Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy (most popular novels of all time TXT) 📖

At this point of time a golden radiance flashed in upon the lives of people here, and charged all youthful thought with emotional interest.  This radiance was the aforesaid York Hussars.

The present generation has probably but a very dim notion of the celebrated York Hussars of ninety years ago.  They were one of the regiments of the King’s German Legion, and (though they somewhat degenerated later on) their brilliant uniform, their splendid horses, and above all, their foreign air and mustachios (rare appendages then), drew crowds of admirers of both sexes wherever they went.  These with other regiments had come to encamp on the downs and pastures, because of the presence of the King in the neighbouring town.

The spot was high and airy, and the view extensive, commanding the Isle of Portland in front, and reaching to St. Aldhelm’s Head eastward, and almost to the Start on the west.

Phyllis, though not precisely a girl of the village, was as interested as any of them in this military investment.  Her father’s home stood somewhat apart, and on the highest point of ground to which the lane ascended, so that it was almost level with the top of the church tower in the lower part of the parish.  Immediately from the outside of the garden-wall the grass spread away to a great distance, and it was crossed by a path which came close to the wall.  Ever since her childhood it had been Phyllis’s pleasure to clamber up this fence and sit on the top—a feat not so difficult as it may seem, the walls in this district being built of rubble, without mortar, so that there were plenty of crevices for small toes.

She was sitting up here one day, listlessly surveying the pasture without, when her attention was arrested by a solitary figure walking along the path.  It was one of the renowned German Hussars, and he moved onward with his eyes on the ground, and with the manner of one who wished to escape company.  His head would probably have been bent like his eyes but for his stiff neck-gear.  On nearer view she perceived that his face was marked with deep sadness.  Without observing her, he advanced by the footpath till it brought him almost immediately under the wall.

Phyllis was much surprised to see a fine, tall soldier in such a mood as this.  Her theory of the military, and of the York Hussars in particular (derived entirely from hearsay, for she had never talked to a soldier in her life), was that their hearts were as gay as their accoutrements.

At this moment the Hussar lifted his eyes and noticed her on her perch, the white muslin neckerchief which covered her shoulders and neck where left bare by her low gown, and her white raiment in general, showing conspicuously in the bright sunlight of this summer day.  He blushed a little at the suddenness of the encounter, and without halting a moment from his pace passed on.

All that day the foreigner’s face haunted Phyllis; its aspect was so striking, so handsome, and his eyes were so blue, and sad, and abstracted.  It was perhaps only natural that on some following day at the same hour she should look over that wall again, and wait till he had passed a second time.  On this occasion he was reading a letter, and at the sight of her his manner was that of one who had half expected or hoped to discover her.  He almost stopped, smiled, and made a courteous salute.  The end of the meeting was that they exchanged a few words.  She asked him what he was reading, and he readily informed her that he was re-perusing letters from his mother in Germany; he did not get them often, he said, and was forced to read the old ones a great many times.  This was all that passed at the present interview, but others of the same kind followed.

Phyllis used to say that his English, though not good, was quite intelligible to her, so that their acquaintance was never hindered by difficulties of speech.  Whenever the subject became too delicate, subtle, or tender, for such words of English as were at his command, the eyes no doubt helped out the tongue, and—though this was later on—the lips helped out the eyes.  In short this acquaintance, unguardedly made, and rash enough on her part, developed and ripened.  Like Desdemona, she pitied him, and learnt his history.

His name was Matthäus Tina, and Saarbrück his native town, where his mother was still living.  His age was twenty-two, and he had already risen to the grade of corporal, though he had not long been in the army.  Phyllis used to assert that no such refined or well-educated young man could have been found in the ranks of the purely English regiments, some of these foreign soldiers having rather the graceful manner and presence of our native officers than of our rank and file.

She by degrees learnt from her foreign friend a circumstance about himself and his comrades which Phyllis would least have expected of the York Hussars.  So far from being as gay as its uniform, the regiment was pervaded by a dreadful melancholy, a chronic home-sickness, which depressed many of the men to such an extent that they could hardly attend to their drill.  The worst sufferers were the younger soldiers who had not been over here long.  They hated England and English life; they took no interest whatever in King George and his island kingdom, and they only wished to be out of it and never to see it any more.  Their bodies were here, but their hearts and minds were always far away in their dear fatherland, of which—brave men and stoical as they were in many ways—they would speak with tears in their eyes.  One of the worst of the sufferers from this home-woe, as he called it in his own tongue, was Matthäus Tina, whose dreamy musing nature felt the gloom of exile still more intensely from the fact that he had left a lonely mother at home with nobody to cheer her.

