The Return of the Native
The handkerchief which had hooded her head was now a little thrown
back, her face being somewhat elevated. A profile was visible against
the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side
shadows from the features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had converged
upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting
both. This, however, was mere superficiality. In respect of character a
face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses
only in its changes. So much is this the case that what is called the
play of the features often helps more in understanding a man or woman
than the earnest labours of all the other members together. Thus the
night revealed little of her whose form it was embracing, for the
mobile parts of her countenance could not be seen.
At last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the telescope, and
turned to the decaying embers. From these no appreciable beams now
radiated, except when a more than usually smart gust brushed over their
faces and raised a fitful glow which came and went like the blush of a
girl. She stooped over the silent circle, and selecting from the brands
a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal at its end, brought
it to where she had been standing before.
She held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal with her mouth
at the same time; till it faintly illuminated the sod, and revealed a
small object, which turned out to be an hourglass, though she wore a
watch. She blew long enough to show that the sand had all slipped
through.
“Ah!” she said, as if surprised.
The light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentary
irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. That
consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still
enveloped. She threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the
telescope under her arm, and moved on.
Along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed. Those
who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitor would have
passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were
at no loss for it at midnight. The whole secret of following these
incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to
show a turnpike road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in
the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden
spots. To a walker practised in such places a difference between impact
on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is
perceptible through the thickest boot or shoe.
The solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of the windy
tune still played on the dead heathbells. She did not turn her head to
look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her
presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about a
score of the small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. They roamed at
large on the undulations of Egdon, but in numbers too few to detract
much from the solitude.
The pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her abstraction
was afforded by a trivial incident. A bramble caught hold of her skirt,
and checked her progress. Instead of putting it off and hastening
along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood passively still.
When she began to extricate herself it was by turning round and round,
and so unwinding the prickly switch. She was in a desponding reverie.
Her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which had
drawn the attention of the men on Rainbarrow and of Wildeve in the
valley below. A faint illumination from its rays began to glow upon her
face, and the fire soon revealed itself to be lit, not on the level
ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, at the junction of
two converging bank fences. Outside was a ditch, dry except immediately
under the fire, where there was a large pool, bearded all round by
heather and rushes. In the smooth water of the pool the fire appeared
upside down.
The banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formed
by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top, like
impaled heads above a city wall. A white mast, fitted up with spars and
other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against the dark clouds
whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it. Altogether the
scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon which had been
kindled a beacon fire.
Nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved above
the bank from behind, and vanished again. This was a small human hand,
in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire, but for all that
could be seen the hand, like that which troubled Belshazzar, was there
alone. Occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped with a
hiss into the pool.
At one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled everyone who
wished to do so to mount the bank; which the woman did. Within was a
paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of having
once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and
were reasserting their old supremacy. Further ahead were dimly visible
an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings, backed by a
clump of firs.
The young lady—for youth had revealed its presence in her buoyant bound
up the bank—walked along the top instead of descending inside, and came
to the corner where the fire was burning. One reason for the permanence
of the blaze was now manifest: the fuel consisted of hard pieces of
wood, cleft and sawn—the knotty boles of old thorn trees which grew in
twos and threes about the hillsides. A yet unconsumed pile of these lay
in the inner angle of the bank; and from this corner the upturned face
of a little boy greeted her eyes. He was dilatorily throwing up a piece
of wood into the fire every now and then, a business which seemed to
have engaged him a considerable part of the evening, for his face was
somewhat weary.
“I am glad you have come, Miss Eustacia,” he said, with a sigh of
relief. “I don’t like biding by myself.”
“Nonsense. I have only been a little way for a walk. I have been gone
only twenty minutes.”
“It seemed long,” murmured the sad boy. “And you have been so many
times.”
“Why, I thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. Are you not
much obliged to me for making you one?”
“Yes; but there’s nobody here to play wi’ me.”
“I suppose nobody has come while I’ve been away?”
