The Return of the Native
relieved himself of the hat by ticklishly balancing it between the
candle-box and the head of the clock-case. “I should have come earlier,
ma’am,” he resumed, with a more composed air, “but I know what parties
be, and how there’s none too much room in folks’ houses at such times,
so I thought I wouldn’t come till you’d got settled a bit.”
“And I thought so too, Mrs. Yeobright,” said Christian earnestly, “but
Father there was so eager that he had no manners at all, and left home
almost afore ’twas dark. I told him ’twas barely decent in a’ old man
to come so oversoon; but words be wind.”
“Klk! I wasn’t going to bide waiting about, till half the game was
over! I’m as light as a kite when anything’s going on!” crowed Grandfer
Cantle from the chimneyseat.
Fairway had meanwhile concluded a critical gaze at Yeobright. “Now, you
may not believe it,” he said to the rest of the room, “but I should
never have knowed this gentleman if I had met him anywhere off his own
he’th—he’s altered so much.”
“You too have altered, and for the better, I think Timothy,” said
Yeobright, surveying the firm figure of Fairway.
“Master Yeobright, look me over too. I have altered for the better,
haven’t I, hey?” said Grandfer Cantle, rising and placing himself
something above half a foot from Clym’s eye, to induce the most
searching criticism.
“To be sure we will,” said Fairway, taking the candle and moving it
over the surface of the Grandfer’s countenance, the subject of his
scrutiny irradiating himself with light and pleasant smiles, and giving
himself jerks of juvenility.
“You haven’t changed much,” said Yeobright.
“If there’s any difference, Grandfer is younger,” appended Fairway
decisively.
“And yet not my own doing, and I feel no pride in it,” said the pleased
ancient. “But I can’t be cured of my vagaries; them I plead guilty to.
Yes, Master Cantle always was that, as we know. But I am nothing by the
side of you, Mister Clym.”
“Nor any o’ us,” said Humphrey, in a low rich tone of admiration, not
intended to reach anybody’s ears.
“Really, there would have been nobody here who could have stood as
decent second to him, or even third, if I hadn’t been a soldier in the
Bang-up Locals (as we was called for our smartness),” said Grandfer
Cantle. “And even as ’tis we all look a little scammish beside him. But
in the year four ’twas said there wasn’t a finer figure in the whole
South Wessex than I, as I looked when dashing past the shop-winders
with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o’ Budmouth because
it was thoughted that Boney had landed round the point. There was I,
straight as a young poplar, wi’ my firelock, and my bagnet, and my
spatterdashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements
sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in
my soldiering days. You ought to have seen me in four!”
“’Tis his mother’s side where Master Clym’s figure comes from, bless
ye,” said Timothy. “I know’d her brothers well. Longer coffins were
never made in the whole country of South Wessex, and ’tis said that
poor George’s knees were crumpled up a little e’en as ’twas.”
“Coffins, where?” inquired Christian, drawing nearer. “Have the ghost
of one appeared to anybody, Master Fairway?”
“No, no. Don’t let your mind so mislead your ears, Christian; and be a
man,” said Timothy reproachfully.
“I will.” said Christian. “But now I think o’t my shadder last night
seemed just the shape of a coffin. What is it a sign of when your
shade’s like a coffin, neighbours? It can’t be nothing to be afeared
of, I suppose?”
“Afeared, no!” said the Grandfer. “Faith, I was never afeard of nothing
except Boney, or I shouldn’t ha’ been the soldier I was. Yes, ’tis a
thousand pities you didn’t see me in four!”
By this time the mummers were preparing to leave; but Mrs. Yeobright
stopped them by asking them to sit down and have a little supper. To
this invitation Father Christmas, in the name of them all, readily
agreed.
Eustacia was happy in the opportunity of staying a little longer. The
cold and frosty night without was doubly frigid to her. But the
lingering was not without its difficulties. Mrs. Yeobright, for want of
room in the larger apartment, placed a bench for the mummers halfway
through the pantry door, which opened from the sitting-room. Here they
seated themselves in a row, the door being left open—thus they were
still virtually in the same apartment. Mrs. Yeobright now murmured a
few words to her son, who crossed the room to the pantry door, striking
his head against the mistletoe as he passed, and brought the mummers
beef and bread, cake pastry, mead, and elder-wine, the waiting being
done by him and his mother, that the little maid-servant might sit as
guest. The mummers doffed their helmets, and began to eat and drink.
“But you will surely have some?” said Clym to the Turkish Knight, as he
stood before that warrior, tray in hand. She had refused, and still sat
covered, only the sparkle of her eyes being visible between the ribbons
which covered her face.
“None, thank you,” replied Eustacia.
“He’s quite a youngster,” said the Saracen apologetically, “and you
must excuse him. He’s not one of the old set, but have jined us because
t’other couldn’t come.”
“But he will take something?” persisted Yeobright. “Try a glass of mead
or elder-wine.”