Though Phyllis, touched by all this, and interested in his history, did not disdain her soldier’s acquaintance, she declined (according to her own account, at least) to permit the young man to overstep the line of mere friendship for a long while—as long, indeed, as she considered herself likely to become the possession of another; though it is probable that she had lost her heart to Matthäus before she was herself aware.  The stone wall of necessity made anything like intimacy difficult; and he had never ventured to come, or to ask to come, inside the garden, so that all their conversation had been overtly conducted across this boundary.

But news reached the village from a friend of Phyllis’s father concerning Mr. Humphrey Gould, her remarkably cool and patient betrothed.  This gentleman had been heard to say in Bath that he considered his overtures to Miss Phyllis Grove to have reached only the stage of a half-understanding; and in view of his enforced absence on his father’s account, who was too great an invalid now to attend to his affairs, he thought it best that there should be no definite promise as yet on either side.  He was not sure, indeed, that he might not cast his eyes elsewhere.

This account—though only a piece of hearsay, and as such entitled to no absolute credit—tallied so well with the infrequency of his letters and their lack of warmth, that Phyllis did not doubt its truth for one moment; and from that hour she felt herself free to bestow her heart as she should choose.  Not so her father; he declared the whole story to be a fabrication.  He had known Mr. Gould’s family from his boyhood; and if there was one proverb which expressed the matrimonial aspect of that family well, it was ‘Love me little, love me long.’  Humphrey was an honourable man, who would not think of treating his engagement so lightly.  ‘Do you wait in patience,’ he said; ‘all will be right enough in time.’

From these words Phyllis at first imagined that her father was in correspondence with Mr. Gould; and her heart sank within her; for in spite of her original intentions she had been relieved to hear that her engagement had come to nothing.  But she presently learnt that her father had heard no more of Humphrey Gould than she herself had done; while he would not write and address her affianced directly on the subject, lest it should be deemed an imputation on that bachelor’s honour.

‘You want an excuse for encouraging one or other of those foreign fellows to flatter you with his unmeaning attentions,’ her father exclaimed, his mood having of late been a very unkind one towards her.  ‘I see more than I say.  Don’t you ever set foot outside that garden-fence without my permission.  If you want to see the camp I’ll take you myself some Sunday afternoon.’

Phyllis had not the smallest intention of disobeying him in her actions, but she assumed herself to be independent with respect to her feelings.  She no longer checked her fancy for the Hussar, though she was far from regarding him as her lover in the serious sense in which an Englishman might have been regarded as such.  The young foreign soldier was almost an ideal being to her, with none of the appurtenances of an ordinary house-dweller; one who had descended she knew not whence, and would disappear she knew not whither; the subject of a fascinating dream—no more.

They met continually now—mostly at dusk—during the brief interval between the going down of the sun and the minute at which the last trumpet-call summoned him to his tent.  Perhaps her manner had become less restrained latterly; at any rate that of the Hussar was so; he had grown more tender every day, and at parting after these hurried interviews she reached down her hand from the top of the wall that he might press it.  One evening he held it so long that she exclaimed, ‘The wall is white, and somebody in the field may see your shape against it!’

He lingered so long that night that it was with the greatest difficulty that he could run across the intervening stretch of ground and enter the camp in time.  On the next occasion of his awaiting her she did not appear in her usual place at the usual hour.  His disappointment was unspeakably keen; he remained staring blankly at the spot, like a man in a trance.  The trumpets and tattoo sounded, and still he did not go.

She had been delayed purely by an accident.  When she arrived she was anxious because of the lateness of the hour, having heard as well as he the sounds denoting the closing of the camp.  She implored him to leave immediately.

‘No,’ he said gloomily.  ‘I shall not go in yet—the moment you come—I have thought of your coming all day.’

‘But you may be disgraced at being after time?’

‘I don’t mind that.  I should have disappeared from the world some time ago if it had not been for two persons—my beloved, here, and my mother in Saarbrück.  I hate the army.  I care more for a minute of your company than for all the promotion in the world.’

Thus he stayed and talked to her, and told her interesting details of his native place, and incidents of his childhood, till she was in a simmer of distress at his recklessness in remaining.  It was only because she insisted on bidding him good-night and leaving the wall that he returned to his quarters.

The next time that she saw him he was without the stripes that had adorned his sleeve.  He had been broken to the level of private for his lateness that night; and as Phyllis considered