Return of the Native

T >> Thomas Hardy >> Return of the Native


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, neigbbour 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
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
in 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 passionless
severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not
gusto had to do with the iteration. "And the next thing I heard was, 'I
forbid the banns,' from her. 'I'll speak to you after the service,'
said the parson, in quite a homely way--yes, turning all at once into a
common man no holier than you or I. Ah, her face was pale! Maybe you
can call to mind that monument in Weatherbury church--the cross-legged
soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the schoolchildren? Well,
he would about have matched that woman's face, when she said, 'I forbid
the banns.'"

The audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks into the
fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to give themselves time
to weigh the moral of the story.

"I'm sure when I heard they'd been forbid I felt as glad as if anybody
had gied me sixpence," said an earnest voice--that of Olly Dowden, a
woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. Her nature was to be
civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world
for letting her remain alive.

"And now the maid have married him just the same," said Humphrey.

"After that Mis'ess Yeobright came round and was quite agreeable,"
Fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show that his words were no
appendage to Humphrey's, but the result of independent reflection.

"Supposing they were ashamed, I don't see why they shouldn't have done
it here-right," said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like
shoes whenever she stooped or turned. "'Tis well to call the neighbours
together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as
well be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. I don't care for close
ways."

"Ah, now, you'd hardly believe it, but I don't care for gay weddings,"
said Timothy Fairway, his eyes again travelling round. "I hardly blame
Thomasin Yeobright and neighbour Wildeve for doing it quiet, if I must
own it. A wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour;
and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty."

"True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in
a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth
your victuals."

"You be bound to dance at Christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you
must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. At christenings
folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the
first or second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've got to
sing....For my part I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything.
You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even
better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over a poor
fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes."

"Nine folks out of ten would own 'twas going too far to dance then, I
suppose?" suggested Grandfer Cantle.

"'Tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at after the mug
have been round a few times."

"Well, I can't understand a quiet ladylike little body like Tamsin
Yeobright caring to be married in such a mean way," said Susan Nunsuch,
the wide woman, who preferred the original subject. "'Tis worse than the
poorest do. And I shouldn't have cared about the man, though some may
say he's good-looking."

"To give him his due he's a clever, learned fellow in his way--a'most as
clever as Clym Yeobright used to be. He was brought up to better things
than keeping the Quiet Woman. An engineer--that's what the man was, as
we know; but he threw away his chance, and so 'a took a public house to
live. His learning was no use to him at all."

"Very often the case," said Olly, the besom-maker. "And yet how people
do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use to
make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names
now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot--what
do I say?--why, almost without a desk to lean their stomachs and elbows
upon."

"True--'tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to," said
Humphrey.

"Why, afore I went a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called),
in the year four," chimed in Grandfer Cantle brightly, "I didn't know no
more what the world was like than the commonest man among ye. And now,
jown it all, I won't say what I bain't fit for, hey?"

"Couldst sign the book, no doubt," said Fairway, "if wast young enough
to join hands with a woman again, like Wildeve and Mis'ess Tamsin,
which is more than Humph there could do, for he follows his father in
learning. Ah, Humph, well I can mind when I was married how I zid thy
father's mark staring me in the face as I went to put down my name. He
and your mother were the couple married just afore we were and there
stood they father's cross with arms stretched out like a great banging
scarecrow. What a terrible black cross that was--thy father's very
likeness in en! To save my soul I couldn't help laughing when I zid en,
though all the time I was as hot as dog-days, what with the marrying,
and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with Jack Changley
and a lot more chaps grinning at me through church window. But the next
moment a strawmote would have knocked me down, for I called to mind
that if thy father and mother had had high words once, they'd been at
it twenty times since they'd been man and wife, and I zid myself as the
next poor stunpoll to get into the same mess....Ah--well, what a day
'twas!"

"Wildeve is older than Tamsin Yeobright by a good-few summers. A pretty
maid too she is. A young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her
smock for a man like that."

The speaker, a peat- or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group,
carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large
dimensions used in that species of labour, and its well-whetted edge
gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire.

"A hundred maidens would have had him if he'd asked 'em," said the wide
woman.

"Didst ever know a man, neighbour, that no woman at all would marry?"
inquired Humphrey.

"I never did," said the turf-cutter.

"Nor I," said another.

"Nor I," said Grandfer Cantle.

"Well, now, I did once," said Timothy Fairway, adding more firmness to
one of his legs. "I did know of such a man. But only once, mind." He
gave his throat a thorough rake round, as if it were the duty of every
person not to be mistaken through thickness of voice. "Yes, I knew of
such a man," he said.

"And what ghastly gallicrow might the poor fellow have been like, Master
Fairway?" asked the turf-cutter.

"Well, 'a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor a blind man. What
'a was I don't say."

"Is he known in these parts?" said Olly Dowden.

"Hardly," said Timothy; "but I name no name....Come, keep the fire up
there, youngsters."

"Whatever is Christian Cantle's teeth a-chattering for?" said a boy from
amid the smoke and shades on the other side of the blaze. "Be ye a-cold,
Christian?"

A thin jibbering voice was heard to reply, "No, not at all."

"Come forward, Christian, and show yourself. I didn't know you were
here," said Fairway, with a humane look across towards that quarter.

Thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no shoulders, and a
great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond his clothes, advanced a step or
two by his own will, and was pushed by the will of others half a dozen
steps more. He was Grandfer Cantle's youngest son.

"What be ye quaking for, Christian?" said the turf-cutter kindly.

"I'm the man."

"What man?"

"The man no woman will marry."

"The deuce you be!" said Timothy Fairway, enlarging his gaze to cover
Christian's whole surface and a great deal more, Grandfer Cantle
meanwhile staring as a hen stares at the duck she has hatched.

"Yes, I be he; and it makes me afeard," said Christian. "D'ye think
'twill hurt me? I shall always say I don't care, and swear to it, though
I do care all the while."

"Well, be damned if this isn't the queerest start ever I know'd," said
Mr. Fairway. "I didn't mean you at all. There's another in the country,
then! Why did ye reveal yer misfortune, Christian?"

"'Twas to be if 'twas, I suppose. I can't help it, can I?" He turned
upon them his painfully circular eyes, surrounded by concentric lines
like targets.

"No, that's true. But 'tis a melancholy thing, and my blood ran cold
when you spoke, for I felt there were two poor fellows where I had
thought only one. 'Tis a sad thing for ye, Christian. How'st know the
women won't hae thee?"

"I've asked 'em."

"Sure I should never have thought you had the face. Well, and what did
the last one say to ye? Nothing that can't be got over, perhaps, after
all?"

"'Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight
fool,' was the woman's words to me."

"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.