Yeovil

“ And always there was one horse that detached itself conspicuously from the rest, the ideal hunter, or at any rate, Yeovil’s ideal of the ideal hunter. Mentally it was put through its paces before him, its pedigree and brief history recounted to him; mentally he saw a stable lad put it over a jump or two, with credit to all concerned, and inevitably he saw himself outbidding less discerning rivals and securing the desired piece of horseflesh, to be the chief glory and mainstay of his hunting stable, to carry him well and truly and cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. ”

“ Yeovil privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions.
“It stands to reason,” continued the fisherman, “that a highly civilised race like ours, with the record that we’ve had for leading the whole world, is not going to be held under for long by a lot of damned sausage-eating Germans. ”

“ Here, installed under his own roof-tree, with as good horseflesh in his stable as man could desire, with sport lying almost at his door, with his wife ready to come down and help him to entertain his neighbours, Murrey Yeovil had found the life that he wanted—and was accursed in his own eyes. He argued with himself, and palliated and explained, but he knew why he had turned his eyes away that evening from the little graveyard under the trees; one cannot explain things to the dead. ”

“ A new generation will spring up, a weaker memory of old glories will survive, the éclat of the ruling race will capture young imaginations. If I had your youth, Murrey, and your sex, I would become a commercial traveller.”
“A commercial traveller!” exclaimed Yeovil. ”

“ The clergyman flushed.
“Rather a fine epitaph to have on one’s tombstone,” he said, “especially if the tombstone were in some crowded city graveyard. I suppose I am a man of God, but I don’t think I could be called a man of peace.”
Looking at the strong young face, with its suggestion of a fighting prior of bygone days more marked than ever, Yeovil mentally agreed that he could not.
“I have learned one thing in life,” continued the young man, “and that is that peace is not for this world. Peace is what God gives us when He takes us into His rest. ”

“ Yeovil gave a grunt of acquiescence.
“They grew soft in their political ideas,” continued the unsparing critic; “for the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils and rogues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lack of knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who only needed to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends and benefactors. ”

“ By the way, at Yeovil I ran into an old friend of ours, Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, of all people. As large as life—quite six foot two, and tremendously filled out. I thought he was abroad. The last I heard of him was that he had started for Buenos Ayres in a cattle ship, with a borrowed pipe by way of luggage. It seems he has been in England for some time. ”

“ Yeovil seems to have outgrown its original intentions and is still rapidly increasing. The older streets have the usual congested appearance of a small country town, but more spacious thoroughfares are now spreading outwards in every direction. ”

“ The train bearing Yeovil on his visit to Torywood slid and rattled westward through the hazy dreamland of an English summer landscape. Seen from the train windows the stark bare ugliness of the metalled line was forgotten, and the eye rested only on the green solitude that unfolded itself as the miles went slipping by. Tall grasses and meadow-weeds stood in deep shocks, field after field, between the leafy boundaries of hedge or coppice, thrusting themselves higher and higher till they touched the low sweeping branches of the trees that here and there overshadowed them. ”

“ Yeovil had pleasant recollections of the East Wessex, a cheery little hunt that afforded good sport in an unpretentious manner, a joyous thread of life running through a rather sleepy countryside, like a merry brook careering through a placid valley. For a man coming slowly and yet eagerly back to the activities of life from the weariness of a long fever, the prospect of a leisurely season with the East Wessex was singularly attractive, and side by side with its attractiveness there was a tempting argument in favour of yielding to its attractions. ”

“ Yeovil rode through the deepening twilight, relying chiefly on his horse to find its way in the network of hedge-bordered lanes that presumably led to a high road or to some human habitation. He was desperately tired after his day’s hunting, a legacy of weakness that the fever had bequeathed to him, but even though he could scarcely sit upright in his saddle his mind dwelt complacently on the day’s sport and looked forward to the snug cheery comfort that awaited him at his hunting box. ”

