prompt:
Chapter: <CHAPTER>
4--Eustacia Is Led on to an Adventure

In the evening of this last day of expectation, which was the
twenty-third of December, Eustacia was at home alone. She had passed
the recent hour in lamenting over a rumour newly come to her ears--that
Yeobright's visit to his mother was to be of short duration, and would
end some time the next week. "Naturally," she said to herself. A man
in the full swing of his activities in a gay city could not afford to
linger long on Egdon Heath. That she would behold face to face the owner
of the awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday was most
unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs of his mother's house
like a robin, to do which was difficult and unseemly.

The customary expedient of provincial girls and men in such
circumstances is churchgoing. In an ordinary village or country town
one can safely calculate that, either on Christmas day or the Sunday
contiguous, any native home for the holidays, who has not through age or
ennui lost the appetite for seeing and being seen, will turn up in some
pew or other, shining with hope, self-consciousness, and new clothes.
Thus the congregation on Christmas morning is mostly a Tussaud
collection of celebrities who have been born in the neighbourhood.
Hither the mistress, left neglected at home all the year, can steal and
observe the development of the returned lover who has forgotten her, and
think as she watches him over her prayer book that he may throb with
a renewed fidelity when novelties have lost their charm. And hither
a comparatively recent settler like Eustacia may betake herself to
scrutinize the person of a native son who left home before her advent
upon the scene, and consider if the friendship of his parents be worth
cultivating during his next absence in order to secure a knowledge of
him on his next return.

But these tender schemes were not feasible among the scattered
inhabitants of Egdon Heath. In name they were parishioners, but
virtually they belonged to no parish at all. People who came to these
few isolated houses to keep Christmas with their friends remained
in their friends' chimney-corners drinking mead and other comforting
liquors till they left again for good and all. Rain, snow, ice, mud
everywhere around, they did not care to trudge two or three miles to
sit wet-footed and splashed to the nape of their necks among those
who, though in some measure neighbours, lived close to the church, and
entered it clean and dry. Eustacia knew it was ten to one that Clym
Yeobright would go to no church at all during his few days of leave, and
that it would be a waste of labour for her to go driving the pony and
gig over a bad road in hope to see him there.

It was dusk, and she was sitting by the fire in the dining-room or
hall, which they occupied at this time of the year in preference to the
parlour, because of its large hearth, constructed for turf-fires, a
fuel the captain was partial to in the winter season. The only visible
articles in the room were those on the window-sill, which showed their
shapes against the low sky, the middle article being the old hourglass,
and the other two a pair of ancient British urns which had been dug
from a barrow near, and were used as flowerpots for two razor-leaved
cactuses. Somebody knocked at the door. The servant was out; so was her
grandfather. The person, after waiting a minute, came in and tapped at
the door of the room.

"Who's there?" said Eustacia.

"Please, Cap'n Vye, will you let us----"

Eustacia arose and went to the door. "I cannot allow you to come in so
boldly. You should have waited."

"The cap'n said I might come in without any fuss," was answered in a
lad's pleasant voice.

"Oh, did he?" said Eustacia more gently. "What do you want, Charley?"

"Please will your grandfather lend us his fuelhouse to try over our
parts in, tonight at seven o'clock?"

"What, are you one of the Egdon mummers for this year?"

"Yes, miss. The cap'n used to let the old mummers practise here."

"I know it. Yes, you may use the fuelhouse if you like," said Eustacia
languidly.

The choice of Captain Vye's fuelhouse as the scene of rehearsal was
dictated by the fact that his dwelling was nearly in the centre of the
heath. The fuelhouse was as roomy as a barn, and was a most desirable
place for such a purpose. The lads who formed the company of players
lived at different scattered points around, and by meeting in this spot
the distances to be traversed by all the comers would be about equally
proportioned.

