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 mediaeval 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.”
Chapter 5
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,
