The Return of the Native
Soldier, looking through the keyhole as the tune modulated into another
without stopping. “Grandfer Cantle is standing in this corner, waiting
his turn.”
“’Twon’t be long; ’tis a six-handed reel,” said the Doctor.
“Why not go in, dancing or no? They sent for us,” said the Saracen.
“Certainly not,” said Eustacia authoritatively, as she paced smartly up
and down from door to gate to warm herself. “We should burst into the
middle of them and stop the dance, and that would be unmannerly.”
“He thinks himself somebody because he has had a bit more schooling
than we,” said the Doctor.
“You may go to the deuce!” said Eustacia.
There was a whispered conversation between three or four of them, and
one turned to her.
“Will you tell us one thing?” he said, not without gentleness. “Be you
Miss Vye? We think you must be.”
“You may think what you like,” said Eustacia slowly. “But honourable
lads will not tell tales upon a lady.”
“We’ll say nothing, miss. That’s upon our honour.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
At this moment the fiddles finished off with a screech, and the serpent
emitted a last note that nearly lifted the roof. When, from the
comparative quiet within, the mummers judged that the dancers had taken
their seats, Father Christmas advanced, lifted the latch, and put his
head inside the door.
“Ah, the mummers, the mummers!” cried several guests at once. “Clear a
space for the mummers.”
Humpbacked Father Christmas then made a complete entry, swinging his
huge club, and in a general way clearing the stage for the actors
proper, while he informed the company in smart verse that he was come,
welcome or welcome not; concluding his speech with
“Make room, make room, my gallant boys,
And give us space to rhyme;
We’ve come to show Saint George’s play,
Upon this Christmas time.”
The guests were now arranging themselves at one end of the room, the
fiddler was mending a string, the serpent-player was emptying his
mouthpiece, and the play began. First of those outside the Valiant
Soldier entered, in the interest of Saint George—
“Here come I, the Valiant Soldier;
Slasher is my name”;
and so on. This speech concluded with a challenge to the infidel, at
the end of which it was Eustacia’s duty to enter as the Turkish Knight.
She, with the rest who were not yet on, had hitherto remained in the
moonlight which streamed under the porch. With no apparent effort or
backwardness she came in, beginning—
“Here come I, a Turkish Knight,
Who learnt in Turkish land to fight;
I’ll fight this man with courage bold:
If his blood’s hot I’ll make it cold!”
During her declamation Eustacia held her head erect, and spoke as
roughly as she could, feeling pretty secure from observation. But the
concentration upon her part necessary to prevent discovery, the newness
of the scene, the shine of the candles, and the confusing effect upon
her vision of the ribboned visor which hid her features, left her
absolutely unable to perceive who were present as spectators. On the
further side of a table bearing candles she could faintly discern
faces, and that was all.
Meanwhile Jim Starks as the Valiant Soldier had come forward, and, with
a glare upon the Turk, replied—
“If, then, thou art that Turkish Knight,
Draw out thy sword, and let us fight!”
And fight they did; the issue of the combat being that the Valiant
Soldier was slain by a preternaturally inadequate thrust from Eustacia,
Jim, in his ardour for genuine histrionic art, coming down like a log
upon the stone floor with force enough to dislocate his shoulder. Then,
after more words from the Turkish Knight, rather too faintly delivered,
and statements that he’d fight Saint George and all his crew, Saint
George himself magnificently entered with the well-known flourish—
“Here come I, Saint George, the valiant man,
With naked sword and spear in hand,
Who fought the dragon and brought him to the slaughter,
And by this won fair Sabra, the King of Egypt’s daughter;
What mortal man would dare to stand
Before me with my sword in hand?”
This was the lad who had first recognized Eustacia; and when she now,
as the Turk, replied with suitable defiance, and at once began the
combat, the young fellow took especial care to use his sword as gently
as possible. Being wounded, the Knight fell upon one knee, according to
the direction. The Doctor now entered, restored the Knight by giving
him a draught from the bottle which he carried, and the fight was again
resumed, the Turk sinking by degrees until quite overcome—dying as hard
in this venerable drama as he is said to do at the present day.
This gradual sinking to the earth was, in fact, one reason why Eustacia
had thought that the part of the Turkish Knight, though not the
shortest, would suit her best. A direct fall from upright to
horizontal, which was the end of the other fighting characters, was not
an elegant or decorous part for a girl. But it was easy to die like a
Turk, by a dogged decline.
Eustacia was now among the number of the slain, though not on the
floor, for she had managed to sink into a sloping position against the
clock-case, so that her head was well elevated. The play proceeded
between Saint George, the Saracen, the Doctor, and Father Christmas;
and Eustacia, having no more to do, for the first time found leisure to
observe the scene round, and to search for the form that had drawn her
hither.