For mummers and mumming Eustacia had the greatest contempt. The mummers
themselves were not afflicted with any such feeling for their art,
though at the same time they were not enthusiastic. A traditional
pastime is to be distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking
feature than in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and
fervour, the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of
stir which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so perfunctorily
should be kept up at all. Like Balaam and other unwilling prophets, the
agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their allotted
parts whether they will or no. This unweeting manner of performance is
the true ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival
may be known from a spurious reproduction.

The piece was the well-known play of Saint George, and all who were
behind the scenes assisted in the preparations, including the women of
each household. Without the co-operation of sisters and sweethearts the
dresses were likely to be a failure; but on the other hand, this class
of assistance was not without its drawbacks. The girls could never be
brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the armour;
they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk and velvet in any
situation pleasing to their taste. Gorget, gusset, basinet, cuirass,
gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view of these feminine eyes were
practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps of fluttering colour.

It might be that Joe, who fought on the side of Christendom, had a
sweetheart, and that Jim, who fought on the side of the Moslem, had
one likewise. During the making of the costumes it would come to the
knowledge of Joe's sweetheart that Jim's was putting brilliant silk
scallops at the bottom of her lover's surcoat, in addition to the
ribbons of the visor, the bars of which, being invariably formed of
coloured strips about half an inch wide hanging before the face, were
mostly of that material. Joe's sweetheart straight-way placed brilliant
silk on the scallops of the hem in question, and, going a little
further, added ribbon tufts to the shoulder pieces. Jim's, not to be
outdone, would affix bows and rosettes everywhere.

The result was that in the end the Valiant Soldier, of the Christian
army, was distinguished by no peculiarity of accoutrement from the
Turkish Knight; and what was worse, on a casual view Saint George
himself might be mistaken for his deadly enemy, the Saracen. The guisers
themselves, though inwardly regretting this confusion of persons, could
not afford to offend those by whose assistance they so largely profited,
and the innovations were allowed to stand.

There was, it is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity. The
Leech or Doctor preserved his character intact--his darker habiliments,
peculiar hat, and the bottle of physic slung under his arm, could never
be mistaken. And the same might be said of the conventional figure of
Father Christmas, with his gigantic club, an older man, who accompanied
the band as general protector in long night journeys from parish to
parish, and was bearer of the purse.

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 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>
<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, 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?"

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.

</CHAPTER>
<CHAPTER>
6--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 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 Aeneas 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 she
preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to the door as
imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped out.

The calm, lone scene reassured her. She went forward to the palings and
leant over them, looking at the moon. She had stood thus but a little
time when the door again opened. Expecting to see the remainder of the
band Eustacia turned; but no--Clym Yeobright came out as softly as she
had done, and closed the door behind him.

He advanced and stood beside her. "I have an odd opinion," he said, "and
should like to ask you a question. Are you a woman--or am I wrong?"

"I am a woman."

His eyes lingered on her with great interest. "Do girls often play as
mummers now? They never used to."

"They don't now."

"Why did you?"

"To get excitement and shake off depression," she said in low tones.

"What depressed you?"

"Life."

"That's a cause of depression a good many have to put up with."

"Yes."

A long silence. "And do you find excitement?" asked Clym at last.

"At this moment, perhaps."

"Then you are vexed at being discovered?"

"Yes; though I thought I might be."

"I would gladly have asked you to our party had I known you wished to
come. Have I ever been acquainted with you in my youth?"

"Never."

"Won't you come in again, and stay as long as you like?"

"No. I wish not to be further recognized."

"Well, you are safe with me." After remaining in thought a minute he
added gently, "I will not intrude upon you longer. It is a strange way
of meeting, and I will not ask why I find a cultivated woman playing
such a part as this."

She did not volunteer the reason which he seemed to hope for, and he
wished her good night, going thence round to the back of the house,
where he walked up and down by himself for some time before re-
entering.

