Part 11

Seven o’clock, the hour of the rehearsal, came round, and in a short time Eustacia could hear voices in the fuelhouse. To dissipate in some trifling measure her abiding sense of the murkiness of human life she went to the “linhay” or lean-to shed, which formed the root-store of their dwelling and abutted on the fuelhouse. Here was a small rough hole in the mud wall, originally made for pigeons, through which the interior of the next shed could be viewed. A light came from it now; and Eustacia stepped upon a stool to look in upon the scene.

On a ledge in the fuelhouse stood three tall rushlights and by the light of them seven or eight lads were marching about, haranguing, and confusing each other, in endeavours to perfect themselves in the play. Humphrey and Sam, the furze- and turf-cutters, were there looking on, so also was Timothy Fairway, who leant against the wall and prompted the boys from memory, interspersing among the set words remarks and anecdotes of the superior days when he and others were the Egdon mummers-elect that these lads were now.

“Well, ye be as well up to it as ever ye will be,” he said. “Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn’t holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you’ll do. Have you got all your clothes ready?”

“We shall by Monday.”

“Your first outing will be Monday night, I suppose?”

“Yes. At Mrs. Yeobright’s.”

“Oh, Mrs. Yeobright’s. What makes her want to see ye? I should think a middle-aged woman was tired of mumming.”

“She’s got up a bit of a party, because ’tis the first Christmas that her son Clym has been home for a long time.”

“To be sure, to be sure—her party! I am going myself. I almost forgot it, upon my life.”

Eustacia’s face flagged. There was to be a party at the Yeobrights’; she, naturally, had nothing to do with it. She was a stranger to all such local gatherings, and had always held them as scarcely appertaining to her sphere. But had she been going, what an opportunity would have been afforded her of seeing the man whose influence was penetrating her like summer sun! To increase that influence was coveted excitement; to cast it off might be to regain serenity; to leave it as it stood was tantalizing.

The lads and men prepared to leave the premises, and Eustacia returned to her fireside. She was immersed in thought, but not for long. In a few minutes the lad Charley, who had come to ask permission to use the place, returned with the key to the kitchen. Eustacia heard him, and opening the door into the passage said, “Charley, come here.”

The lad was surprised. He entered the front room not without blushing; for he, like many, had felt the power of this girl’s face and form.

She pointed to a seat by the fire, and entered the other side of the chimney-corner herself. It could be seen in her face that whatever motive she might have had in asking the youth indoors would soon appear.

“Which part do you play, Charley—the Turkish Knight, do you not?” inquired the beauty, looking across the smoke of the fire to him on the other side.

“Yes, miss, the Turkish Knight,” he replied diffidently.

“Is yours a long part?”

“Nine speeches, about.”

“Can you repeat them to me? If so I should like to hear them.”

The lad smiled into the glowing turf and began—

“Here come I, a Turkish Knight, Who learnt in Turkish land to fight,”

continuing the discourse throughout the scenes to the concluding catastrophe of his fall by the hand of Saint George.

Eustacia had occasionally heard the part recited before. When the lad ended she began, precisely in the same words, and ranted on without hitch or divergence till she too reached the end. It was the same thing, yet how different. Like in form, it had the added softness and finish of a Raffaelle after Perugino, which, while faithfully reproducing the original subject, entirely distances the original art.

Charley’s eyes rounded with surprise. “Well, you be a clever lady!” he said, in admiration. “I’ve been three weeks learning mine.”

“I have heard it before,” she quietly observed. “Now, would you do anything to please me, Charley?”

“I’d do a good deal, miss.”

“Would you let me play your part for one night?”

“Oh, miss! But your woman’s gown—you couldn’t.”

“I can get boy’s clothes—at least all that would be wanted besides the mumming dress. What should I have to give you to lend me your things, to let me take your place for an hour or two on Monday night, and on no account to say a word about who or what I am? You would, of course, have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say that somebody—a cousin of Miss Vye’s—would act for you. The other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, I should not mind. Now, what must I give you to agree to this? Half a crown?”

The youth shook his head

“Five shillings?”

He shook his head again. “Money won’t do it,” he said, brushing the iron head of the firedog with the hollow of his hand.

“What will, then, Charley?” said Eustacia in a disappointed tone.

“You know what you forbade me at the Maypoling, miss,” murmured the lad, without looking at her, and still stroking the firedog’s head.

“Yes,” said Eustacia, with a little more hauteur. “You wanted to join hands with me in the ring, if I recollect?”

“Half an hour of that, and I’ll agree, miss.”

Eustacia regarded the youth steadfastly. He was three years younger than herself, but apparently not backward for his age. “Half an hour of what?” she said, though she guessed what.

“Holding your hand in mine.”

She was silent. “Make it a quarter of an hour,” she said

“Yes, Miss Eustacia—I will, if I may kiss it too. A quarter of an hour. And I’ll swear to do the best I can to let you take my place without anybody knowing. Don’t you think somebody might know your tongue, miss?”

“It is possible. But I will put a pebble in my mouth to make is less likely. Very well; you shall be allowed to have my hand as soon as you bring the dress and your sword and staff. I don’t want you any longer now.”

Charley departed, and Eustacia felt more and more interest in life. Here was something to do: here was some one to see, and a charmingly adventurous way to see him. “Ah,” she said to herself, “want of an object to live for—that’s all is the matter with me!”

Eustacia’s manner was as a rule of a slumberous sort, her passions being of the massive rather than the vivacious kind. But when aroused she would make a dash which, just for the time, was not unlike the move of a naturally lively person.

On the question of recognition she was somewhat indifferent. By the acting lads themselves she was not likely to be known. With the guests who might be assembled she was hardly so secure. Yet detection, after all, would be no such dreadful thing. The fact only could be detected, her true motive never. It would be instantly set down as the passing freak of a girl whose ways were already considered singular. That she was doing for an earnest reason what would most naturally be done in jest was at any rate a safe secret.

The next evening Eustacia stood punctually at the fuelhouse door, waiting for the dusk which was to bring Charley with the trappings. Her grandfather was at home tonight, and she would be unable to ask her confederate indoors.

He appeared on the dark ridge of heathland, like a fly on a Negro, bearing the articles with him, and came up breathless with his walk.

“Here are the things,” he whispered, placing them upon the threshold. “And now, Miss Eustacia—”

“The payment. It is quite ready. I am as good as my word.”

She leant against the door-post, and gave him her hand. Charley took it 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 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?”