The Return of the Native

“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 Blooms-End?” came to them in the same voice, as a long, slim indistinct figure approached the barrow.

“Ought we not to run home as hard as we can, neighbours, as ‘tis getting late?” said Christian. “Not run away from one another, you know; run close together, I mean.”

“Scrape up a few stray locks of furze, and make a blaze, so that we can see who the man is,” said Fairway.

When the flame arose it revealed a young man in tight raiment, and red from top to toe. “Is there a track across here to Mis’ess Yeobright’s house?” he repeated.

“Ay – keep along the path down there.”

“I mean a way two horses and a van can travel over?”

“Well, yes; you can get up the vale below here with time. The track is rough, but if you’ve got a light your horses may pick along wi’ care. Have ye brought your cart far up, neighbour reddleman?”

“I’ve left it in the bottom, about half a mile back, I stepped on in front to make sure of the way, as ‘tis night-time, and I han’t been here for so long.”

“Oh, well you can get up,” said Fairway. “What a turn it did give me when I saw him!” he added to the whole group, the reddleman included. “Lord’s sake, I thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble us? No slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain’t bad-looking in the groundwork, though the finish is queer. My meaning is just to say how curious I felt. I half thought it ‘twas the devil or the red ghost the boy told of.”

“It gied me a turn likewise,” said Susan Nunsuch, “for I had a dream last night of a death’s head.”

“Don’t ye talk o’t no more,” said Christian. “If he had a handkerchief over his head he’d look for all the world like the Devil in the picture of the Temptation.”

“Well, thank you for telling me,” said the young reddleman, smiling faintly. “And good night t’ye all.”

He withdrew from their sight down the barrow.

“I fancy I’ve seen that young man’s face before,” said Humphrey. “But where, or how, or what his name is, I don’t know.”

The reddleman had not been gone more than a few minutes when another person approached the partially revived bonfire. It proved to be a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel. Her face, encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely, and with-out half-lights, like a cameo.

She was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features of the type usually found where perspicacity is the chief quality enthroned within. At moments she seemed to be regarding issues from a Nebo denied to others around. She had something of an estranged mien; the solitude exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that had risen from it. The air with which she looked at the heathmen betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what might be their opinions of her for walking in that lonely spot at such an hour, thus indirectly implying that in some respect or other they were not up to her level. The explanation lay in the fact that though her husband had been a small farmer she herself was a curate’s daughter, who had once dreamt of doing better things.

Persons with any weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits; and the matron who entered now upon the scene could, and usually did, bring her own tone into a company. Her normal manner among the heathfolk had that reticence which results from the consciousness of superior communicative power. But the effect of coming into society and light after lonely wandering in darkness is a sociability in the comer above its usual pitch, expressed in the features even more than in words.

“Why, ‘tis Mis’ess Yeobright,” said Fairway. “Mis’ess Yeobright, not ten minutes ago a man was here asking for you – a reddleman.”

“What did he want?” said she.

“He didn’t tell us.”

“Something to sell, I suppose; what it can be I am at a loss to understand.”

“I am glad to hear that your son Mr. Clym is coming home at Christmas, ma’am,” said Sam, the turf-cutter. “What a dog he used to be for bonfires!”

“Yes. I believe he is coming,” she said.