Thomasin faintly. "I suppose not; it
would be wrong."

"You must come, certainly--to confront him, so that he may make no false
representations to me. We shall not be five minutes in the house, and
then we'll walk home."

Entering the open passage, she tapped at the door of the private
parlour, unfastened it, and looked in.

The back and shoulders of a man came between Mrs. Yeobright's eyes and
the fire. Wildeve, whose form it was, immediately turned, arose, and
advanced to meet his visitors.

He was quite a young man, and of the two properties, form and motion,
the latter first attracted the eye in him. The grace of his movement
was singular--it was the pantomimic expression of a lady-killing career.
Next came into notice the more material qualities, among which was a
profuse crop of hair impending over the top of his face, lending to his
forehead the high-cornered outline of an early Gothic shield; and a neck
which was smooth and round as a cylinder. The lower half of his figure
was of light build. Altogether he was one in whom no man would have seen
anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen anything to
dislike.

He discerned the young girl's form in the passage, and said, "Thomasin,
then, has reached home. How could you leave me in that way, darling?"
And turning to Mrs. Yeobright--"It was useless to argue with her. She
would go, and go alone."

"But what's the meaning of it all?" demanded Mrs. Yeobright haughtily.

"Take a seat," said Wildeve, placing chairs for the two women. "Well,
it was a very stupid mistake, but such mistakes will happen. The license
was useless at Anglebury. It was made out for Budmouth, but as I didn't
read it I wasn't aware of that."

"But you had been staying at Anglebury?"

"No. I had been at Budmouth--till two days ago--and that was where I
had intended to take her; but when I came to fetch her we decided upon
Anglebury, forgetting that a new license would be necessary. There was
not time to get to Budmouth afterwards."

"I think you are very much to blame," said Mrs. Yeobright.

"It was quite my fault we chose Anglebury," Thomasin pleaded. "I
proposed it because I was not known there."

"I know so well that I am to blame that you need not remind me of it,"
replied Wildeve shortly.

"Such things don't happen for nothing," said the aunt. "It is a great
slight to me and my family; and when it gets known there will be a
very unpleasant time for us. How can she look her friends in the face
tomorrow? It is a very great injury, and one I cannot easily forgive. It
may even reflect on her character."

"Nonsense," said Wildeve.

Thomasin's large eyes had flown from the face of one to the face of
the other during this discussion, and she now said anxiously, "Will you
allow me, Aunt, to talk it over alone with Damon for five minutes? Will
you, Damon?"

"Certainly, dear," said Wildeve, "if your aunt will excuse us." He led
her into an adjoining room, leaving Mrs. Yeobright by the fire.

As soon as they were alone, and the door closed, Thomasin said, turning
up her pale, tearful face to him, "It is killing me, this, Damon! I did
not mean to part from you in anger at Anglebury this morning; but I was
frightened and hardly knew what I said. I've not let Aunt know how much
I suffered today; and it is so hard to command my face and voice, and to
smile as if it were a slight thing to me; but I try to do so, that she
may not be still more indignant with you. I know you could not help it,
dear, whatever Aunt may think."

"She is very unpleasant."

"Yes," Thomasin murmured, "and I suppose I seem so now.... Damon, what do
you mean to do about me?"

"Do about you?"

"Yes. Those who don't like you whisper things which at moments make me
doubt you. We mean to marry, I suppose, don't we?"

"Of course we do. We have only to go to Budmouth on Monday, and we marry
at once."

"Then do let us go!--O Damon, what you make me say!" She hid her face in
her handkerchief. "Here am I asking you to marry me, when by rights
you ought to be on your knees imploring me, your cruel mistress, not
to refuse you, and saying it would break your heart if I did. I used to
think it would be pretty and sweet like that; but how different!"

"Yes, real life is never at all like that."

"But I don't care personally if it never takes place," she added with a
little dignity; "no, I can live without you. It is Aunt I think of. She
is so proud, and thinks so much of her family respectability, that she
will be cut down with mortification if this story should get abroad
before--it is done. My cousin Clym, too, will be much wounded."

"Then he will be very unreasonable. In fact, you are all rather
unreasonable."

Thomasin coloured a little, and not with love. But whatever the
momentary feeling which caused that flush in her, it went as it came,
and she humbly said, "I never mean to be, if I can help it. I merely
feel that you have my aunt to some extent in your power at last."

"As a matter of justice it is almost due to me," said Wildeve. "Think
what I have gone through to win her consent; the insult that it is to
any man to have the banns forbidden--the double insult to a man unlucky
enough to be cursed with sensitiveness, and blue demons, and Heaven
knows what, as I am. I can never forget those banns. A harsher man would
rejoice now in the power I have of turning upon your aunt by going no
further in the business."

