Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1083 page)

are kept open, and the rooms within lighted, in expectation of

more arrivals from the field.  A courier gallops up, who is accosted

by idlers.]

COURIER
[hastily]

The Prussians are defeated at Ligny by Napoleon in person.  He will

be here to-morrow.

[Exit courier.]

FIRST IDLER

The devil!  Then I am for welcoming him.  No Antwerp for me!

OTHER IDLERS
[sotto voce]

Vive l'Empereur!

[A warm summer fog from the Lower Town covers the Parc and the

Place Royale.]

SCENE VIII

THE ROAD TO WATERLOO

[The view is now from Quatre-Bras backward along the road by

which the English arrived.  Diminishing in a straight line from

the foreground to the centre of the distance it passes over Mont

Saint-Jean and through Waterloo to Brussels.

It is now tinged by a moving mass of English and Allied infantry,

in retreat to a new position at Mont Saint-Jean.  The sun shines

brilliantly upon the foreground as yet, but towards Waterloo and

the Forest of Soignes on the north horizon it is overcast with

black clouds which are steadily advancing up the sky.

To mask the retreat the English outposts retain their position

on the battlefield in the face of NEY'S troops, and keep up a

desultory firing: the cavalry for the same reason remain, being

drawn up in lines beside the intersecting Namur road.

Enter WELLINGTON, UXBRIDGE [who is in charge of the cavalry]
,

MUFFLING, VIVIAN, and others.  They look through their field-

glasses towards Frasnes, NEY'S position since his retreat

yesternight, and also towards NAPOLEON'S at Ligny.]

WELLINGTON

The noonday sun, striking so strongly there,

Makes mirrors of their arms.  That they advance

Their glowing radiance shows.  Those gleams by Marbais

Suggest fixed bayonets.

UXBRIDGE

     Vivian's glass reveals

That they are cuirassiers.  Ney's troops, too, near

At last, methinks, along this other road.

WELLINGTON

One thing is sure: that here the whole French force

Schemes to unite and sharply follow us.

It formulates our fence.  The cavalry

Must linger here no longer; but recede

To Mont Saint-Jean, as rearguard of the foot.

From the intelligence that Gordon brings

'Tis pretty clear old Blucher had to take

A damned good drubbing yesterday at Ligny,

And has been bent hard back!  So that, for us,

Bound to the plighted plan, there is no choice

But do like.... No doubt they'll say at home

That we've been well thrashed too.  It can't be helped,

They must!...
[He looks round at the sky.]
  A heavy rainfall

threatens us,

To make it all the worse!

[The speaker and his staff ride off along the Brussels road in

the rear of the infantry, and UXBRIDGE begins the retreat of the

cavalry.  CAPTAIN MERCER enters with a light battery.]

MERCER
[excitedly]

     Look back, my lord;

Is it not Bonaparte himself we see

Upon the road I have come by?

UXBRIDGE
[looking through glass]

     Yes, by God;

His face as clear-cut as the edge of a cloud

The sun behind shows up!  His suite and all!

Fire—fire!  And aim you well.

[The battery makes ready and fires.]

     No!  It won't do.

He brings on mounted ordnance of his Guard,

So we're in danger here.  Then limber up,

And off as soon as may be.

[The English artillery and cavalry retreat at full speed, just as

the weather bursts, with flashes of lightning and drops of rain.

They all clatter off along the Brussels road, UXBRIDGE and his

aides galloping beside the column; till no British are left at

Quatre-Bras except the slain.

The focus of the scene follows the retreating English army, the

highway and its and margins panoramically gliding past the vision

of the spectator.  The phantoms chant monotonously while the retreat

goes on.]

CHORUS OF RUMOURS
[aerial music]

Day's nether hours advance; storm supervenes

In heaviness unparalleled, that screens

With water-woven gauzes, vapour-bred,

The creeping clumps of half-obliterate red—

Severely harassed past each round and ridge

By the inimical lance.  They gain the bridge

And village of Genappe, in equal fence

With weather and the enemy's violence.

—Cannon upon the foul and flooded road,

Cavalry in the cornfields mire-bestrowed,

With frothy horses floundering to their knees,

Make wayfaring a moil of miseries!

Till Britishry and Bonapartists lose

Their clashing colours for the tawny hues

That twilight sets on all its stealing tinct imbues.

[The rising ground of Mont Saint-Jean, in front of Waterloo,

is gained by the English vanguard and main masses of foot, and

by degrees they are joined by the cavalry and artillery.  The

French are but little later in taking up their position amid

the cornfields around La Belle Alliance.

Fires begin to shine up from the English bivouacs.  Camp kettles

are slung, and the men pile arms and stand round the blaze to dry

themselves.  The French opposite lie down like dead men in the

dripping green wheat and rye, without supper and without fire.

By and by the English army also lies down, the men huddling

together on the ploughed mud in their wet blankets, while some

sleep sitting round the dying fires.]

CHORUS OF THE YEARS
[aerial music]

The eyelids of eve fall together at last,

And the forms so foreign to field and tree

Lie down as though native, and slumber fast!

