The Return of the Native | Page 3

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The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

PREFACE
The date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred
may be set down as between 1840 and 1850, when the old watering
place herein called "Budmouth" still retained sufficient afterglow from
its Georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing attractiveness to
the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland.
Under the general name of "Egdon Heath," which has been given to the
sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real
names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in
character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now
somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the
plough with varying degrees of success, or planted to woodland.
It is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose
southwestern quarter is here described, may be the heath of that
traditionary King of Wessex--Lear.

July, 1895.

"To sorrow I bade good morrow, And thought to leave her far away
behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly; She is so constant to
me, and so kind. I would deceive her, And so leave her, But ah! she is
so constant and so kind."

book one
THE THREE WOMEN

1 - A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression
A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of
twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath
embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of
whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole
heath for its floor.
The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the
darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked.
In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night
which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come:
darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct
in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to
continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his
faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament
seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The
face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening;
it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the
frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a
moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.
In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into

darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and
nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at
such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its
complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours
before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The
spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself
an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its
shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows
seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath
exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the
obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a
black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway.
The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other
things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and
listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it
had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises
of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last
crisis--the final overthrow.
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of