The Return of the Native
“Not encouraging, I own,” said Fairway. “‘Get out of my sight, you
slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,’ is rather a hard way of
saying No. But even that might be overcome by time and patience, so as
to let a few grey hairs show themselves in the hussy’s head. How old be
you, Christian?”
“Thirty-one last tatie-digging, Mister Fairway.”
“Not a boy—not a boy. Still there’s hope yet.”
“That’s my age by baptism, because that’s put down in the great book of
the Judgment that they keep in church vestry; but Mother told me I was
born some time afore I was christened.”
“Ah!”
“But she couldn’t tell when, to save her life, except that there was no
moon.”
“No moon—that’s bad. Hey, neighbours, that’s bad for him!”
“Yes, ’tis bad,” said Grandfer Cantle, shaking his head.
“Mother know’d ’twas no moon, for she asked another woman that had an
almanac, as she did whenever a boy was born to her, because of the
saying, ‘No moon, no man,’ which made her afeard every man-child she
had. Do ye really think it serious, Mister Fairway, that there was no
moon?”
“Yes. ‘No moon, no man.’ ’Tis one of the truest sayings ever spit out.
The boy never comes to anything that’s born at new moon. A bad job for
thee, Christian, that you should have showed your nose then of all days
in the month.”
“I suppose the moon was terrible full when you were born?” said
Christian, with a look of hopeless admiration at Fairway.
“Well, ’a was not new,” Mr. Fairway replied, with a disinterested gaze.
“I’d sooner go without drink at Lammas-tide than be a man of no moon,”
continued Christian, in the same shattered recitative. “’Tis said I be
only the rames of a man, and no good for my race at all; and I suppose
that’s the cause o’t.”
“Ay,” said Grandfer Cantle, somewhat subdued in spirit; “and yet his
mother cried for scores of hours when ’a was a boy, for fear he should
outgrow hisself and go for a soldier.”
“Well, there’s many just as bad as he.” said Fairway.
“Wethers must live their time as well as other sheep, poor soul.”
“So perhaps I shall rub on? Ought I to be afeared o’ nights, Master
Fairway?”
“You’ll have to lie alone all your life; and ’tis not to married
couples but to single sleepers that a ghost shows himself when ’a do
come. One has been seen lately, too. A very strange one.”
“No—don’t talk about it if ’tis agreeable of ye not to! ’Twill make my
skin crawl when I think of it in bed alone. But you will—ah, you will,
I know, Timothy; and I shall dream all night o’t! A very strange one?
What sort of a spirit did ye mean when ye said, a very strange one,
Timothy?—no, no—don’t tell me.”
“I don’t half believe in spirits myself. But I think it ghostly
enough—what I was told. ’Twas a little boy that zid it.”
“What was it like?—no, don’t—”
“A red one. Yes, most ghosts be white; but this is as if it had been
dipped in blood.”
Christian drew a deep breath without letting it expand his body, and
Humphrey said, “Where has it been seen?”
“Not exactly here; but in this same heth. But ’tisn’t a thing to talk
about. What do ye say,” continued Fairway in brisker tones, and turning
upon them as if the idea had not been Grandfer Cantle’s—“what do you
say to giving the new man and wife a bit of a song tonight afore we go
to bed—being their wedding-day? When folks are just married ’tis as
well to look glad o’t, since looking sorry won’t unjoin ’em. I am no
drinker, as we know, but when the womenfolk and youngsters have gone
home we can drop down across to the Quiet Woman, and strike up a ballet
in front of the married folks’ door. ’Twill please the young wife, and
that’s what I should like to do, for many’s the skinful I’ve had at her
hands when she lived with her aunt at Blooms-End.”
“Hey? And so we will!” said Grandfer Cantle, turning so briskly that
his copper seals swung extravagantly. “I’m as dry as a kex with biding
up here in the wind, and I haven’t seen the colour of drink since
nammet-time today. ’Tis said that the last brew at the Woman is very
pretty drinking. And, neighbours, if we should be a little late in the
finishing, why, tomorrow’s Sunday, and we can sleep it off?”
“Grandfer Cantle! you take things very careless for an old man,” said
the wide woman.
“I take things careless; I do—too careless to please the women! Klk!
I’ll sing the ‘Jovial Crew,’ or any other song, when a weak old man
would cry his eyes out. Jown it; I am up for anything.
“The king′ look’d o′-ver his left′ shoul-der′,
And a grim′ look look′-ed hee′,
Earl Mar′-shal, he said′, but for′ my oath′
Or hang′-ed thou′ shouldst bee′.”
“Well, that’s what we’ll do,” said Fairway. “We’ll give ’em a song, an’
it please the Lord. What’s the good of Thomasin’s cousin Clym a-coming
home after the deed’s done? He should have come afore, if so be he
wanted to stop it, and marry her himself.”
“Perhaps he’s coming to bide with his mother a little time, as she must
feel lonely now the maid’s gone.”
“Now, ’tis very odd, but I never feel lonely—no, not at all,” said
Grandfer Cantle. “I am as brave in the nighttime as a’ admiral!”
The bonfire was by this time beginning to sink low, for the fuel had
not been of that substantial sort which can support a blaze long. Most
of the other fires within the wide horizon were also dwindling weak.
