Chapter 3 : The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin


Throughout this period Yeobright had more or less pondered
on his duty to his cousin Thomasin.  He could not help
feeling that it would be a pitiful waste of sweet
material if the tender-natured thing should be doomed
from this early stage of her life onwards to dribble
away her winsome qualities on lonely gorse and fern. 
But he felt this as an economist merely, and not as a lover. 
His passion for Eustacia had been a sort of conserve
of his whole life, and he had nothing more of that supreme
quality left to bestow.  So far the obvious thing was
not to entertain any idea of marriage with Thomasin,
even to oblige her. 

But this was not all.  Years ago there had been in his
mother's mind a great fancy about Thomasin and himself. 
It had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had
always been a favourite dream.  That they should be man
and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither
were endangered thereby, was the fancy in question. 
So that what course save one was there now left for any son
who reverenced his mother's memory as Yeobright did?  It
is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents,
which might have been dispersed by half an hour's
conversation during their lives, becomes sublimated
by their deaths into a fiat the most absolute, with such
results to conscientious children as those parents,
had they lived, would have been the first to decry. 

Had only Yeobright's own future been involved he would
have proposed to Thomasin with a ready heart.  He had
nothing to lose by carrying out a dead mother's hope. 
But he dreaded to contemplate Thomasin wedded to the mere
corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be. 
He had but three activities alive in him.  One was his
almost daily walk to the little graveyard wherein his
mother lay, another, his just as frequent visits by night
to the more distant enclosure which numbered his Eustacia
among its dead; the third was self-preparation for a vocation
which alone seemed likely to satisfy his cravings--that
of an itinerant preacher of the eleventh commandment. 
It was difficult to believe that Thomasin would be cheered
by a husband with such tendencies as these. 

Yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for herself. 
It was even with a pleasant sense of doing his duty that
he went downstairs to her one evening for this purpose,
when the sun was printing on the valley the same long
shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times
out of number while his mother lived. 

Thomasin was not in her room, and he found her in the
front garden.  "I have long been wanting, Thomasin,"
he began, "to say something about a matter that concerns
both our futures."

"And you are going to say it now?" she remarked quickly,
colouring as she met his gaze.  "Do stop a minute, Clym,
and let me speak first, for oddly enough, I have been
wanting to say something to you."

"By all means say on, Tamsie."

"I suppose nobody can overhear us?" she went on, casting her
eyes around and lowering her voice.  "Well, first you
will promise me this--that you won't be angry and call
me anything harsh if you disagree with what I propose?"

Yeobright promised, and she continued: "What I want
is your advice, for you are my relation--I mean, a sort
of guardian to me--aren't you, Clym?"

"Well, yes, I suppose I am; a sort of guardian.  In fact,
I am, of course," he said, altogether perplexed as to
her drift. 

"I am thinking of marrying," she then observed blandly. 
"But I shall not marry unless you assure me that you approve
of such a step.  Why don't you speak?"

"I was taken rather by surprise.  But, nevertheless, I am
very glad to hear such news.  I shall approve, of course,
dear Tamsie.  Who can it be?  I am quite at a loss to guess. 
No I am not--'tis the old doctor!--not that I mean to call
him old, for he is not very old after all.  Ah--I noticed
when he attended you last time!"

"No, no," she said hastily.  "'Tis Mr. Venn."

Clym's face suddenly became grave.

"There, now, you don't like him, and I wish I hadn't
mentioned him!" she exclaimed almost petulantly. 
"And I shouldn't have done it, either, only he keeps
on bothering me so till I don't know what to do!"

Clym looked at the heath.  "I like Venn well enough,"
he answered at last.  "He is a very honest and at the same
time astute man.  He is clever too, as is proved by his
having got you to favour him.  But really, Thomasin, he is
not quite--"

"Gentleman enough for me?  That is just what I feel. 
I am sorry now that I asked you, and I won't think any
more of him.  At the same time I must marry him if I marry
anybody--that I WILL say!"

"I don't see that," said Clym, carefully concealing every
clue to his own interrupted intention, which she plainly
had not guessed.  "You might marry a professional man,
or somebody of that sort, by going into the town to live
and forming acquaintances there."

"I am not fit for town life--so very rural and silly
as I always have been.  Do not you yourself notice
my countrified ways?"