“ But meanwhile it is necessary to preserve our industrial life and our social life, and for that reason we must accommodate ourselves to present circumstances, however distasteful they may be. Emigration to some colonial wilderness, or holding ourselves rigidly aloof from the life of the capital, won’t help matters. Really, Murrey, if you will think things over a bit, you will see that the course I am following is the one dictated by sane patriotism.”
“Whom the gods wish to render harmless they first afflict with sanity,” said Yeovil bitterly. ”

“ Jeovil came strolling in from the Pall Mall entrance at just about five o'clock. The Tea Room at the Carlton was quite as crowded as it always is at that hour and the music was going on—and the talk, too. Jeovil paused by the door and stood quite still, surveying the assembled company with a roving, but especially scrutinizing gaze. He was a big, heavily-built man with a face marred by dissipation and eyes that showed something might have gone right once if it had not gone wrong permanently instead.
The something that had gone wrong had gone wrong nine years previous. ”

“ As for the girl Yeoland, her joy was dim and flickering, mocked with constant prophecies of woe. The sounds of the siege haunted her perpetually. Shafts wailed and whistled, bombards roared, the walls reeked and cracked. A corner in the garden under the yew walk was the single nook left her open to the blue hope of heaven. The clamour of the leaguer woke a hundred echoes in her heart. Above all shone the man's strong face and passionate eyes; above the moon, the stars, the blue vault of day, death spread his sable wings, a cloud of gloom. ”

“ There is something fearfully imposing about a big and well-dressed man. Jeovil was imposing.
And so, now, he had come into the Carlton for tea. Some people who knew him looked up and smiled; if he had chosen he might have joined any one of half-a-dozen little parties, but he only nodded and—after terminating his first scrutiny—began to move slowly through the middle space. One of the waiters laid his hand upon a chair-back and looked piercingly attentive, but Jeovil only shook his head. ”

“ I am named Fulviac, and I am an outlaw. Let that grant you satisfaction."
Yeoland glanced over the glade, walled in with the gloom of the woods, the stream foaming in the dusk, the armed men gathered about the further fire.
"And these?" she asked.
"Are mine."
"Outcasts also?"
"Say no hard things of them; they are folk whom the world has treated scurvily; therefore they are at feud with the world. The times are out of joint, tyrannous and heavy to bear. The nobles like millstones grind the poor into pulp, tread out the life from them, that the wine of pleasure may flow into gilded chalices. ”

“ Hence the yew-tree was planted in churchyards, not to indicate death, despair, but life, hope and assurance. It is one of our few evergreens, and is the most enduring of all, and clearly points out the Christian's hope in the immortality of the soul: Resurgam.
Whilst on the word yew, I may perhaps observe that I am hardly inclined now (though I once was so) to derive from it, as the author of the Etymological Compendium does, the name yeoman: I think that yeoman is not yew-man, "a man using the yew-bow," but yoke-man, a man owning as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough in a certain time. ”

“ He was known as Nord of the Hammer, an armourer like to a Norse Volund, burly, strong as a bear. The door was barred upon them. One of the guards plucked the cloth from the bound man's face.
In the malicious imagery of thought, Yeoland had often pictured to herself this Flavian of Gambrevault, a coarse, florid ruffian, burly and brutal, a fleshly demigod in the world of feudalism. So much for conjecture. What she beheld was a straight-lipped, clean-limbed man, slim as a cypress, supple as good steel. The face was young yet strong, the grey eyes clear and fearless. ”

“ The forest stood wrapped in the stupendous stillness of the night. An impenetrable curtain of ebony closed the glade with its rush-edged pool.
Fulviac's servers had retreated to the fire, where a ring of rough faces shone in the wayward light. The sound of their harsh voices came up to the pair in concord with the perpetual murmur of the stream. Yeoland had shaken the bread-crumbs from her green gown. She was comforted in the flesh, and ready for further foining with the man who posed as her captor.
"Sincerity is a rare virtue," she said, with a slight lifting of the angles of her mouth. ”

