Life's Little Ironies, Thomas Hardy [reading well .txt] 📗

the rise and fall of the tide along the shore, coming and going every few moments like a sort of great snore of the sleeping world.  Over the lower ground there was a bit of a mist, but on the hill where we lay the air was clear, and the moon, then in her last quarter, flung a fairly good light on the grass and scattered straw.

‘While we lay there Uncle Job amused me by telling me strange stories of the wars he had served in and the wounds he had got.  He had already fought the French in the Low Countries, and hoped to fight ’em again.  His stories lasted so long that at last I was hardly sure that I was not a soldier myself, and had seen such service as he told of.  The wonders of his tales quite bewildered my mind, till I fell asleep and dreamed of battle, smoke, and flying soldiers, all of a kind with the doings he had been bringing up to me.

‘How long my nap lasted I am not prepared to say.  But some faint sounds over and above the rustle of the ewes in the straw, the bleat of the lambs, and the tinkle of the sheep-bell brought me to my waking senses.  Uncle Job was still beside me; but he too had fallen asleep.  I looked out from the straw, and saw what it was that had aroused me.  Two men, in boat-cloaks, cocked hats, and swords, stood by the hurdles about twenty yards off.

‘I turned my ear thitherward to catch what they were saying, but though I heard every word o’t, not one did I understand.  They spoke in a tongue that was not ours—in French, as I afterward found.  But if I could not gain the meaning of a word, I was shrewd boy enough to find out a deal of the talkers’ business.  By the light o’ the moon I could see that one of ’em carried a roll of paper in his hand, while every moment he spoke quick to his comrade, and pointed right and left with the other hand to spots along the shore.  There was no doubt that he was explaining to the second gentleman the shapes and features of the coast.  What happened soon after made this still clearer to me.

‘All this time I had not waked Uncle Job, but now I began to be afeared that they might light upon us, because uncle breathed so heavily through’s nose.  I put my mouth to his ear and whispered, “Uncle Job.”

‘“What is it, my boy?” he said, just as if he hadn’t been asleep at all.

‘“Hush!” says I.  “Two French generals—”

‘“French?” says he.

‘“Yes,” says I.  “Come to see where to land their army!”

‘I pointed ’em out; but I could say no more, for the pair were coming at that moment much nearer to where we lay.  As soon as they got as near as eight or ten yards, the officer with a roll in his hand stooped down to a slanting hurdle, unfastened his roll upon it, and spread it out.  Then suddenly he sprung a dark lantern open on the paper, and showed it to be a map.

‘“What be they looking at?” I whispered to Uncle Job.

‘“A chart of the Channel,” says the sergeant (knowing about such things).

‘The other French officer now stooped likewise, and over the map they had a long consultation, as they pointed here and there on the paper, and then hither and thither at places along the shore beneath us.  I noticed that the manner of one officer was very respectful toward the other, who seemed much his superior, the second in rank calling him by a sort of title that I did not know the sense of.  The head one, on the other hand, was quite familiar with his friend, and more than once clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Uncle Job had watched as well as I, but though the map had been in the lantern-light, their faces had always been in shade.  But when they rose from stooping over the chart the light flashed upward, and fell smart upon one of ’em’s features.  No sooner had this happened than Uncle Job gasped, and sank down as if he’d been in a fit.

‘“What is it—what is it, Uncle Job?” said I.

‘“O good God!” says he, under the straw.

‘“What?” says I.

‘“Boney!” he groaned out.

‘“Who?” says I.

‘“Bonaparty,” he said.  “The Corsican ogre.  O that I had got but my new-flinted firelock, that there man should die!  But I haven’t got my new-flinted firelock, and that there man must live.  So lie low, as you value your life!”

‘I did lie low, as you mid suppose.  But I couldn’t help peeping.  And then I too, lad as I was, knew that it was the face of Bonaparte.  Not know Boney?  I should think I did know Boney.  I should have known him by half the light o’ that lantern.  If I had seen a picture of his features once, I had seen it a hundred times.  There was his bullet head, his short neck, his round yaller cheeks and chin, his gloomy face, and his great glowing eyes.  He took off his hat to blow himself a bit, and there was the forelock in the middle of his forehead, as in all the draughts of him.  In moving, his cloak fell a little open, and I could see for a moment his white-fronted jacket and one of his epaulets.

‘But none of this lasted long.  In a minute he and his general had rolled up the map, shut the lantern, and turned to go down toward the shore.

‘Then Uncle Job came to himself a bit.  “Slipped across in the night-time to see how to put his men ashore,” he said.  “The like o’ that man’s coolness eyes will never again see!  Nephew, I must act in this, and immediate, or England’s lost!”