She looked wistfully at him with her sorrowful eyes as he said those
words, and her aspect showed that more than one person in the room could
deplore the possession of sensitiveness. Seeing that she was really
suffering he seemed disturbed and added, "This is merely a reflection
you know. I have not the least intention to refuse to complete the
marriage, Tamsie mine--I could not bear it."

"You could not, I know!" said the fair girl, brightening. "You, who
cannot bear the sight of pain in even an insect, or any disagreeable
sound, or unpleasant smell even, will not long cause pain to me and
mine."

"I will not, if I can help it."

"Your hand upon it, Damon."

He carelessly gave her his hand.

"Ah, by my crown, what's that?" he said suddenly.

There fell upon their ears the sound of numerous voices singing in
front of the house. Among these, two made themselves prominent by their
peculiarity: one was a very strong bass, the other a wheezy thin piping.
Thomasin recognized them as belonging to Timothy Fairway and Grandfer
Cantle respectively.

"What does it mean--it is not skimmity-riding, I hope?" she said, with a
frightened gaze at Wildeve.

"Of course not; no, it is that the heath-folk have come to sing to us
a welcome. This is intolerable!" He began pacing about, the men outside
singing cheerily--


"He told' her that she' was the joy' of his life', And if' she'd
con-sent' he would make her his wife'; She could' not refuse' him;
to church' so they went', Young Will was forgot', and young Sue' was
content'; And then' was she kiss'd' and set down' on his knee', No man'
in the world' was so lov'-ing as he'!"


Mrs. Yeobright burst in from the outer room. "Thomasin, Thomasin!" she
said, looking indignantly at Wildeve; "here's a pretty exposure! Let us
escape at once. Come!"

It was, however, too late to get away by the passage. A rugged knocking
had begun upon the door of the front room. Wildeve, who had gone to the
window, came back.

"Stop!" he said imperiously, putting his hand upon Mrs. Yeobright's arm.
"We are regularly besieged. There are fifty of them out there if there's
one. You stay in this room with Thomasin; I'll go out and face them. You
must stay now, for my sake, till they are gone, so that it may seem as
if all was right. Come, Tamsie dear, don't go making a scene--we must
marry after this; that you can see as well as I. Sit still, that's
all--and don't speak much. I'll manage them. Blundering fools!"

He pressed the agitated girl into a seat, returned to the outer room and
opened the door. Immediately outside, in the passage, appeared Grandfer
Cantle singing in concert with those still standing in front of the
house. He came into the room and nodded abstractedly to Wildeve, his
lips still parted, and his features excruciatingly strained in the
emission of the chorus. This being ended, he said heartily, "Here's
welcome to the new-made couple, and God bless 'em!"

"Thank you," said Wildeve, with dry resentment, his face as gloomy as a
thunderstorm.

At the Grandfer's heels now came the rest of the group, which included
Fairway, Christian, Sam the turf-cutter, Humphrey, and a dozen others.
All smiled upon Wildeve, and upon his tables and chairs likewise, from
a general sense of friendliness towards the articles as well as towards
their owner.

"We be not here afore Mrs. Yeobright after all," said Fairway,
recognizing the matron's bonnet through the glass partition which
divided the public apartment they had entered from the room where the
women sat. "We struck down across, d'ye see, Mr. Wildeve, and she went
round by the path."

"And I see the young bride's little head!" said Grandfer, peeping in the
same direction, and discerning Thomasin, who was waiting beside her aunt
in a miserable and awkward way. "Not quite settled in yet--well, well,
there's plenty of time."

Wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated
them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a
warm halo over matters at once.

"That's a drop of the right sort, I can see," said Grandfer Cantle, with
the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it.

"Yes," said Wildeve, "'tis some old mead. I hope you will like it."

"O ay!" replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words
demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. "There
isn't a prettier drink under the sun."

"I'll take my oath there isn't," added Grandfer Cantle. "All that can be
said against mead is that 'tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a man
a good while. But tomorrow's Sunday, thank God."

"I feel'd for all the world like some bold soldier after I had had some
once," said Christian.

"You shall feel so again," said Wildeve, with condescension, "Cups or
glasses, gentlemen?"

"Well, if you don't mind, we'll have the beaker, and pass 'en round;
'tis better than heling it out in dribbles."

"Jown the slippery glasses," said Grandfer Cantle. "What's the good of
a thing that you can't put down in the ashes to warm, hey, neighbours;
that's what I ask?"

"Right, Grandfer," said Sam; and the mead then circulated.

"Well," said Timothy Fairway, feeling demands upon his praise in some
form or other, "'tis a worthy thing to be married, Mr. Wildeve; and the
woman you've got is a dimant, so says I. Yes," he continued, to Grandfer
Cantle, raising his voice so as to be heard through the partition, "her
father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was as good a
feller as ever lived. He always had his great indignation ready against
anything underhand."