Eustacia, warmed with an inner fire, could not wait for her companions
after this. She flung back the ribbons from her face, opened the
gate, and at once struck into the heath. She did not hasten along. Her
grandfather was in bed at this hour, for she so frequently walked upon
the hills on moonlight nights that he took no notice of her comings and
goings, and, enjoying himself in his own way, left her to do likewise.
A more important subject than that of getting indoors now engrossed her.
Yeobright, if he had the least curiosity, would infallibly discover her
name. What then? She first felt a sort of exultation at the way in
which the adventure had terminated, even though at moments between
her exultations she was abashed and blushful. Then this consideration
recurred to chill her: What was the use of her exploit? She was at
present a total stranger to the Yeobright family. The unreasonable
nimbus of romance with which she had encircled that man might be her
misery. How could she allow herself to become so infatuated with a
stranger? And to fill the cup of her sorrow there would be Thomasin,
living day after day in inflammable proximity to him; for she had just
learnt that, contrary to her first belief, he was going to stay at home
some considerable time.

She reached the wicket at Mistover Knap, but before opening it she
turned and faced the heath once more. The form of Rainbarrow stood above
the hills, and the moon stood above Rainbarrow. The air was charged with
silence and frost. The scene reminded Eustacia of a circumstance which
till that moment she had totally forgotten. She had promised to meet
Wildeve by the Barrow this very night at eight, to give a final answer
to his pleading for an elopement.

She herself had fixed the evening and the hour. He had probably come to
the spot, waited there in the cold, and been greatly disappointed.

"Well, so much the better--it did not hurt him," she said serenely.
Wildeve had at present the rayless outline of the sun through smoked
glass, and she could say such things as that with the greatest facility.

She remained deeply pondering; and Thomasin's winning manner towards her
cousin arose again upon Eustacia's mind.

"O that she had been married to Damon before this!" she said. "And
she would if it hadn't been for me! If I had only known--if I had only
known!"

Eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and,
sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder,
entered the shadow of the roof. She threw off her trappings in the
outhouse, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber.

</CHAPTER>

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Charley is one of the Egdon mummers for the present year, and he and the other mummers practice in Captain Vye's house for the play "Saint George. " On the night they are to perform in Mrs. Yeobright's house, Eustacia arranges to take Charley's place in order to see Clym and study him in the guise of the Turkish Knight. Some of the boys recognize her. Eustacia observes Clym during the performance, but when the mummers are invited to sit down and eat, she panics, not wanting to be recognized. She notices Clym talking to Thomasin and has the uneasy feeling that he might fall in love with his cousin. She feels frustrated and angry that he cannot see her, since she is dressed as a boy. Clym follows her as she rushes outside and guesses that she is a woman. They talk briefly. While returning home, Eustacia remembers that she was to have met Wildeve, but is indifferent to the fact that she has stood him up and he may be disappointed. Her attention is now focused on Clym.


prompt:
Chapter: <CHAPTER>
BOOK THREE -- THE FASCINATION
1--"My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"

In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance
of the future. Should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its
Pheidias may produce such faces. The view of life as a thing to be put
up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early
civilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution
of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted
as a new artistic departure. People already feel that a man who lives
without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mental
concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern
perceptiveness to be a modern type. Physically beautiful men--the glory
of the race when it was young--are almost an anachronism now; and we may
wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may
not be an anachronism likewise.

The truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries has
permanently displaced the Hellenic idea of life, or whatever it may
be called. What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their
Aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned
revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as we
uncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is in
by their operation.

The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this new
recognition will probably be akin to those of Yeobright. The observer's
eye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as a
page; not by what it was, but by what it recorded. His features were
attractive in the light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically common
become attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple become
interesting in writing.

He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had
been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he
would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The
only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in
the circumstances amid which he was born.

Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen,
the listener said, "Ah, Clym Yeobright--what is he doing now?" When the
instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is
felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in
particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some
region of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that he is doing
well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it. Half a dozen
comfortable market-men, who were habitual callers at the Quiet Woman
as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the topic. In fact,
though they were not Egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while they
sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window.
Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly
anybody could look upon it without thinking of him. So the subject
recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better
for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the
better for a narrative.

