The Return of the Native
in both his own with a tenderness beyond description, unless it was
like that of a child holding a captured sparrow.
“Why, there’s a glove on it!” he said in a deprecating way.
“I have been walking,” she observed.
“But, miss!”
“Well—it is hardly fair.” She pulled off the glove, and gave him her
bare hand.
They stood together minute after minute, without further speech, each
looking at the blackening scene, and each thinking his and her own
thoughts.
“I think I won’t use it all up tonight,” said Charley devotedly, when
six or eight minutes had been passed by him caressing her hand. “May I
have the other few minutes another time?”
“As you like,” said she without the least emotion. “But it must be over
in a week. Now, there is only one thing I want you to do—to wait while
I put on the dress, and then to see if I do my part properly. But let
me look first indoors.”
She vanished for a minute or two, and went in. Her grandfather was
safely asleep in his chair. “Now, then,” she said, on returning, “walk
down the garden a little way, and when I am ready I’ll call you.”
Charley walked and waited, and presently heard a soft whistle. He
returned to the fuelhouse door.
“Did you whistle, Miss Vye?”
“Yes; come in,” reached him in Eustacia’s voice from a back quarter. “I
must not strike a light till the door is shut, or it may be seen
shining. Push your hat into the hole through to the wash-house, if you
can feel your way across.”
Charley did as commanded, and she struck the light revealing herself to
be changed in sex, brilliant in colours, and armed from top to toe.
Perhaps she quailed a little under Charley’s vigorous gaze, but whether
any shyness at her male attire appeared upon her countenance could not
be seen by reason of the strips of ribbon which used to cover the face
in mumming costumes, representing the barred visor of the mediæval
helmet.
“It fits pretty well,” she said, looking down at the white overalls,
“except that the tunic, or whatever you call it, is long in the sleeve.
The bottom of the overalls I can turn up inside. Now pay attention.”
Eustacia then proceeded in her delivery, striking the sword against the
staff or lance at the minatory phrases, in the orthodox mumming manner,
and strutting up and down. Charley seasoned his admiration with
criticism of the gentlest kind, for the touch of Eustacia’s hand yet
remained with him.
“And now for your excuse to the others,” she said. “Where do you meet
before you go to Mrs. Yeobright’s?”
“We thought of meeting here, miss, if you have nothing to say against
it. At eight o’clock, so as to get there by nine.”
“Yes. Well, you of course must not appear. I will march in about five
minutes late, ready-dressed, and tell them that you can’t come. I have
decided that the best plan will be for you to be sent somewhere by me,
to make a real thing of the excuse. Our two heath-croppers are in the
habit of straying into the meads, and tomorrow evening you can go and
see if they are gone there. I’ll manage the rest. Now you may leave
me.”
“Yes, miss. But I think I’ll have one minute more of what I am owed, if
you don’t mind.”
Eustacia gave him her hand as before.
“One minute,” she said, and counted on till she reached seven or eight
minutes. Hand and person she then withdrew to a distance of several
feet, and recovered some of her old dignity. The contract completed,
she raised between them a barrier impenetrable as a wall.
“There, ’tis all gone; and I didn’t mean quite all,” he said, with a
sigh.
“You had good measure,” said she, turning away.
“Yes, miss. Well, ’tis over, and now I’ll get home-along.”
V.
Through the Moonlight
The next evening the mummers were assembled in the same spot, awaiting
the entrance of the Turkish Knight.
“Twenty minutes after eight by the Quiet Woman, and Charley not come.”
“Ten minutes past by Blooms-End.”
“It wants ten minutes to, by Grandfer Cantle’s watch.”
“And ’tis five minutes past by the captain’s clock.”
On Egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. The time at any moment
was a number of varying doctrines professed by the different hamlets,
some of them having originally grown up from a common root, and then
become divided by secession, some having been alien from the beginning.
West Egdon believed in Blooms-End time, East Egdon in the time of the
Quiet Woman Inn. Grandfer Cantle’s watch had numbered many followers in
years gone by, but since he had grown older faiths were shaken. Thus,
the mummers having gathered hither from scattered points each came with
his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a little longer as a
compromise.
Eustacia had watched the assemblage through the hole; and seeing that
now was the proper moment to enter, she went from the “linhay” and
boldly pulled the bobbin of the fuelhouse door. Her grandfather was
safe at the Quiet Woman.
“Here’s Charley at last! How late you be, Charley.”
“’Tis not Charley,” said the Turkish Knight from within his visor.
“’Tis a cousin of Miss Vye’s, come to take Charley’s place from
curiosity. He was obliged to go and look for the heath-croppers that
have got into the meads, and I agreed to take his place, as he knew he
couldn’t come back here again tonight. I know the part as well as he.”
Her graceful gait, elegant figure, and dignified manner in general won
the mummers to the opinion that they had gained by the exchange, if the
newcomer were perfect in his part.
“It don’t matter—if you be not too young,” said Saint George.
Eustacia’s voice had sounded somewhat more juvenile and fluty than
Charley’s.
