The Return of the Native
caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very
finger-touches of the last geological change.
The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath,
from one horizon to another. In many portions of its course it overlaid
an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the
Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by. On the evening
under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom
had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath,
the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.
II.
Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble
Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed as a mountain,
bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a glazed
hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an
anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick,
which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the
ground with its point at every few inches’ interval. One would have
said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or
other.
Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white.
It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast
dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing
and bending away on the furthest horizon.
The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract
that he had yet to traverse. At length he discerned, a long distance in
front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it
proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was
journeying. It was the single atom of life that the scene contained,
and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. Its
rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly.
When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in
shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. The driver
walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dye of
that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots,
his face, and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with the
colour; it permeated him.
The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cart was a
reddleman—a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding
for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in
Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during
the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a
curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms
of life and those which generally prevail.
The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer,
and wished him good evening. The reddleman turned his head, and replied
in sad and occupied tones. He was young, and his face, if not exactly
handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have
contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour.
His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself
attractive—keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He
had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the
lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though,
as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at
their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a
tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn,
and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by
his trade. It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. A
certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for
his degree. The natural query of an observer would have been, Why
should such a promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing
exterior by adopting that singular occupation?
After replying to the old man’s greeting he showed no inclination to
continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the
elder traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds but that
of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the
crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two
shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals, of a
breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known as “heath-croppers”
here.
Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally left
his companion’s side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into its
interior through a small window. The look was always anxious. He would
then return to the old man, who made another remark about the state of
the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly
replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence
conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places
wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without
speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise
than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest
inclination, and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in
itself.
Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, had
it not been for the reddleman’s visits to his van. When he returned
from his fifth time of looking in the old man said, “You have something
inside there besides your load?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody who wants looking after?”
“Yes.”
Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. The
reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came away again.
“You have a child there, my man?”
“No, sir, I have a woman.”
“The deuce you have! Why did she cry out?”
“Oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling, she’s
uneasy, and keeps dreaming.”
“A young woman?”
“Yes, a young woman.”
“That would have interested me forty years ago. Perhaps she’s your
wife?”
“My wife!” said the other bitterly. “She’s above mating with such as I.
But there’s no reason why I should tell you about that.”
“That’s true. And there’s no reason why you should not. What harm can I
do to you or to her?”
The reddleman looked in the old man’s face. “Well, sir,” he said at
last, “I knew her before today, though perhaps it would have been
better if I had not. But she’s nothing to me, and I am nothing to her;
and she wouldn’t have been in my van if any better carriage had been
there to take her.”
“Where, may I ask?”
“At Anglebury.”
“I know the town well. What was she doing there?”
“Oh, not much—to gossip about. However, she’s tired to death now, and
not at all well, and that’s what makes her so restless. She dropped off
into a nap about an hour ago, and ’twill do her good.”
“A nice-looking girl, no doubt?”
“You would say so.”
The other traveller turned his eyes with interest towards the van
window, and, without withdrawing them, said, “I presume I might look in
upon her?”
“No,” said the reddleman abruptly. “It is getting too dark for you to
see much of her; and, more than that, I have no right to allow you.
Thank God she sleeps so well, I hope she won’t wake till she’s home.”
“Who is she? One of the neighbourhood?”
“’Tis no matter who, excuse me.”
“It is not that girl of Blooms-End, who has been talked about more or
less lately? If so, I know her; and I can guess what has happened.”
“’Tis no matter.... Now, sir, I am sorry to say that we shall soon have
to part company. My ponies are tired, and I have further to go, and I
am going to rest them under this bank for an hour.”
The elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman
turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, “Good night.” The
old man replied, and proceeded on his way as before.
The reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the road
and became absorbed in the thickening films of night. He then took some
hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwing a
portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he
laid on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down, leaning
his back against the wheel. From the interior a low soft breathing came
to his ear. It appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the
scene, as if considering the next step that he should take.
To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to be a
duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for there was that
in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and
halting dubiousness. It was the quality of the repose appertaining to
the scene. This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the
apparent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy life so
nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its
sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to
be exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the
forest, awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually
engendered by understatement and reserve.
The scene before the reddleman’s eyes was a gradual series of ascents
from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. It
embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other,
till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light
sky. The traveller’s eye hovered about these things for a time, and
finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow.
This bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied the
loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained.
Although from the vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlantean brow,
its actual bulk was great. It formed the pole and axis of this heathery
world.
As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that its
summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, was
surmounted by something higher. It rose from the semiglobular mound
like a spike from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginative
stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the Celts
who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the
scene. It seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment
before dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race.
There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plain
rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow
rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped
elsewhere than on a celestial globe.
Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give to
the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious
justification of their outline. Without it, there was the dome without
the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were
satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the
upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to unity.
Looking at this or that member of the group was not observing a
complete thing, but a fraction of a thing.
The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless
structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a
strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of that
whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of
immobility in any quarter suggested confusion.
Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity,
shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if alarmed, it descended on
the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a
bud, and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more
clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman’s.