“Yes, you had better try that,” said the Saracen. “It will keep the
cold out going home-along.”
Though Eustacia could not eat without uncovering her face she could
drink easily enough beneath her disguise. The elder-wine was
accordingly accepted, and the glass vanished inside the ribbons.
At moments during this performance Eustacia was half in doubt about the
security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. A series of
attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary
person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore,
complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly
because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had
determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of
loving somebody after wearying of Wildeve. Believing that she must love
him in spite of herself, she had been influenced after the fashion of
the second Lord Lyttleton and other persons, who have dreamed that they
were to die on a certain day, and by stress of a morbid imagination
have actually brought about that event. Once let a maiden admit the
possibility of her being stricken with love for someone at a certain
hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.
Did anything at this moment suggest to Yeobright the sex of the
creature whom that fantastic guise inclosed, how extended was her scope
both in feeling and in making others feel, and how far her compass
transcended that of her companions in the band? When the disguised
Queen of Love appeared before Æneas a preternatural perfume accompanied
her presence and betrayed her quality. If such a mysterious emanation
ever was projected by the emotions of an earthly woman upon their
object, it must have signified Eustacia’s presence to Yeobright now. He
looked at her wistfully, then seemed to fall into a reverie, as if he
were forgetting what he observed. The momentary situation ended, he
passed on, and Eustacia sipped her wine without knowing what she drank.
The man for whom she had pre-determined to nourish a passion went into
the small room, and across it to the further extremity.
The mummers, as has been stated, were seated on a bench, one end of
which extended into the small apartment, or pantry, for want of space
in the outer room. Eustacia, partly from shyness, had chosen the
midmost seat, which thus commanded a view of the interior of the pantry
as well as the room containing the guests. When Clym passed down the
pantry her eyes followed him in the gloom which prevailed there. At the
remote end was a door which, just as he was about to open it for
himself, was opened by somebody within; and light streamed forth.
The person was Thomasin, with a candle, looking anxious, pale, and
interesting. Yeobright appeared glad to see her, and pressed her hand.
“That’s right, Tamsie,” he said heartily, as though recalled to himself
by the sight of her, “you have decided to come down. I am glad of it.”
“Hush—no, no,” she said quickly. “I only came to speak to you.”
“But why not join us?”
“I cannot. At least I would rather not. I am not well enough, and we
shall have plenty of time together now you are going to be home a good
long holiday.”
“It isn’t nearly so pleasant without you. Are you really ill?”
“Just a little, my old cousin—here,” she said, playfully sweeping her
hand across her heart.
“Ah, Mother should have asked somebody else to be present tonight,
perhaps?”
“O no, indeed. I merely stepped down, Clym, to ask you—” Here he
followed her through the doorway into the private room beyond, and, the
door closing, Eustacia and the mummer who sat next to her, the only
other witness of the performance, saw and heard no more.
The heat flew to Eustacia’s head and cheeks. She instantly guessed that
Clym, having been home only these two or three days, had not as yet
been made acquainted with Thomasin’s painful situation with regard to
Wildeve; and seeing her living there just as she had been living before
he left home, he naturally suspected nothing. Eustacia felt a wild
jealousy of Thomasin on the instant. Though Thomasin might possibly
have tender sentiments towards another man as yet, how long could they
be expected to last when she was shut up here with this interesting and
travelled cousin of hers? There was no knowing what affection might not
soon break out between the two, so constantly in each other’s society,
and not a distracting object near. Clym’s boyish love for her might
have languished, but it might easily be revived again.
Eustacia was nettled by her own contrivances. What a sheer waste of
herself to be dressed thus while another was shining to advantage! Had
she known the full effect of the encounter she would have moved heaven
and earth to get here in a natural manner. The power of her face all
lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her
coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her; she had a
sense of the doom of Echo. “Nobody here respects me,” she said. She had
overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she
would be treated as a boy. The slight, though of her own causing, and
self-explanatory, she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so
sensitive had the situation made her.
Women have done much for themselves in histrionic dress. To look far
below those who, like a certain fair personator of Polly Peachum early
in the last century, and another of Lydia Languish early in this,[1]
have won not only love but ducal coronets into the bargain, whole
shoals of them have reached to the initial satisfaction of getting love
almost whence they would. But the Turkish Knight was denied even the
chance of achieving this by the fluttering ribbons which she dared not
brush aside.
[1] Written in 1877.
Yeobright returned to the room without his cousin. When within two or
three feet of Eustacia he stopped, as if again arrested by a thought.
He was gazing at her. She looked another way, disconcerted, and
wondered how long this purgatory was to last. After lingering a few
seconds he passed on again.
To court their own discomfiture by love is a common instinct with
certain perfervid women. Conflicting sensations of love, fear, and
shame reduced Eustacia to a state of the utmost uneasiness. To escape
was her great and immediate desire. The other mummers appeared to be in
no hurry to leave; and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her that