Chapter: <CHAPTER>
2--The New Course Causes Disappointment


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

In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate
stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those
stages is almost sure to be worldly advanced. We can hardly imagine
bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining
social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's local peculiarity was
that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living--nay,
wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness with clowns.

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

In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Yeobright might
have been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him. A
man should be only partially before his time--to be completely to the
vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been
intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without
bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but
nobody would have heard of an Alexander.

In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the
capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded
because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners
have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man who advocates
aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only likely to be
understood by a class to which social effort has become a stale matter.
To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the bucolic
world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to disturb a sequence
to which humanity has been long accustomed. Yeobright preaching to
the Egdon eremites that they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness
without going through the process of enriching themselves was not unlike
arguing to ancient Chaldeans that in ascending from earth to the pure
empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into the intervening heaven
of ether.

Was Yeobright's mind well-proportioned? No. A well proportioned mind is
one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that
it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a
heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other 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 are happiness and mediocrity.
It produces the poetry of Rogers, the paintings of West, the statecraft
of North, the spiritual guidance of Tomline; enabling its possessors to
find their way to wealth, to wind up well, to step with dignity off the
stage, to die comfortably in their beds, and to get the decent monument
which, in many cases, they deserve. It never would have allowed
Yeobright to do such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to
benefit his fellow-creatures.

He walked along towards home without attending to paths. If anyone knew
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 its product. His
eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all the first images
of his memory were mingled, his estimate of life had been coloured by
it: his toys had been the flint knives and arrow-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 human haunters. Take all the
varying hates felt by Eustacia Vye towards the heath, 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 its
century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this.
It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. How could this
be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadows
watered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they looked like
silver gridirons? The farmer, in his ride, who could smile at artificial
grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh with sadness
at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant upland of heath
nothing better than a frown. But as for Yeobright, when he looked
from the heights on his way he could not help indulging in a barbarous
satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attempts at reclamation
from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded
again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly 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 looked
up at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long stay with
her; her face had worn that look for several days. He could perceive
that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting group
amounted in his mother to concern. But she had asked no question with
her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that he was not
going to leave her soon. Her silence besought an explanation of him more
loudly than words.

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

Mrs. Yeobright turned in pained surprise. "I thought something was
amiss, 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 would be
pleased with my plan. I was not quite clear on a few points myself. I am
going to take an entirely new course."

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

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

"After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and when
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 be your
ruin, Clym."

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

No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. His mother then
began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "It disturbs
me, Clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughts as those. I
hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in the world by your
own free choice. Of course, I have always supposed you were going to
push straight on, as other men do--all who deserve the 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 hate
the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any man
deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees
half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach
them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up every morning
and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as St. Paul
says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering splendours with
wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest
vanities--I, who have health and strength enough for anything. I have
been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and the 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 care for
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 enjoy delicacies;
good things are wasted upon me. Well, I ought to turn that defect to
advantage, and by being able to do without what other people require I
can spend what such things cost upon anybody else."

Now, Yeobright, having inherited some of these very instincts from the
woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in her through
her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she might for his
good. She spoke with less assurance. "And yet you might have been a
wealthy man if you had only persevered. Manager to that large diamond
establishment--what better can a man wish for? What a post of trust
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 what
you mean by it. Mother, what is doing well?"

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

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

It was the custom on Egdon to begin the preface to a story before
absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of the
narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face. Christian
had been saying to them while the door was leaving its latch, "To think
that I, who go from home but once in a while, and hardly 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 done dinner.' I
assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. Do ye think any 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 to oblige
the man as I. We hadn't been hard at it for more than a minute when a
most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just
gied up their heart's blood. All the folk jumped up and then we found
that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a long stocking-needle, as
she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could get the young lady to
church, where she don't come very often. She've waited for this chance
for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the bewitching of
Susan's children that has been carried on so long. Sue followed her into
church, sat next to her, and as soon as she could find a chance in went
the stocking-needle into my lady's arm."

