 in the general situation
grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects of natural laws, and see
the quandary that man is in by their operation.
    The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this new
recognition will probably be akin to those of Yeobright. The observer's eye was
arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as a page; not by what
it was, but by what it recorded. His features were attractive in the light of
symbols, as sounds intrinsically common become attractive in language, and as
shapes intrinsically simple become interesting in writing.
    He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been
chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to
the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The only absolute
certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid
which he was born.
    Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen, the
listener said, »Ah, Clym Yeobright: what is he doing now?« When the instinctive
question about a person is, What is he doing? it is felt that he will not be
found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. There is an
indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity, good or
bad. The devout hope is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is
making a mess of it. Half a dozen comfortable market-men, who were habitual
callers at the Quiet Woman as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the
topic. In fact, though they were not Egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while
they sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window.
Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly anybody could
look upon it without thinking of him. So the subject recurred: if he were making
a fortune and a name, so much the better for him; if he were making a tragical
figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative.
    The fact was that Yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extent before he
left home. »It is bad when your fame outruns your means,« said the Spanish
Jesuit Gracian. At the age of six he had asked a Scripture riddle: »Who was the
first man known to wear breeches?« and applause had resounded from the very
verge of the heath. At seven he painted the Battle of Waterloo with tiger-lily