The fact was that Yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extent
before he left home. "It is bad when your fame outruns your means," said
the Spanish Jesuit Gracian. At the age of six he had asked a Scripture
riddle: "Who was the first man known to wear breeches?" and applause
had resounded from the very verge of the heath. At seven he painted the
Battle of Waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and black-currant juice, in
the absence of water-colours. By the time he reached twelve he had in
this manner been heard of as artist and scholar for at least two miles
round. An individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in
the time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to travel six or
eight hundred, must of necessity have something in him. Possibly Clym's
fame, like Homer's, owed something to the accidents of his situation;
nevertheless famous he was.

He grew up and was helped out in life. That waggery of fate which
started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a
surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished
the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with
the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory.

The details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessary
to give. At the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had kindly
undertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form of sending
him to Budmouth. Yeobright did not wish to go there, but it was the only
feasible opening. Thence he went to London; and thence, shortly after,
to Paris, where he had remained till now.

Something being expected of him, he had not been at home many days
before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to arise
in the heath. The natural term of a holiday had passed, yet he still
remained. On the Sunday morning following the week of Thomasin's
marriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cutting
before Fairway's house. Here the local barbering was always done at
this hour on this day, to be followed by the great Sunday wash of the
inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great Sunday
dressing an hour later. On Egdon Heath Sunday proper did not begin till
dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen of the
day.

These Sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by Fairway; the victim
sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, and
the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair as
they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight to
the four quarters of the heavens. Summer and winter the scene was the
same, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the stool
was shifted a few feet round the corner. To complain of cold in sitting
out of doors, hatless and coatless, while Fairway told true stories
between the cuts of the scissors, would have been to pronounce yourself
no man at once. To flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face at
the small stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or at
scarifications of the neck by the comb, would have been thought a gross
breach of good manners, considering that Fairway did it all for nothing.
A bleeding about the poll on Sunday afternoons was amply accounted for
by the explanation. "I have had my hair cut, you know."

The conversation on Yeobright had been started by a distant view of the
young man rambling leisurely across the heath before them.

"A man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three weeks
for nothing," said Fairway. "He's got some project in 's head--depend
upon that."

"Well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here," said Sam.

"I don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he had
not been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the Lord in
heaven knows."

Before many more surmises could be indulged in Yeobright had come near;
and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them. Marching
up, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he said, without
introduction, "Now, folks, let me guess what you have been talking
about."

"Ay, sure, if you will," said Sam.

"About me."

"Now, it is a thing I shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise," said
Fairway in a tone of integrity; "but since you have named it, Master
Yeobright, I'll own that we was talking about 'ee. We were wondering
what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made such
a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade--now, that's the
truth o't."

"I'll tell you," said Yeobright with unexpected earnestness. "I am
not sorry to have the opportunity. I've come home because, all things
considered, I can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else. But
I have only lately found this out. When I first got away from home I
thought this place was not worth troubling about. I thought our life
here was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking them, to
dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush--was there ever anything
more ridiculous? I said."

"So 'tis; so 'tis!"

"No, no--you are wrong; it isn't."

"Beg your pardon, we thought that was your meaning?"

"Well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. I found
that I was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common
with myself. I was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for another
sort of life, which was not better than the life I had known before. It
was simply different."

"True; a sight different," said Fairway.

"Yes, Paris must be a taking place," said Humphrey. "Grand shop-winders,
trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all winds and
weathers--"

"But you mistake me," pleaded Clym. "All this was very depressing. But
not so depressing as something I next perceived--that my business was
the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man could
be put to. That decided me--I would give it up and try to follow some
rational occupation among the people I knew best, and to whom I could
be of most use. I have come home; and this is how I mean to carry out
my plan. I shall keep a school as near to Egdon as possible, so as to be
able to walk over here and have a night-school in my mother's house.
But I must study a little at first, to get properly qualified. Now,
neighbours, I must go."

And Clym resumed his walk across the heath.