“Nobody except your grandfather—he looked out of doors once for ’ee. I
told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the other
bonfires.”
“A good boy.”
“I think I hear him coming again, miss.”
An old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the direction
of the homestead. He was the same who had overtaken the reddleman on
the road that afternoon. He looked wistfully to the top of the bank at
the woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired,
showed like parian from his parted lips.
“When are you coming indoors, Eustacia?” he asked. “’Tis almost
bedtime. I’ve been home these two hours, and am tired out. Surely ’tis
somewhat childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long, and
wasting such fuel. My precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing,
that I laid by on purpose for Christmas—you have burnt ’em nearly all!”
“I promised Johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go out
just yet,” said Eustacia, in a way which told at once that she was
absolute queen here. “Grandfather, you go in to bed. I shall follow you
soon. You like the fire, don’t you, Johnny?”
The boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, “I don’t think I want
it any longer.”
Her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear the boy’s
reply. As soon as the white-haired man had vanished she said in a tone
of pique to the child, “Ungrateful little boy, how can you contradict
me? Never shall you have a bonfire again unless you keep it up now.
Come, tell me you like to do things for me, and don’t deny it.”
The repressed child said, “Yes, I do, miss,” and continued to stir the
fire perfunctorily.
“Stay a little longer and I will give you a crooked six-pence,” said
Eustacia, more gently. “Put in one piece of wood every two or three
minutes, but not too much at once. I am going to walk along the ridge a
little longer, but I shall keep on coming to you. And if you hear a
frog jump into the pond with a flounce like a stone thrown in, be sure
you run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain.”
“Yes, Eustacia.”
“Miss Vye, sir.”
“Miss Vy—stacia.”
“That will do. Now put in one stick more.”
The little slave went on feeding the fire as before. He seemed a mere
automaton, galvanized into moving and speaking by the wayward
Eustacia’s will. He might have been the brass statue which Albertus
Magnus is said to have animated just so far as to make it chatter, and
move, and be his servant.
Before going on her walk again the young girl stood still on the bank
for a few instants and listened. It was to the full as lonely a place
as Rainbarrow, though at rather a lower level; and it was more
sheltered from wind and weather on account of the few firs to the
north. The bank which enclosed the homestead, and protected it from the
lawless state of the world without, was formed of thick square clods,
dug from the ditch on the outside, and built up with a slight batter or
incline, which forms no slight defense where hedges will not grow
because of the wind and the wilderness, and where wall materials are
unattainable. Otherwise the situation was quite open, commanding the
whole length of the valley which reached to the river behind Wildeve’s
house. High above this to the right, and much nearer thitherward than
the Quiet Woman Inn, the blurred contour of Rainbarrow obstructed the
sky.
After her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines a
gesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She vented petulant words every
now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden
listenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch she again
sauntered off towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did not go the
whole way.
Twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes and each time she
said—
“Not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?”
“No, Miss Eustacia,” the child replied.
“Well,” she said at last, “I shall soon be going in, and then I will
give you the crooked sixpence, and let you go home.”
“Thank’ee, Miss Eustacia,” said the tired stoker, breathing more
easily. And Eustacia again strolled away from the fire, but this time
not towards Rainbarrow. She skirted the bank and went round to the
wicket before the house, where she stood motionless, looking at the
scene.
Fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks, with the
fire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the fire one stick at a
time, just as before, the figure of the little child. She idly watched
him as he occasionally climbed up in the nook of the bank and stood
beside the brands. The wind blew the smoke, and the child’s hair, and
the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; the breeze died,
and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up straight.
While Eustacia looked on from this distance the boy’s form visibly
started—he slid down the bank and ran across towards the white gate.
“Well?” said Eustacia.
“A hopfrog have jumped into the pond. Yes, I heard ’en!”
“Then it is going to rain, and you had better go home. You will not be
afraid?” She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into her throat
at the boy’s words.
“No, because I shall hae the crooked sixpence.”
“Yes, here it is. Now run as fast as you can—not that way—through the