"Is that very dangerous?" said Christian.

"And there were few in these parts that were upsides with him," said
Sam. "Whenever a club walked he'd play the clarinet in the band that
marched before 'em as if he'd never touched anything but a clarinet all
his life. And then, when they got to church door he'd throw down the
clarinet, mount the gallery, snatch up the bass viol, and rozum away as
if he'd never played anything but a bass viol. Folk would say--folk that
knowed what a true stave was--'Surely, surely that's never the same man
that I saw handling the clarinet so masterly by now!"

"I can mind it," said the furze-cutter. "'Twas a wonderful thing that
one body could hold it all and never mix the fingering."

"There was Kingsbere church likewise," Fairway recommenced, as one
opening a new vein of the same mine of interest.

Wildeve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and glanced
through the partition at the prisoners.

"He used to walk over there of a Sunday afternoon to visit his old
acquaintance Andrew Brown, the first clarinet there; a good man enough,
but rather screechy in his music, if you can mind?"

"'A was."

"And neighbour Yeobright would take Andrey's place for some part of
the service, to let Andrey have a bit of a nap, as any friend would
naturally do."

"As any friend would," said Grandfer Cantle, the other listeners
expressing the same accord by the shorter way of nodding their heads.

"No sooner was Andrey asleep and the first whiff of neighbour
Yeobright's wind had got inside Andrey's clarinet than everyone in
church feeled in a moment there was a great soul among 'em. All heads
would turn, and they'd say, 'Ah, I thought 'twas he!' One Sunday I can
well mind--a bass viol day that time, and Yeobright had brought his own.
'Twas the Hundred-and-thirty-third to 'Lydia'; and when they'd come
to 'Ran down his beard and o'er his robes its costly moisture shed,'
neighbour Yeobright, who had just warmed to his work, drove his bow into
them strings that glorious grand that he e'en a'most sawed the bass
viol into two pieces. Every winder in church rattled as if 'twere a
thunderstorm. Old Pa'son Williams lifted his hands in his great holy
surplice as natural as if he'd been in common clothes, and seemed to say
hisself, 'O for such a man in our parish!' But not a soul in Kingsbere
could hold a candle to Yeobright."

"Was it quite safe when the winder shook?" Christian inquired.

He received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration
of the performance described. As with Farinelli's singing before the
princesses, Sheridan's renowned Begum Speech, and other such examples,
the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested
the deceased Mr. Yeobright's tour de force on that memorable afternoon
with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been
possible, might considerably have shorn down.

"He was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the prime of life,"
said Humphrey.

"Ah, well; he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. At
that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at Greenhill
Fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid,
hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens, for 'a was a
good, runner afore she got so heavy. When she came home I said--we were
then just beginning to walk together--'What have ye got, my honey?'
'I've won--well, I've won--a gown-piece,' says she, her colours coming
up in a moment. 'Tis a smock for a crown, I thought; and so it turned
out. Ay, when I think what she'll say to me now without a mossel of red
in her face, it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little thing
then.... However, then she went on, and that's what made me bring up the
story. Well, whatever clothes I've won, white or figured, for eyes to
see or for eyes not to see' ('a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in
those days), 'I'd sooner have lost it than have seen what I have. Poor
Mr. Yeobright was took bad directly he reached the fair ground, and was
forced to go home again.' That was the last time he ever went out of the
parish."

"'A faltered on from one day to another, and then we heard he was gone."

"D'ye think he had great pain when 'a died?" said Christian.

"O no--quite different. Nor any pain of mind. He was lucky enough to be
God A'mighty's own man."

"And other folk--d'ye think 'twill be much pain to 'em, Mister Fairway?"

"That depends on whether they be afeard."

"I bain't afeard at all, I thank God!" said Christian strenuously. "I'm
glad I bain't, for then 'twon't pain me.... I don't think I be afeard--or
if I be I can't help it, and I don't deserve to suffer. I wish I was not
afeard at all!"

There was a solemn silence, and looking from the window, which was
unshuttered and unblinded, Timothy said, "Well, what a fess little
bonfire that one is, out by Cap'n Vye's! 'Tis burning just the same now
as ever, upon my life."

All glances went through the window, and nobody noticed that Wildeve
disguised a brief, telltale look. Far away up the sombre valley of
heath, and to the right of Rainbarrow, could indeed be seen the light,
small, but steady and persistent as before.

"It was lighted before ours was," Fairway continued; "and yet every one
in the country round is out afore 'n."

"Perhaps there's meaning in it!" murmured Christian.

"How meaning?" said Wildeve sharply.

Christian was too scattered to reply, and Timothy helped him.

"He means, sir, that the lonesome dark-eyed creature up there that some
say is a witch--ever I should call a fine young woman such a name--is
always up to some odd conceit or other; and so perhaps 'tis she."