"He'll never carry it out in the world," said Fairway. "In a few weeks
he'll learn to see things otherwise."

"'Tis good-hearted of the young man," said another. "But, for my part, I
think he had better mind his business."

</CHAPTER>
<CHAPTER>
2--The New Course Causes Disappointment

Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of most men
was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence. He
wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather than
individuals at the expense of the class. What was more, he was ready at
once to be the first unit sacrificed.

In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate
stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those
stages is almost sure to be worldly advanced. We can hardly imagine
bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining
social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's local peculiarity was
that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living--nay,
wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness with clowns.

He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentance
for his text. Mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was in
many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date. Much of
this development he may have owed to his studious life in Paris, where
he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at the time.

In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Yeobright might
have been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him. A
man should be only partially before his time--to be completely to the
vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been
intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without
bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but
nobody would have heard of an Alexander.

In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the
capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded
because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners
have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man who advocates
aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only likely to be
understood by a class to which social effort has become a stale matter.
To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the bucolic
world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to disturb a sequence
to which humanity has been long accustomed. Yeobright preaching to
the Egdon eremites that they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness
without going through the process of enriching themselves was not unlike
arguing to ancient Chaldeans that in ascending from earth to the pure
empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into the intervening heaven
of ether.

Was Yeobright's mind well-proportioned? No. A well proportioned mind is
one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that
it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a
heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it
will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest,
or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.
It produces the poetry of Rogers, the paintings of West, the statecraft
of North, the spiritual guidance of Tomline; enabling its possessors to
find their way to wealth, to wind up well, to step with dignity off the
stage, to die comfortably in their beds, and to get the decent monument
which, in many cases, they deserve. It never would have allowed
Yeobright to do such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to
benefit his fellow-creatures.

He walked along towards home without attending to paths. If anyone knew
the heath well it was Clym. He was permeated with its scenes, with its
substance, and with its odours. He might be said to be its product. His
eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all the first images
of his memory were mingled, his estimate of life had been coloured by
it: his toys had been the flint knives and arrow-heads which he found
there, wondering why stones should "grow" to such odd shapes; his
flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze: his animal kingdom, the
snakes and croppers; his society, its human haunters. Take all the
varying hates felt by Eustacia Vye towards the heath, and translate
them into loves, and you have the heart of Clym. He gazed upon the wide
prospect as he walked, and was glad.

To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped out of its
century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this.
It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. How could this
be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadows
watered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they looked like
silver gridirons? The farmer, in his ride, who could smile at artificial
grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh with sadness
at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant upland of heath
nothing better than a frown. But as for Yeobright, when he looked
from the heights on his way he could not help indulging in a barbarous
satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attempts at reclamation
from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded
again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting
themselves.

He descended into the valley, and soon reached his home at Blooms-End.
His mother was snipping dead leaves from the window-plants. She looked
up at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long stay with
her; her face had worn that look for several days. He could perceive
that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting group
amounted in his mother to concern. But she had asked no question with
her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that he was not
going to leave her soon. Her silence besought an explanation of him more
loudly than words.

"I am not going back to Paris again, Mother," he said. "At least, in my
old capacity. I have given up the business."

Mrs. Yeobright turned in pained surprise. "I thought something was
amiss, because of the boxes. I wonder you did not tell me sooner."

"I ought to have done it. But I have been in doubt whether you would be
pleased with my plan. I was not quite clear on a few points myself. I am
going to take an entirely new course."

"I am astonished, Clym. How can you want to do better than you've been
doing?"

"Very easily. But I shall not do better in the way you mean; I suppose
it will be called doing worse. But I hate that business of mine, and I
want to do some worthy thing before I die. As a schoolmaster I think
to do it--a school-master to the poor and ignorant, to teach them what
nobody else will."

"After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and when
there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence, you
say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. Your fancies will be your
ruin, Clym."

