The Return of the Native
The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping
out of sight on the right side, a newcomer, bearing a burden, protruded
into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the
burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth,
and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures.
The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of
silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had
taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither
for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung
by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more
interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth
knowing than these newcomers, and unconsciously regarded them as
intruders. But they remained, and established themselves; and the
lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at
present seem likely to return.
III.
The Custom of the Country
Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow, he
would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the
neighbouring hamlets. Each, as he ascended the barrow, had been heavily
laden with furze faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long
stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily—two in front and
two behind. They came from a part of the heath a quarter of a mile to
the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a product.
Every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying the
faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown them
down. The party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of sheep;
that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind.
The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in
circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as
Rainbarrow for many miles round. Some made themselves busy with
matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in
loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others,
again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast
expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly
obliterated by shade. In the valleys of the heath nothing save its own
wild face was visible at any time of day; but this spot commanded a
horizon enclosing a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond
the heath country. None of its features could be seen now, but the
whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness.
While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in
the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and
tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country
round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were
engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood
in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams
radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near,
glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. Some
were Mænades, with winy faces and blown hair. These tinctured the
silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves,
which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. Perhaps as many
as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the
district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures
themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each
fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be
viewed.
The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting
all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to
their own attempt in the same kind. The cheerful blaze streaked the
inner surface of the human circle—now increased by other stragglers,
male and female—with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark
turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into
obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed
the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when
it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth
was dug. Not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil.
In the heath’s barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the
historian. There had been no obliteration, because there had been no
tending.
It seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper
story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches
below. The heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a
continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the
blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence.
Occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their
faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to
some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to
replies of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. Then
the whole black phenomenon beneath represented Limbo as viewed from the
brink by the sublime Florentine in his vision, and the muttered
articulations of the wind in the hollows were as complaints and
petitions from the “souls of mighty worth” suspended therein.
It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and
fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with
this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from
that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their
tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone
down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to
Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day.
Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen
were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled
Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular
feeling about Gunpowder Plot.
Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man
when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature.
It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat
that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness,
misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth
say, Let there be light.
The brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon the skin and
clothes of the persons standing round caused their lineaments and
general contours to be drawn with Dureresque vigour and dash. Yet the
permanent moral expression of each face it was impossible to discover,
for as the nimble flames towered, nodded, and swooped through the
surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the
countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. All was
unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. Shadowy
eye-sockets, deep as those of a death’s head, suddenly turned into pits
of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles
were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ray.
Nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings;
things with no particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects,
such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried, were as glass;
eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. Those whom Nature had depicted as
merely quaint became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for
all was in extremity.
Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been
called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere
nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of
human countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat.
With a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into
the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally
lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the
great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The
beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a
cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. With his stick
in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals
shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also
began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue—
“The king′ call’d down′ his no-bles all′,
By one′, by two′, by three′;
Earl Mar′-shal, I’ll′ go shrive′-the queen′,
And thou′ shalt wend′ with me′.
“A boon′, a boon′, quoth Earl′ Mar-shal′,
And fell′ on his bend′-ded knee′,
That what′-so-e’er′ the queen′ shall say′,
No harm′ there-of′ may be′.”
Want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown
attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept
each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his
cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might
erroneously have attached to him.
“A fair stave, Grandfer Cantle; but I am afeard ’tis too much for the
mouldy weasand of such a old man as you,” he said to the wrinkled
reveller. “Dostn’t wish th’ wast three sixes again, Grandfer, as you
was when you first learnt to sing it?”
“Hey?” said Grandfer Cantle, stopping in his dance.
“Dostn’t wish wast young again, I say? There’s a hole in thy poor
bellows nowadays seemingly.”
“But there’s good art in me? If I couldn’t make a little wind go a long
ways I should seem no younger than the most aged man, should I,
Timothy?”
“And how about the new-married folks down there at the Quiet Woman
Inn?” the other inquired, pointing towards a dim light in the direction
of the distant highway, but considerably apart from where the reddleman
was at that moment resting. “What’s the rights of the matter about ’em?
You ought to know, being an understanding man.”
“But a little rakish, hey? I own to it. Master Cantle is that, or he’s
nothing. Yet ’tis a gay fault, neighbour Fairway, that age will cure.”
“I heard that they were coming home tonight. By this time they must
have come. What besides?”
“The next thing is for us to go and wish ’em joy, I suppose?”
“Well, no.”
“No? Now, I thought we must. I must, or ’twould be very unlike me—the
first in every spree that’s going!
“Do thou′ put on′ a fri′-ar’s coat′,
And I’ll′ put on′ a-no′-ther,
And we′ will to′ Queen Ele′anor go′,
Like Fri′ar and′ his bro′ther.
I met Mis’ess Yeobright, the young bride’s aunt, last night, and she
told me that her son Clym was coming home a’ Christmas. Wonderful
clever, ’a believe—ah, I should like to have all that’s under that
young man’s hair. Well, then, I spoke to her in my well-known merry
way, and she said, ‘O that what’s shaped so venerable should talk like
a fool!’—that’s what she said to me. I don’t care for her, be jowned if
I do, and so I told her. ‘Be jowned if I care for ’ee,’ I said. I had
her there—hey?”
“I rather think she had you,” said Fairway.
“No,” said Grandfer Cantle, his countenance slightly flagging. “’Tisn’t
so bad as that with me?”
“Seemingly ’tis, however, is it because of the wedding that Clym is
coming home a’ Christmas—to make a new arrangement because his mother
is now left in the house alone?”
“Yes, yes—that’s it. But, Timothy, hearken to me,” said the Grandfer
earnestly. “Though known as such a joker, I be an understanding man if
you catch me serious, and I am serious now. I can tell ’ee lots about
the married couple. Yes, this morning at six o’clock they went up the
country to do the job, and neither vell nor mark have been seen of ’em
since, though I reckon that this afternoon has brought ’em home again