“I know every word of it, I tell you,” said Eustacia decisively. Dash
being all that was required to carry her triumphantly through, she
adopted as much as was necessary. “Go ahead, lads, with the try-over.
I’ll challenge any of you to find a mistake in me.”
The play was hastily rehearsed, whereupon the other mummers were
delighted with the new knight. They extinguished the candles at
half-past eight, and set out upon the heath in the direction of Mrs.
Yeobright’s house at Bloom’s-End.
There was a slight hoarfrost that night, and the moon, though not more
than half full, threw a spirited and enticing brightness upon the
fantastic figures of the mumming band, whose plumes and ribbons rustled
in their walk like autumn leaves. Their path was not over Rainbarrow
now, but down a valley which left that ancient elevation a little to
the east. The bottom of the vale was green to a width of ten yards or
thereabouts, and the shining facets of frost upon the blades of grass
seemed to move on with the shadows of those they surrounded. The masses
of furze and heath to the right and left were dark as ever; a mere
half-moon was powerless to silver such sable features as theirs.
Half-an-hour of walking and talking brought them to the spot in the
valley where the grass riband widened and led down to the front of the
house. At sight of the place Eustacia who had felt a few passing doubts
during her walk with the youths, again was glad that the adventure had
been undertaken. She had come out to see a man who might possibly have
the power to deliver her soul from a most deadly oppression. What was
Wildeve? Interesting, but inadequate. Perhaps she would see a
sufficient hero tonight.
As they drew nearer to the front of the house the mummers became aware
that music and dancing were briskly flourishing within. Every now and
then a long low note from the serpent, which was the chief wind
instrument played at these times, advanced further into the heath than
the thin treble part, and reached their ears alone; and next a more
than usual loud tread from a dancer would come the same way. With
nearer approach these fragmentary sounds became pieced together, and
were found to be the salient points of the tune called “Nancy’s Fancy.”
He was there, of course. Who was she that he danced with? Perhaps some
unknown woman, far beneath herself in culture, was by the most subtle
of lures sealing his fate this very instant. To dance with a man is to
concentrate a twelvemonth’s regulation fire upon him in the fragment of
an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage
without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who
tread this royal road. She would see how his heart lay by keen
observation of them all.
The enterprising lady followed the mumming company through the gate in
the white paling, and stood before the open porch. The house was
encrusted with heavy thatchings, which dropped between the upper
windows; the front, upon which the moonbeams directly played, had
originally been white; but a huge pyracanth now darkened the greater
portion.
It became at once evident that the dance was proceeding immediately
within the surface of the door, no apartment intervening. The brushing
of skirts and elbows, sometimes the bumping of shoulders, could be
heard against the very panels. Eustacia, though living within two miles
of the place, had never seen the interior of this quaint old
habitation. Between Captain Vye and the Yeobrights there had never
existed much acquaintance, the former having come as a stranger and
purchased the long-empty house at Mistover Knap not long before the
death of Mrs. Yeobright’s husband; and with that event and the
departure of her son such friendship as had grown up became quite
broken off.
“Is there no passage inside the door, then?” asked Eustacia as they
stood within the porch.
“No,” said the lad who played the Saracen. “The door opens right upon
the front sitting-room, where the spree’s going on.”
“So that we cannot open the door without stopping the dance.”
“That’s it. Here we must bide till they have done, for they always bolt
the back door after dark.”
“They won’t be much longer,” said Father Christmas.
This assertion, however, was hardly borne out by the event. Again the
instruments ended the tune; again they recommenced with as much fire
and pathos as if it were the first strain. The air was now that one
without any particular beginning, middle, or end, which perhaps, among
all the dances which throng an inspired fiddler’s fancy, best conveys
the idea of the interminable—the celebrated “Devil’s Dream.” The fury
of personal movement that was kindled by the fury of the notes could be
approximately imagined by these outsiders under the moon, from the
occasional kicks of toes and heels against the door, whenever the whirl
round had been of more than customary velocity.
The first five minutes of listening was interesting enough to the
mummers. The five minutes extended to ten minutes, and these to a
quarter of an hour; but no signs of ceasing were audible in the lively
“Dream.” The bumping against the door, the laughter, the stamping, were
all as vigorous as ever, and the pleasure in being outside lessened
considerably.
“Why does Mrs. Yeobright give parties of this sort?” Eustacia asked, a
little surprised to hear merriment so pronounced.
“It is not one of her bettermost parlour-parties. She’s asked the plain
neighbours and workpeople without drawing any lines, just to give ’em a
good supper and such like. Her son and she wait upon the folks.”
“I see,” said Eustacia.
“’Tis the last strain, I think,” said Saint George, with his ear to the
panel. “A young man and woman have just swung into this corner, and
he’s saying to her, ‘Ah, the pity; ’tis over for us this time, my
own.’”
“Thank God,” said the Turkish Knight, stamping, and taking from the
wall the conventional lance that each of the mummers carried. Her boots
being thinner than those of the young men, the hoar had damped her feet
and made them cold.
“Upon my song ’tis another ten minutes for us,” said the Valiant