THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
by
THOMAS HARDY
1912
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
BOOK FIRST: THE THREE WOMEN
I. A Face on Which Time Makes But Little Impression
II. Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble
III. The Custom of the Country
IV. The Halt on the Turnpike Road
V. Perplexity among Honest People
VI. The Figure against the Sky
VII. Queen of Night
VIII. Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody
IX. Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy
X. A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion
XI. The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman
BOOK SECOND: THE ARRIVAL
I. Tidings of the Comer
II. The People at Blooms-End Make Ready
III. How a Little Sound Produced a Great Dream
IV. Eustacia Is Led On to an Adventure
V. Through the Moonlight
VI. The Two Stand Face to Face
VII. A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness
VIII. Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart
BOOK THIRD: THE FASCINATION
I. "My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"
II. The New Course Causes Disappointment
III. The First Act in a Timeworn Drama
IV. An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness
V. Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues
VI. Yeobright Goes, and the Breach Is Complete
VII. The Morning and the Evening of a Day
VIII. A New Force Disturbs the Current
BOOK FOURTH: THE CLOSED DOOR
I. The Rencounter by the Pool
II. He Is Set Upon by Adversities; but He Sings a Song
III. She Goes Out to Battle against Depression
IV. Rough Coercion Is Employed
V. The Journey across the Heath
VI. A Conjuncture, and Its Result upon the Pedestrian
VII. The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends
VIII. Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil
BOOK FIFTH: THE DISCOVERY
I. "Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery"
II. A Lurid Light Breaks In upon a Darkened Understanding
III. Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning
IV. The Ministrations of a Half-Forgotten One
V. An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated
VI. Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter
VII. The Night of the Sixth of November
VIII. Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers
IX. Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together
BOOK SIXTH: AFTERCOURSES
I. The Inevitable Movement Onward
II. Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road
III. The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin
IV. Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End,
and Clym Finds His Vocation
"To sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.
I would deceive her,
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind."
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred
may be set down as between 1840 and 1850, when the old watering-place
herein called "Budmouth" still retained sufficient afterglow from its
Georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing attractiveness to
the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland.
Under the general name of "Egdon Heath," which has been given to the
sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various
real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually
one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial
unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices
brought under the plough with varying degrees of success, or planted
to woodland.
It is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose
south-western quarter is here described, may be the heath of that
traditionary King of Wessex - Lear.
July 1895
POSTSCRIPT
To prevent disappointment to searchers for scenery it should be added
that though the action of the narrative is supposed to proceed in the
central and most secluded part of the heaths united into one whole,
as above described, certain topographical features resembling those
delineated really lie on the margin of the waste, several miles to the
westward of the centre. In some other respects also there has been a
bringing together of scattered characteristics.
The first edition of this novel was published in three volumes in
1878.
April 1912 T. H.
BOOK FIRST
THE THREE WOMEN
I
A Face on Which Time Makes But Little Impression
A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight,
and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned
itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud
shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its
floor.
The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with
the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was
clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of
an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its
astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived
hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a
furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down,
he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant
rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time
no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere
complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner
retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms
scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight
to a cause of shaking and dread.
In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into
darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and
nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at
such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen,
its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding
hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true
tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night
showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be
perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds
and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure
sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens
precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in
the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each
advanced half-way.
The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other
things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and
listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but
it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the
crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one
last crisis - the final overthrow.
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it
with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of
flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious
only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the
present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve
a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness,
emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The
qualifications which frequently invest the façade of a prison with far
more dignity than is found in the façade of a palace double its size
lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of
the accepted kind are utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily
with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftener
suffered from the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason
than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard
Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently
learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called
charming and fair.
Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox
beauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe
may be a gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in
closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness
distasteful to our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it
has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a
sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping
with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately,
to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the
vineyards and myrtle-gardens of South Europe are to him now; and
Heidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to
the sand-dunes of Scheveningen.
The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right
to wander on Egdon: he was keeping within the line of legitimate
indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these.
Colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of
all. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the
level of gaiety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of the
solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was
often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then
Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and
the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and
it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild
regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about
in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of
after the dream till revived by scenes like this.
It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's
nature - neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace,
unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal
singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with
some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look
out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical
possibilities.
This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday.
Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary
wilderness - "Bruaria." Then follows the length and breadth in
leagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of
this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area
of Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "Turbaria
Bruaria" - the right of cutting heath-turf - occurs in charters relating
to the district. "Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of the
same dark sweep of country.
Here at least were intelligible facts regarding
landscape - far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction.
The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always had
been. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of
vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural
and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerable
one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A
person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or
less an anomalous look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest human
clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive.
To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between
afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the
world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the
whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around
and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the
stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and
harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had
an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a
particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the
moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea
changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people
changed, yet Egdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep as
to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of
floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a
still more aged barrow presently to be referred to - themselves almost
crystallized to natural products by long continuance - even the
trifling irregularities were not 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 semi-globular 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.
The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping
out of sight on the right side, a new-comer, 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 new-comers, 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 strawlike 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 Maenades, 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 to-night. 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 man and woman - wife, that is. Isn't it spoke like a man,
Timothy, and wasn't Mis'ess Yeobright wrong about me?"
"Yes, it will do. I didn't know the two had walked together since
last fall, when her aunt forbad the banns. How long has this new
set-to been mangling then? Do you know, Humphrey?"
"Yes, how long?" said Grandfer Cantle smartly, likewise turning to
Humphrey. "I ask that question."
"Ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might have the
man after all," replied Humphrey, without removing his eyes from the
fire. He was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook
and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that
occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the
Philistine's greaves of brass. "That's why they went away to be
married, I count. You see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch
and forbidding the banns 'twould have made Mis'ess Yeobright seem
foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if
she'd never gainsaid it."
"Exactly - seem foolish-like; and that's very bad for the poor things
that be so, though I only guess as much, to be sure," said Grandfer
Cantle, still strenuously preserving a sensible bearing and mien.
"Ah, well, I was at church that day," said Fairway, "which was a very
curious thing to happen."
"If 'twasn't my name's Simple," said the Grandfer emphatically. "I
ha'n't been there to-year; and now the winter is a-coming on I won't
say I shall."
"I ha'n't been these three years," said Humphrey; "for I'm so dead
sleepy of a Sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get there; and when
you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor chance that you'll be chose
for up above, when so many bain't, that I bide at home and don't go at
all."
"I not only happened to be there," said Fairway, with a fresh
collection of emphasis, "but I was sitting in the same pew as Mis'ess
Yeobright. And though you may not see it as such, it fairly made my
blood run cold to hear her. Yes, it is a curious thing; but it made
my blood run cold, for I was close at her elbow." The speaker looked
round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his
lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive
moderation.
"'Tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there," said a woman
behind.
"'Ye are to declare it,' was the parson's words," Fairway continued.
"And then up stood a woman at my side - a-touching of me. 'Well, be
damned if there isn't Mis'ess Yeobright a-standing up,' I said to
myself. Yes, neighbours, though I was in the temple of prayer that's
what I said. 'Tis against my conscience to curse and swear in
company, and I hope any woman here will overlook it. Still what I did
say I did say, and 'twould be a lie if I didn't own it."
"So 'twould, neighbour Fairway."
"'Be damned if there isn't Mis'ess Yeobright a-standing up,' I
said," the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word with the same