"I'd be very glad to ask her in wedlock, if she'd hae me and take
the risk of her wild dark eyes ill-wishing me," said Grandfer Cantle
staunchly.

"Don't ye say it, Father!" implored Christian.

"Well, be dazed if he who do marry the maid won't hae an uncommon
picture for his best parlour," said Fairway in a liquid tone, placing
down the cup of mead at the end of a good pull.

"And a partner as deep as the North Star," said Sam, taking up the cup
and finishing the little that remained. "Well, really, now I think we
must be moving," said Humphrey, observing the emptiness of the vessel.

"But we'll gie 'em another song?" said Grandfer Cantle. "I'm as full of
notes as a bird!"

"Thank you, Grandfer," said Wildeve. "But we will not trouble you now.
Some other day must do for that--when I have a party."

"Be jown'd if I don't learn ten new songs for't, or I won't learn a
line!" said Grandfer Cantle. "And you may be sure I won't disappoint ye
by biding away, Mr. Wildeve."

"I quite believe you," said that gentleman.

All then took their leave, wishing their entertainer long life and
happiness as a married man, with recapitulations which occupied some
time. Wildeve attended them to the door, beyond which the deep-dyed
upward stretch of heath stood awaiting them, an amplitude of darkness
reigning from their feet almost to the zenith, where a definite form
first became visible in the lowering forehead of Rainbarrow. Diving
into the dense obscurity in a line headed by Sam the turf-cutter, they
pursued their trackless way home.

When the scratching of the furze against their leggings had fainted upon
the ear, Wildeve returned to the room where he had left Thomasin and her
aunt. The women were gone.

They could only have left the house in one way, by the back window; and
this was open.

Wildeve laughed to himself, remained a moment thinking, and idly
returned to the front room. Here his glance fell upon a bottle of wine
which stood on the mantelpiece. "Ah--old Dowden!" he murmured; and going
to the kitchen door shouted, "Is anybody here who can take something to
old Dowden?"

There was no reply. The room was empty, the lad who acted as his
factotum having gone to bed. Wildeve came back put on his hat, took the
bottle, and left the house, turning the key in the door, for there was
no guest at the inn tonight. As soon as he was on the road the little
bonfire on Mistover Knap again met his eye.

"Still waiting, are you, my lady?" he murmured.

However, he did not proceed that way just then; but leaving the hill to
the left of him, he stumbled over a rutted road that brought him to a
cottage which, like all other habitations on the heath at this hour, was
only saved from being visible by a faint shine from its bedroom window.
This house was the home of Olly Dowden, the besom-maker, and he entered.

The lower room was in darkness; but by feeling his way he found a table,
whereon he placed the bottle, and a minute later emerged again upon the
heath. He stood and looked northeast at the undying little fire--high up
above him, though not so high as Rainbarrow.

We have been told what happens when a woman deliberates; and the epigram
is not always terminable with woman, provided that one be in the case,
and that a fair one. Wildeve stood, and stood longer, and breathed
perplexedly, and then said to himself with resignation, "Yes--by Heaven,
I must go to her, I suppose!"

Instead of turning in the direction of home he pressed on rapidly by a
path under Rainbarrow towards what was evidently a signal light.

</CHAPTER>

 Thomasin isn't married after all, which is hugely scandalous. Her aunt is shocked. Turns out, Wildeve, first name Damon, did something wrong with the marriage license. Thomasin is upset but she doesn't try to avoid blame in the situation - she panicked and ran off after the marriage snafu, which probably didn't help matters at all. Mrs. Yeobright drags her niece off to see Damon, which is just awkward. So Damon answers the door and proceeds to confirm Thomasin's narration of the events. Damon asks for some private time with his bride-to-be. The couple hashes out their situation. Damon is being grumpy - he's still mad at Mrs. Yeobright for publicly disapproving of the engagement . But he insists he still wants to marry "Tamsie." Thomasin's mood improves. Suddenly, the bonfire crew all show up, in high spirits. They've come to welcome the married couple. The group decides to sing a song too, just like in Oklahoma. Wildeve and the Yeobright women decide to just pretend like everything is cool until the party people go away. Wildeve has a drink with the guys. He's kind of a jerk to them all. Fairway regales everyone with the story of his wedding day. The group gossip and stand around drinking Wildeve's alcohol. Fairway mentions that the bonfire over at Captain Vye's house is still burning. Wildeve glances out the window at it and seems very interested. Intrigue. The group gossip about the bonfire and Vye's granddaughter - rumor has it, she's a witch. Finally the group leaves. The Yeobright women have also left. Wildeve then starts talking to himself like he's in a play doing a soliloquy or something. But he helpfully informs us that he has a thing with Vye's granddaughter and that the fire is some sort of signal. So he heads off to visit her.