"Well, when I came home from Paris I did, a little;
but I don't now."

"That's because you have got countrified too.  O, I couldn't
live in a street for the world! Egdon is a ridiculous
old place; but I have got used to it, and I couldn't
be happy anywhere else at all."

"Neither could I," said Clym. 

"Then how could you say that I should marry some town man?
I am sure, say what you will, that I must marry Diggory,
if I marry at all.  He has been kinder to me than anybody else,
and has helped me in many ways that I don't know of!"
Thomasin almost pouted now.

"Yes, he has," said Clym in a neutral tone.  "Well, I
wish with all my heart that I could say, marry him. 
But I cannot forget what my mother thought on that matter,
and it goes rather against me not to respect her opinion. 
There is too much reason why we should do the little we can
to respect it now."

"Very well, then," sighed Thomasin.  "I will say no more."

"But you are not bound to obey my wishes.  I merely say
what I think."

"O no--I don't want to be rebellious in that way,"
she said sadly.  "I had no business to think of him--I
ought to have thought of my family.  What dreadfully bad
impulses there are in me!" Her lips trembled, and she
turned away to hide a tear. 

Clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste,
was in a measure relieved to find that at any rate the
marriage question in relation to himself was shelved. 
Through several succeeding days he saw her at different
times from the window of his room moping disconsolately
about the garden.  He was half angry with her for
choosing Venn; then he was grieved at having put himself
in the way of Venn's happiness, who was, after all,
as honest and persevering a young fellow as any on Egdon,
since he had turned over a new leaf.  In short, Clym did
not know what to do. 

When next they met she said abruptly, "He is much more
respectable now than he was then!"

"Who?  O yes--Diggory Venn."

"Aunt only objected because he was a reddleman."

"Well, Thomasin, perhaps I don't know all the particulars
of my mother's wish.  So you had better use your own discretion."

"You will always feel that I slighted your mother's memory."

"No, I will not.  I shall think you are convinced that,
had she seen Diggory in his present position, she would
have considered him a fitting husband for you. 
Now, that's my real feeling.  Don't consult me any more,
but do as you like, Thomasin.  I shall be content."

It is to be supposed that Thomasin was convinced;
for a few days after this, when Clym strayed into a part
of the heath that he had not lately visited, Humphrey,
who was at work there, said to him, "I am glad to see
that Mrs. Wildeve and Venn have made it up again, seemingly."

"Have they?" said Clym abstractedly. 

"Yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she
walks out on fine days with the chiel.  But, Mr. Yeobright,
I can't help feeling that your cousin ought to have
married you.  'Tis a pity to make two chimleycorners
where there need be only one.  You could get her away from
him now, 'tis my belief, if you were only to set about it."

"How can I have the conscience to marry after having
driven two women to their deaths?  Don't think such
a thing, Humphrey.  After my experience I should consider it
too much of a burlesque to go to church and take a wife. 
In the words of Job, 'I have made a covenant with mine eyes;
when then should I think upon a maid?'"

"No, Mr. Clym, don't fancy that about driving two women
to their deaths.  You shouldn't say it."

"Well, we'll leave that out," said Yeobright.  "But anyhow
God has set a mark upon me which wouldn't look well
in a love-making scene.  I have two ideas in my head,
and no others.  I am going to keep a night-school;
and I am going to turn preacher.  What have you got to say
to that, Humphrey?"

"I'll come and hear 'ee with all my heart."

"Thanks. 'Tis all I wish."

As Clym descended into the valley Thomasin came
down by the other path, and met him at the gate. 
"What do you think I have to tell you, Clym?" she said,
looking archly over her shoulder at him. 

"I can guess," he replied. 

She scrutinized his face.  "Yes, you guess right. 
It is going to be after all.  He thinks I may as well
make up my mind, and I have got to think so too. 
It is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you
don't object."

"Do what you think right, dear.  I am only too glad that you
see your way clear to happiness again.  My sex owes you
every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by."*


* The writer may state here that the original conception
of the story did not design a marriage between Thomasin
and Venn.  He was to have retained his isolated and weird
character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously
from the heath, nobody knowing whither--Thomasin remaining
a widow.  But certain circumstances of serial publication
led to a change of intent. 

Readers can therefore choose between the endings,
and those with an austere artistic code can assume
the more consistent conclusion to be the true one.