“ Fulviac thrust Yeoland forward up the slope. She understood the dramatic pause in an instant. Prosper's words had been like the orisons of birds preluding the dawn. She climbed the rocks, and stepped out at the kneeling monk's side.
The scene below dazed her for the moment. Many hundred faces were turned to her from the slopes at her feet. Innumerable eyes seemed fixed upon her with a mesmeric stare. She saw the whole cliff below her packed with men, every rock crowned with humanity, even the pine trees had their living burden. She saw swords waving like innumerable streaks of light ”

“ Granite crowned this elevation, and Teign turned about, like a silver ribbon, far beneath it.
Here the last of his line passed with Honor Endicott beside the river, and she mourned presently that the sole care of such noble woods rested with the Mother only, and that never a forester came to remove the dead or clear overgrowth of brake and thicket.
"Nature's so untidy," said Honor.
"She is," Yeoland admitted, "and she takes her own time, which seems long from our point of view. But then there's no pay-day for her, thank God. ”

“ Yeoland started.
"You mean that I was wrong, then, and Mr. Endicott right? But don't you see how infernally greedy and unreasonable you are? Either that, or you continue to misunderstand me of set purpose. I gave you Honor for your own; yet you grudge me my place at Godleigh—at the footstool of the throne you share with her. What do I rob you of? Do the birds rob you when they eat the crumbs fallen from your table? I cannot remotely judge of your attitude."
"That is true; but every other man can. And it may be that many do." ”

“ So the cobbler followed the yeoman much [261] admiring the finery of the rooms through which he passed and thinking within himself that the yeoman was not very unlike the person he inquired after. “He, whom I look for,” said he, “is a plain, merry, honest fellow. His name is Harry Tudor. I suppose he may be some fine lord or other about the court.”
“I tell you, friend,” replied the yeoman, “I do not know him very well. Do but follow me and I will bring you to him straightway.”
So they went on and soon reached the room where the king sat surrounded by many of his nobles. ”

“ Arising from the window-seat, Nevil paced the room, then returned to the sometime Captain of the Cygnet. "Two things and I will let you go where you do the Queen and Francis Drake yeoman service. You will not slip a silken leash, but will abide with us in this town?"
"Ay," was the answer, "until your sick are recovered and your mariners are making sail I will stay."
Nevil hesitated. "For the present I accept your 'until.' And now I ask you to throw off this disguise. We are men of a like height and make. Yonder within the chamber are suits from which you may choose. Pray you dress at once." ”

“ We're all agreed that Yeoland's no hypocrite, whatever else he may be. Three days since I had speech with him, and your name was on his lips, and he rejoiced that you were his friend and Honor's husband. He does not dream that his return to life has either gladdened her or troubled you. He only sees her now pretty much as she was when he went away. He hasn't seen what you and I have—her sorrows. But, remember that Honor's real happiness rests with you—nobody else—and she knows it, and trusts to you for it. ”

“ Oh yes, we’ll go to Weymouth at once,—before there’s any risk of the Romers stopping us! We’ll walk to Yeoborough—that’ll give us time to think out our plans—and take the train from there.
“I’ll send a telegram to my mother late tonight, when there’s no chance of her communicating with the House. As to being seen in Yeoborough by any Nevilton people, we must risk that! God has been so good to us today that I can’t believe He won’t go on being good to us. ”

“ There is not one of us who doth not grieve to see the yeoman's prisoner in thee. Unhappy was the day that saw thy birth. In person thou art tall and fair to view, yet soon like ours will torments be thy lot.” Quoth Jaufry, “Great is God; easy to Him can your deliverance be. Through Him my sword hath 'venged you on your foe, and now the yeoman lies deprived of feet. ”

“ Fulviac had drawn back into the gloom of the gallery. He turned suddenly upon his heel, and his scabbard smote and rang against the rock.
"I take all the men I have," he said to her, "even the dotard Jaspar, for he knows the ways. Gregory and Adrian I leave on guard; they are tough gentlemen, and loyal. As for the lordling, he is well shackled."
Yeoland was still cowering in her chair with the mysterious passions of the moment.
"You will return?" she asked him.
"By nightfall, if we prosper; as we shall." ”