Mrs. Yeobright spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the words
was but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. He did
not answer. There was in his face that hopelessness of being understood
which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyond the reach of
a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a
vehicle for the subtlety of the argument.

No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. His mother then
began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "It disturbs
me, Clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughts as those. I
hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in the world by your
own free choice. Of course, I have always supposed you were going to
push straight on, as other men do--all who deserve the name--when they
have been put in a good way of doing well."

"I cannot help it," said Clym, in a troubled tone. "Mother, I hate
the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any man
deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees
half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach
them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up every morning
and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as St. Paul
says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering splendours with
wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest
vanities--I, who have health and strength enough for anything. I have
been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and the end is that I
cannot do it any more."

"Why can't you do it as well as others?"

"I don't know, except that there are many things other people care for
which I don't; and that's partly why I think I ought to do this. For one
thing, my body does not require much of me. I cannot enjoy delicacies;
good things are wasted upon me. Well, I ought to turn that defect to
advantage, and by being able to do without what other people require I
can spend what such things cost upon anybody else."

Now, Yeobright, having inherited some of these very instincts from the
woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in her through
her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she might for his
good. She spoke with less assurance. "And yet you might have been a
wealthy man if you had only persevered. Manager to that large diamond
establishment--what better can a man wish for? What a post of trust
and respect! I suppose you will be like your father; like him, you are
getting weary of doing well."

"No," said her son, "I am not weary of that, though I am weary of what
you mean by it. Mother, what is doing well?"

Mrs. Yeobright was far too thoughtful a woman to be content with ready
definitions, and, like the "What is wisdom?" of Plato's Socrates, and
the "What is truth?" of Pontius Pilate, Yeobright's burning question
received no answer.

The silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a tap at the
door, and its opening. Christian Cantle appeared in the room in his
Sunday clothes.

It was the custom on Egdon to begin the preface to a story before
absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of the
narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face. Christian
had been saying to them while the door was leaving its latch, "To think
that I, who go from home but once in a while, and hardly then, should
have been there this morning!"

"'Tis news you have brought us, then, Christian?" said Mrs. Yeobright.

"Ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o' day; for, says
I, 'I must go and tell 'em, though they won't have half done dinner.' I
assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. Do ye think any harm will
come o't?"

"Well--what?"

"This morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa'son said,
'Let us pray.' 'Well,' thinks I, 'one may as well kneel as stand'; so
down I went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing to oblige
the man as I. We hadn't been hard at it for more than a minute when a
most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just
gied up their heart's blood. All the folk jumped up and then we found
that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a long stocking-needle, as
she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could get the young lady to
church, where she don't come very often. She've waited for this chance
for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the bewitching of
Susan's children that has been carried on so long. Sue followed her into
church, sat next to her, and as soon as she could find a chance in went
the stocking-needle into my lady's arm."

"Good heaven, how horrid!" said Mrs. Yeobright.

"Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I was
afeard there might be some tumult among us, I got behind the bass viol
and didn't see no more. But they carried her out into the air, 'tis
said; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone. What a scream
that girl gied, poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surplice
holding up his hand and saying, 'Sit down, my good people, sit down!'
But the deuce a bit would they sit down. O, and what d'ye think I
found out, Mrs. Yeobright? The pa'son wears a suit of clothes under his
surplice!--I could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm."

"'Tis a cruel thing," said Yeobright.

"Yes," said his mother.

"The nation ought to look into it," said Christian. "Here's Humphrey
coming, I think."

In came Humphrey. "Well, have ye heard the news? But I see you have.
'Tis a very strange thing that whenever one of Egdon folk goes to church
some rum job or other is sure to be doing. The last time one of us was
there was when neighbour Fairway went in the fall; and that was the day
you forbad the banns, Mrs. Yeobright."

"Has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?" said Clym.

"They say she got better, and went home very well. And now I've told it
I must be moving homeward myself."

"And I," said Humphrey. "Truly now we shall see if there's anything in
what folks say about her."