‘When they were over the brow, we crope out, and went some little way to look after them.  Half-way down they were joined by two others, and six or seven minutes brought them to the shore.  Then, from behind a rock, a boat came out into the weak moonlight of the Cove, and they jumped in; it put off instantly, and vanished in a few minutes between the two rocks that stand at the mouth of the Cove as we all know.  We climmed back to where we had been before, and I could see, a little way out, a larger vessel, though still not very large.  The little boat drew up alongside, was made fast at the stern as I suppose, for the largest sailed away, and we saw no more.

‘My uncle Job told his officers as soon as he got back to camp; but what they thought of it I never heard—neither did he.  Boney’s army never came, and a good job for me; for the Cove below my father’s house was where he meant to land, as this secret visit showed.  We coast-folk should have been cut down one and all, and I should not have sat here to tell this tale.’

We who listened to old Selby that night have been familiar with his simple grave-stone for these ten years past.  Thanks to the incredulity of the age his tale has been seldom repeated.  But if anything short of the direct testimony of his own eyes could persuade an auditor that Bonaparte had examined these shores for himself with a view to a practicable landing-place, it would have been Solomon Selby’s manner of narrating the adventure which befell him on the down.

Christmas 1882.

A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS

It is a Saturday afternoon of blue and yellow autumn time, and the scene is the High Street of a well-known market-town.  A large carrier’s van stands in the quadrangular fore-court of the White Hart Inn, upon the sides of its spacious tilt being painted, in weather-beaten letters: ‘Burthen, Carrier to Longpuddle.’  These vans, so numerous hereabout, are a respectable, if somewhat lumbering, class of conveyance, much resorted to by decent travellers not overstocked with money, the better among them roughly corresponding to the old French diligences.

The present one is timed to leave the town at four in the afternoon precisely, and it is now half-past three by the clock in the turret at the top of the street.  In a few seconds errand-boys from the shops begin to arrive with packages, which they fling into the vehicle, and turn away whistling, and care for the packages no more.  At twenty minutes to four an elderly woman places her basket upon the shafts, slowly mounts, takes up a seat inside, and folds her hands and her lips.  She has secured her corner for the journey, though there is as yet no sign of a horse being put in, nor of a carrier.  At the three-quarters, two other women arrive, in whom the first recognizes the postmistress of Upper Longpuddle and the registrar’s wife, they recognizing her as the aged groceress of the same village.  At five minutes to the hour there approach Mr. Profitt, the schoolmaster, in a soft felt hat, and Christopher Twink, the master-thatcher; and as the hour strikes there rapidly drop in the parish clerk and his wife, the seedsman and his aged father, the registrar; also Mr. Day, the world-ignored local landscape-painter, an elderly man who resides in his native place, and has never sold a picture outside it, though his pretensions to art have been nobly supported by his fellow-villagers, whose confidence in his genius has been as remarkable as the outer neglect of it, leading them to buy his paintings so extensively (at the price of a few shillings each, it is true) that every dwelling in the parish exhibits three or four of those admired productions on its walls.

Burthen, the carrier, is by this time seen bustling round the vehicle; the horses are put in, the proprietor arranges the reins and springs up into his seat as if he were used to it—which he is.

‘Is everybody here?’ he asks preparatorily over his shoulder to the passengers within.

As those who were not there did not reply in the negative the muster was assumed to be complete, and after a few hitches and hindrances the van with its human freight was got under way.  It jogged on at an easy pace till it reached the bridge which formed the last outpost of the town.  The carrier pulled up suddenly.

‘Bless my soul!’ he said, ‘I’ve forgot the curate!’

All who could do so gazed from the little back window of the van, but the curate was not in sight.

‘Now I wonder where that there man is?’ continued the carrier.

‘Poor man, he ought to have a living at his time of life.’

‘And he ought to be punctual,’ said the carrier.  ‘“Four o’clock sharp is my time for starting,” I said to ’en.  And he said, “I’ll be there.”  Now he’s not here, and as a serious old church-minister he ought to be as good as his word.  Perhaps Mr. Flaxton knows, being in the same line of life?’  He turned to the parish clerk.

‘I was talking an immense deal with him, that’s true, half an hour ago,’ replied that ecclesiastic, as one of whom it was no erroneous supposition that he should be on intimate terms with another of the cloth.  ‘But he didn’t say he would be late.’

The discussion was cut off by the appearance round the corner of the van of rays from the curate’s spectacles, followed hastily by his face and a few white whiskers, and the swinging tails of his long gaunt coat.  Nobody reproached him, seeing how he was reproaching himself; and he entered breathlessly and took his seat.

‘Now be we all here?’ said the carrier again.  They started a second time, and moved on till they were about three hundred yards out of the town, and had nearly reached the second bridge, behind which,