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

"Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I was
afeard there might be some tumult among us, I got behind the bass viol
and didn't see no more. But they carried her out into the air, 'tis
said; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone. What a scream
that girl gied, poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surplice
holding 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 I
found out, Mrs. Yeobright? The pa'son wears a suit of clothes under his
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 Humphrey
coming, 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 to church
some rum job or other is sure to be doing. The last time one of us was
there was when neighbour Fairway went in the fall; and that was 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 told it
I must be moving homeward myself."

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

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

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


Later in the day Sam, the turf-cutter, entered. "I've come a-borrowing,
Mrs. Yeobright. I suppose you have heard what's been happening to the
beauty on the hill?"

"Yes, Sam: half a dozen have been telling us."

"Beauty?" said Clym.

"Yes, tolerably well-favoured," Sam replied. "Lord! all the country owns
that 'tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a woman
should have come to live up there."

"Dark or fair?"

"Now, though I've seen her twenty times, that's a thing I cannot call to
mind."

"Darker than Tamsin," murmured Mrs. Yeobright.

"A woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say."

"She is melancholy, then?" inquired Clym.

"She mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the people."

"Is she a young lady inclined for adventures?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some sort of
excitement in this lonely place?"

"No."

"Mumming, for instance?"

"No. Her notions be different. I should rather say her thoughts were far
away from here, with lords and ladies she'll never know, and mansions
she'll never see again."

Observing that Clym appeared singularly interested Mrs. Yeobright said
rather uneasily to Sam, "You see more in her than most of us do. Miss
Vye is to my mind too idle to be charming. I have never heard that
she is of any use to herself or to other people. Good girls don't get
treated as witches even on Egdon."

"Nonsense--that proves nothing either way," said Yeobright.

"Well, of course I don't understand such niceties," said Sam,
withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument; "and what she is we
must wait for time to tell us. The business that I have really called
about is this, to borrow the longest and strongest rope you have. The
captain's bucket has dropped into the well, and they are in want of
water; and as all the chaps are at home today we think we can get it out
for him. We have three cart-ropes already, but they won't reach to the
bottom."

Mrs. Yeobright told him that he might have whatever ropes he could find
in the outhouse, and Sam went out to search. When he passed by the door
Clym joined him, and accompanied him to the gate.

"Is this young witch-lady going to stay long at Mistover?" he asked.

"I should say so."

"What a cruel shame to ill-use her, She must have suffered greatly--more
in mind than in body."

"'Twas a graceless trick--such a handsome girl, too. You ought to see
her, Mr. Yeobright, being a young man come from far, and with a little
more to show for your years than most of us."

"Do you think she would like to teach children?" said Clym.

Sam shook his head. "Quite a different sort of body from that, I
reckon."

"O, it was merely something which occurred to me. It would of course be
necessary to see her and talk it over--not an easy thing, by the way,
for my family and hers are not very friendly."

"I'll tell you how you mid see her, Mr. Yeobright," said Sam. "We are
going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house, and
you could lend a hand. There's five or six coming, but the well is deep,
and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape.
She's sure to be walking round."

"I'll think of it," said Yeobright; and they parted.

He thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said about Eustacia
inside the house at that time. Whether this romantic martyr to
superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the
full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem.



</CHAPTER>

 The narrator informs us that Clym loves the heath and the people of Egdon, but that he doesn't have a good understanding of them and his school scheme isn't planned out very well. Clym is a huge part of the heath, but he doesn't quite understand his place in it. "Take all the varying hates felt by Eustacia Vye towards the heath, and translate them into love, and you have the heart of Clym" . Clym arrives home after his extended nature walk and announces to his mom that he's staying in Egdon. His mom flips out and thinks that he's throwing his life away. Clym gets all defensive and insists that his mom doesn't understand him. Mrs. Yeobright says that she understands he's giving up a lot of money to come home and live like a loser. She also tells him his school idea is dumb. Clym says that money isn't everything. Then Christian Cantle shows up with some gossip. Apparently, Susan Nunsuch decided that Eustacia is a witch and stabbed her with a needle in church to see if she bled or not. Clym and his mom are upset by the news. Humphrey comes in and corroborates Christian's story. Clym is now concerned about his school plan since the residents of Egdon are more ignorant than he thought. Later that day Sam stops by and gossips about Eustacia some more. The Vyes' water bucket fell into their well and they can't get it out. Clym offers to go with Sam to help drag it back out, and finally to get a look at Eustacia.

