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 affluence1. 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 bucolic2 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 placidity3 quickening to intellectual aims without imagining social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's local peculiarity4 was that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved5 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 repentance6 for his text. Mentally he was in a provincial7 future, that is, he was in many points abreast8 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 ethical9 systems popular at the time.
In consequence of this relatively10 advanced position, Yeobright might have been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially11 before his time--to be completely to the vanward in aspirations12 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 renown13 the forwardness should lie chiefly in the capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine14 they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man who advocates aesthetic15 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 serene16 comprehensiveness without going through the process of enriching themselves was not unlike arguing to ancient Chaldeans that in ascending17 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 bias18; 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, revered19 as a priest, or exalted20 as a king. Its usual blessings21 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 permeated22 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 mingled23, 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 prospect24 as he walked, and was glad.
To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped out of its century generations ago, to intrude25 as an uncouth26 object into this. It was an obsolete27 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 solicitude28 at the coming corn, and sigh with sadness at the fly-eaten turnips29, bestowed30 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 reclamation31 from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded32 again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting themselves.
He descended33 into the valley, and soon reached his home at Blooms-End. His mother was snipping34 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 besought35 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 entirely36 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 worthy37 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 spoke38 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 logic39 that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety40 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 interval41 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 buckle42 to and teach them how to breast the misery43 they are born to? I get up every morning and see the whole creation groaning44 and travailing in pain, as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines45, and pandering46 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 delicacies47; 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 awaken48 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 persevered49. 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. Christian50 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 narrative51 by the time visitor and visited stood face to face. Christian had been saying to them while the door was leaving its latch52, "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 standing53 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 screech54 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 pricked55 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 horrid56!" said Mrs. Yeobright.
"Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I was afeard there might be some tumult57 among us, I got behind the bass58 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 missionaries59, 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 melancholy60, 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 mansions61 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 mid62 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 martyr63 to superstition64 and the melancholy mummer he had conversed65 with under the full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem.
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affluence
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| n.充裕，富足 | |
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bucolic
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| adj.乡村的；牧羊的 | |
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placidity
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| n.平静，安静，温和 | |
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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cleaved
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| v.劈开，剁开，割开( cleave的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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permeated
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| 弥漫( permeate的过去式和过去分词 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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intrude
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| vi.闯入；侵入；打扰，侵扰 | |
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uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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turnips
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| 芜青( turnip的名词复数 )； 芜菁块根； 芜菁甘蓝块根； 怀表 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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reclamation
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| n.开垦；改造；（废料等的）回收 | |
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receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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snipping
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| n.碎片v.剪( snip的现在分词 ) | |
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besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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buckle
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| n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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libertines
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| n.放荡不羁的人，淫荡的人( libertine的名词复数 ) | |
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pandering
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| v.迎合（他人的低级趣味或淫欲）( pander的现在分词 )；纵容某人；迁就某事物 | |
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delicacies
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| n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到 | |
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awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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persevered
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| v.坚忍，坚持( persevere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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62
mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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63
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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64
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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65
conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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