Attentive observation of their brightness, colour, and length of
existence would have revealed the quality of the material burnt, and
through that, to some extent the natural produce of the district in
which each bonfire was situate. The clear, kingly effulgence that had
characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze country like
their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of
miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass
showed the lightest of fuel—straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from
arable land. The most enduring of all—steady unaltering eyes like
Planets—signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and
stout billets. Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and
though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes,
now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance. The great
ones had perished, but these remained. They occupied the remotest
visible positions—sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and
plantation districts to the north, where the soil was different, and
heath foreign and strange.
Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole
shining throng. It lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of the
little window in the vale below. Its nearness was such that,
notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended
theirs.
This quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when
their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even
of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but
no change was perceptible here.
“To be sure, how near that fire is!” said Fairway. “Seemingly. I can
see a fellow of some sort walking round it. Little and good must be
said of that fire, surely.”
“I can throw a stone there,” said the boy.
“And so can I!” said Grandfer Cantle.
“No, no, you can’t, my sonnies. That fire is not much less than a mile
off, for all that ’a seems so near.”
“’Tis in the heath, but no furze,” said the turf-cutter.
“’Tis cleft-wood, that’s what ’tis,” said Timothy Fairway. “Nothing
would burn like that except clean timber. And ’tis on the knap afore
the old captain’s house at Mistover. Such a queer mortal as that man
is! To have a little fire inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody
else may enjoy it or come anigh it! And what a zany an old chap must
be, to light a bonfire when there’s no youngsters to please.”
“Cap’n Vye has been for a long walk today, and is quite tired out,”
said Grandfer Cantle, “so ’tisn’t likely to be he.”
“And he would hardly afford good fuel like that,” said the wide woman.
“Then it must be his granddaughter,” said Fairway. “Not that a body of
her age can want a fire much.”
“She is very strange in her ways, living up there by herself, and such
things please her,” said Susan.
“She’s a well-favoured maid enough,” said Humphrey the furze-cutter,
“especially when she’s got one of her dandy gowns on.”
“That’s true,” said Fairway. “Well, let her bonfire burn an’t will.
Ours is well-nigh out by the look o’t.”
“How dark ’tis now the fire’s gone down!” said Christian Cantle,
looking behind him with his hare eyes. “Don’t ye think we’d better get
home-along, neighbours? The heth isn’t haunted, I know; but we’d better
get home.... Ah, what was that?”
“Only the wind,” said the turf-cutter.
“I don’t think Fifth-of-Novembers ought to be kept up by night except
in towns. It should be by day in outstep, ill-accounted places like
this!”
“Nonsense, Christian. Lift up your spirits like a man! Susy, dear, you
and I will have a jig—hey, my honey?—before ’tis quite too dark to see
how well-favoured you be still, though so many summers have passed
since your husband, a son of a witch, snapped you up from me.”
This was addressed to Susan Nunsuch; and the next circumstance of which
the beholders were conscious was a vision of the matron’s broad form
whisking off towards the space whereon the fire had been kindled. She
was lifted bodily by Mr. Fairway’s arm, which had been flung round her
waist before she had become aware of his intention. The site of the
fire was now merely a circle of ashes flecked with red embers and
sparks, the furze having burnt completely away. Once within the circle
he whirled her round and round in a dance. She was a woman noisily
constructed; in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and
lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather and in dry, to
preserve her boots from wear; and when Fairway began to jump about with
her, the clicking of the pattens, the creaking of the stays, and her
screams of surprise, formed a very audible concert.
“I’ll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!” said Mrs. Nunsuch,
as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like
drumsticks among the sparks. “My ankles were all in a fever before,
from walking through that prickly furze, and now you must make ’em
worse with these vlankers!”
The vagary of Timothy Fairway was infectious. The turf-cutter seized
old Olly Dowden, and, somewhat more gently, poussetted with her
likewise. The young men were not slow to imitate the example of their
elders, and seized the maids; Grandfer Cantle and his stick jigged in
the form of a three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute
all that could be seen on Rainbarrow was a whirling of dark shapes amid
a boiling confusion of sparks, which leapt around the dancers as high
as their waists. The chief noises were women’s shrill cries, men’s
laughter, Susan’s stays and pattens, Olly Dowden’s “heu-heu-heu!” and
the strumming of the wind upon the furze-bushes, which formed a kind of
tune to the demoniac measure they trod. Christian alone stood aloof,
uneasily rocking himself as he murmured, “They ought not to do it—how
the vlankers do fly! ’tis tempting the Wicked one, ’tis.”
“What was that?” said one of the lads, stopping.
“Ah—where?” said Christian, hastily closing up to the rest.
The dancers all lessened their speed.
“’Twas behind you, Christian, that I heard it—down here.”
“Yes—’tis behind me!” Christian said. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
bless the bed that I lie on; four angels guard—”
“Hold your tongue. What is it?” said Fairway.
“Hoi-i-i-i!” cried a voice from the darkness.
“Halloo-o-o-o!” said Fairway.
“Is there any cart track up across here to Mis’ess Yeobright’s, of