When they were gone into the heath again Yeobright said quietly to his
mother, "Do you think I have turned teacher too soon?"

"It is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, and
all such men," she replied. "But it is right, too, that I should try to
lift you out of this life into something richer, and that you should not
come back again, and be as if I had not tried at all."

Later in the day Sam, the turf-cutter, entered. "I've come a-borrowing,
Mrs. Yeobright. I suppose you have heard what's been happening to the
beauty on the hill?"

"Yes, Sam: half a dozen have been telling us."

"Beauty?" said Clym.

"Yes, tolerably well-favoured," Sam replied. "Lord! all the country owns
that 'tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a woman
should have come to live up there."

"Dark or fair?"

"Now, though I've seen her twenty times, that's a thing I cannot call to
mind."

"Darker than Tamsin," murmured Mrs. Yeobright.

"A woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say."

"She is melancholy, then?" inquired Clym.

"She mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the people."

"Is she a young lady inclined for adventures?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some sort of
excitement in this lonely place?"

"No."

"Mumming, for instance?"

"No. Her notions be different. I should rather say her thoughts were far
away from here, with lords and ladies she'll never know, and mansions
she'll never see again."

Observing that Clym appeared singularly interested Mrs. Yeobright said
rather uneasily to Sam, "You see more in her than most of us do. Miss
Vye is to my mind too idle to be charming. I have never heard that
she is of any use to herself or to other people. Good girls don't get
treated as witches even on Egdon."

"Nonsense--that proves nothing either way," said Yeobright.

"Well, of course I don't understand such niceties," said Sam,
withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument; "and what she is we
must wait for time to tell us. The business that I have really called
about is this, to borrow the longest and strongest rope you have. The
captain's bucket has dropped into the well, and they are in want of
water; and as all the chaps are at home today we think we can get it out
for him. We have three cart-ropes already, but they won't reach to the
bottom."

Mrs. Yeobright told him that he might have whatever ropes he could find
in the outhouse, and Sam went out to search. When he passed by the door
Clym joined him, and accompanied him to the gate.

"Is this young witch-lady going to stay long at Mistover?" he asked.

"I should say so."

"What a cruel shame to ill-use her, She must have suffered greatly--more
in mind than in body."

"'Twas a graceless trick--such a handsome girl, too. You ought to see
her, Mr. Yeobright, being a young man come from far, and with a little
more to show for your years than most of us."

"Do you think she would like to teach children?" said Clym.

Sam shook his head. "Quite a different sort of body from that, I
reckon."

"O, it was merely something which occurred to me. It would of course be
necessary to see her and talk it over--not an easy thing, by the way,
for my family and hers are not very friendly."

"I'll tell you how you mid see her, Mr. Yeobright," said Sam. "We are
going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house, and
you could lend a hand. There's five or six coming, but the well is deep,
and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape.
She's sure to be walking round."

"I'll think of it," said Yeobright; and they parted.

He thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said about Eustacia
inside the house at that time. Whether this romantic martyr to
superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the
full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem.

</CHAPTER>

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The heath dwellers are proud to have someone like Clym Yeobright in their neighborhood. He was a gifted boy with awe- inspiring talent, and his career as a manager to a diamond merchant in Paris impresses them. When he comes by the haircutting at Fairways and declares that he would like to stay on Egdon Heath and become a schoolteacher, no one believes him. His mother is particularly shocked by his decision and tries to convince him it is a foolish decision. As he tries to explain his reasoning, he is interrupted by a hysterical Christian Cantle, who relates how Eustacia Vye has been pricked in the arm by Susan Nunsuch. Susan has long suspected her of being a witch and bewitching her children. Clym's curiosity about Eustacia is aroused, and he wonders whether she is the same woman who had disguised herself as the Turkish Knight on the day the party was given at his house. Sam, who is also present, helpfully hints that Clym could see Eustacia if he came to Captain Vye's house with them. Sam must go there this same day with some of the other men in order to retrieve a bucket which has fallen into the well.