VI.
The Two Stand Face to Face
The room had been arranged with a view to the dancing, the large oak
table having been moved back till it stood as a breastwork to the
fireplace. At each end, behind, and in the chimney-corner were grouped
the guests, many of them being warm-faced and panting, among whom
Eustacia cursorily recognized some well-to-do persons from beyond the
heath. Thomasin, as she had expected, was not visible, and Eustacia
recollected that a light had shone from an upper window when they were
outside—the window, probably, of Thomasin’s room. A nose, chin, hands,
knees, and toes projected from the seat within the chimney opening,
which members she found to unite in the person of Grandfer Cantle, Mrs.
Yeobright’s occasional assistant in the garden, and therefore one of
the invited. The smoke went up from an Etna of peat in front of him,
played round the notches of the chimney-crook, struck against the
salt-box, and got lost among the flitches.
Another part of the room soon riveted her gaze. At the other side of
the chimney stood the settle, which is the necessary supplement to a
fire so open that nothing less than a strong breeze will carry up the
smoke. It is, to the hearths of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces,
what the east belt of trees is to the exposed country estate, or the
north wall to the garden. Outside the settle candles gutter, locks of
hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. Inside is Paradise.
Not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sitters’ backs are as
warm as their faces, and songs and old tales are drawn from the
occupants by the comfortable heat, like fruit from melon plants in a
frame.
It was, however, not with those who sat in the settle that Eustacia was
concerned. A face showed itself with marked distinctness against the
dark-tanned wood of the upper part. The owner, who was leaning against
the settle’s outer end, was Clement Yeobright, or Clym, as he was
called here; she knew it could be nobody else. The spectacle
constituted an area of two feet in Rembrandt’s intensest manner. A
strange power in the lounger’s appearance lay in the fact that, though
his whole figure was visible, the observer’s eye was only aware of his
face.
To one of middle age the countenance was that of a young man, though a
youth might hardly have seen any necessity for the term of immaturity.
But it was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so
many years as its age than of so much experience as its store. The
number of their years may have adequately summed up Jared, Mahalaleel,
and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern man is to be
measured by the intensity of his history.
The face was well shaped, even excellently. But the mind within was
beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon to trace its
idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. The beauty here visible
would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought,
which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there
was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a
wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, “A handsome man.”
Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, “A
thoughtful man.” But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer
symmetry, and they rated his look as singular.
Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him. His
countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. Without being
thought-worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his
surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of
the four or five years of endeavour which follow the close of placid
pupilage. He already showed that thought is a disease of flesh, and
indirectly bore evidence that ideal physical beauty is incompatible
with emotional development and a full recognition of the coil of
things. Mental luminousness must be fed with the oil of life, even
though there is already a physical need for it; and the pitiful sight
of two demands on one supply was just showing itself here.
When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers
are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to
think. Thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually
destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been
instinctive with these in critically observing Yeobright.
As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against
depression from without, and not quite succeeding. The look suggested
isolation, but it revealed something more. As is usual with bright
natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within an ephemeral
human carcase shone out of him like a ray.
The effect upon Eustacia was palpable. The extraordinary pitch of
excitement that she had reached beforehand would, indeed, have caused
her to be influenced by the most commonplace man. She was troubled at
Yeobright’s presence.
The remainder of the play ended—the Saracen’s head was cut off, and
Saint George stood as victor. Nobody commented, any more than they
would have commented on the fact of mushrooms coming in autumn or
snowdrops in spring. They took the piece as phlegmatically as did the
actors themselves. It was a phase of cheerfulness which was, as a
matter of course, to be passed through every Christmas; and there was
no more to be said.
They sang the plaintive chant which follows the play, during which all
the dead men rise to their feet in a silent and awful manner, like the
ghosts of Napoleon’s soldiers in the Midnight Review. Afterwards the
door opened, and Fairway appeared on the threshold, accompanied by
Christian and another. They had been waiting outside for the conclusion
of the play, as the players had waited for the conclusion of the dance.
“Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Yeobright; and Clym went forward to
welcome them. “How is it you are so late? Grandfer Cantle has been here
ever so long, and we thought you’d have come with him, as you live so
near one another.”
“Well, I should have come earlier,” Mr. Fairway said and paused to look
along the beam of the ceiling for a nail to hang his hat on; but,
finding his accustomed one to be occupied by the mistletoe, and all the
nails in the walls to be burdened with bunches of holly, he at last