CHORUS OF THE PITIES

Sore are the thrills of misgiving we see

In the artless champaign at this harlequinade,

Distracting a vigil where calm should be!

The green seems opprest, and the Plain afraid

Of a Something to come, whereof these are the proofs,—

Neither earthquake, nor storm, nor eclipses's shade!

CHORUS OF THE YEARS

Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs,

And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels,

And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs.

The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels,

The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled;

And the hedgehog's household the sapper unseals.

The snail draws in at the terrible tread,

But in vain; he is crushed by the felloe-rim

The worm asks what can be overhead,

And wriggles deep from a scene so grim,

And guesses him safe; for he does not know

What a foul red flood will be soaking him!

Beaten about by the heel and toe

Are butterflies, sick of the day's long rheum,

To die of a worse than the weather-foe.

Trodden and bruised to a miry tomb

Are ears that have greened but will never be gold,

And flowers in the bud that will never bloom.

CHORUS OF THE PITIES

So the season's intent, ere its fruit unfold,

Is frustrate, and mangled, and made succumb,

Like a youth of promise struck stark and cold!...

And what of these who to-night have come?

CHORUS OF THE YEARS

The young sleep sound; but the weather awakes

In the veterans, pains from the past that numb;

Old stabs of Ind, old Peninsular aches,

Old Friedland chills, haunt their moist mud bed,

Cramps from Austerlitz; till their slumber breaks.

CHORUS OF SINISTER SPIRITS

And each soul shivers as sinks his head

On the loam he's to lease with the other dead

From to-morrow's mist-fall till Time be sped!

[The fires of the English go out, and silence prevails, save

for the soft hiss of the rain that falls impartially on both

the sleeping armies.]

ACT SEVENTH

SCENE I

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO

[An aerial view of the battlefield at the time of sunrise is

disclosed.

The sky is still overcast, and rain still falls.  A green

expanse, almost unbroken, of rye, wheat, and clover, in oblong

and irregular patches undivided by fences, covers the undulating

ground, which sinks into a shallow valley between the French and

English positions.  The road from Brussels to Charleroi runs like

a spit through both positions, passing at the back of the English

into the leafy forest of Soignes.

The latter are turning out from their bivouacs.  They move stiffly

from their wet rest, and hurry to and fro like ants in an ant-hill.

The tens of thousands of moving specks are largely of a brick-red

colour, but the foreign contingent is darker.

Breakfasts are cooked over smoky fires of green wood.  Innumerable

groups, many in their shirt-sleeves, clean their rusty firelocks,

drawing or exploding the charges, scrape the mud from themselves,

and pipeclay from their cross-belts the red dye washed off their

jackets by the rain.

At six o'clock, they parade, spread out, and take up their positions

in the line of battle, the front of which extends in a wavy riband

three miles long, with three projecting bunches at Hougomont, La

Haye Sainte, and La Haye.

Looking across to the French positions we observe that after

advancing in dark streams from where they have passed the night

they, too, deploy and wheel into their fighting places—figures

with red epaulettes and hairy knapsacks, their arms glittering

like a display of cutlery at a hill-side fair.

They assume three concentric lines of crescent shape, that converge

on the English midst, with great blocks of the Imperial Guard at

the back of them.  The rattle of their drums, their fanfarades,

and their bands playing "Veillons au salut de l'Empire" contrast

with the quiet reigning on the English side.

A knot of figures, comprising WELLINGTON with a suite of general

and other staff-officers, ride backwards and forwards in front

of the English lines, where each regimental colour floats in the

hands of the junior ensign.  The DUKE himself, now a man of forty-

six, is on his bay charger Copenhagen, in light pantaloons, a

small plumeless hat, and a blue cloak, which shows its white

lining when blown back.

On the French side, too, a detached group creeps along the front

in preliminary survey.  BONAPARTE—also forty-six—in a grey

overcoat, is mounted on his white arab Marengo, and accompanied

by SOULT, NEY, JEROME, DROUOT, and other marshals.  The figures

of aides move to and fro like shuttle-cocks between the group

and distant points in the field.  The sun has begun to gleam.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Discriminate these, and what they are,

Who stand so stalwartly to war.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Report, ye Rumourers of things near and far.

SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS
[chanting]

Sweep first the Frenchmen's leftward lines along,

And eye the peaceful panes of Hougomont—

That seemed to hold prescriptive right of peace

In fee from Time till Time itself should cease!—

Jarred now by Reille's fierce foot-divisions three,

Flanked on their left by Pire's cavalry.—

The fourfold corps of d'Erlon, spread at length,

Compose the right, east of the famed chaussee—

The shelterless Charleroi-and-Brussels way,—

And Jacquinot's alert light-steeded strength

Still further right, their sharpened swords display.

Thus stands the first line.

SEMICHORUS II

          Next behind its back

Comes Count Lobau, left of the Brussels track;

Then Domon's horse, the horse of Subervie;

Kellermann's cuirassed troopers twinkle-tipt,

And, backing d'Erlon, Milhaud's horse, equipt

Likewise in burnished steelwork sunshine-dipt:

So ranks the second line refulgently.

SEMICHORUS I

The third and last embattlement reveals