The Return of the Native Page 4

  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 aglazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttonsbearing an anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headedwalking-stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringlydotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval. Onewould have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of somesort 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 thatvast 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 tractthat he had yet to traverse. At length he discerned, a long distancein front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, andit proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself wasjourneying. It was the single atom of life that the scene contained,and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. Itsrate 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 inshape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. The driverwalked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dyeof that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, hisboots, his face, and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid withthe colour; it permeated him.

  The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cartwas a reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmerswith redding for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becomingextinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the placewhich, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world ofanimals. He is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished linkbetween obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail.

  The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside hisfellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. The reddleman turnedhis head, and replied in sad and occupied tones. He was young, andhis face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome thatnobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so inits natural colour. His eye, which glared so strangely through hisstain, was in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, andblue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, whichallowed 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 wasclothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent inquality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprivedof its original colour by his trade. It showed to advantage the goodshape of his figure. A certain well-to-do air about the man suggestedthat he was not poor for his degree. The natural query of an observerwould have been, Why should such a promising being as this have hiddenhis prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular occupation?

  After replying to the old man's greeting he showed no inclination tocontinue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for theelder traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds butthat of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage aroundthem, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footstepsof the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardyanimals, of a breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known as"heath-croppers" here.

  Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally lefthis companion's side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into itsinterior through a small window. The look was always anxious. Hewould then return to the old man, who made another remark aboutthe state of the country and so on, to which the reddleman againabstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence.The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in theselonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod onfor miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversationwhere, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an endto on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it isintercourse in itself.

  Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, hadit not been for the reddleman's visits to his van. When he returnedfrom his fifth time of looking in the old man said, "You havesomething inside there besides your load?"

  "Yes."

  "Somebody who wants looking after?"

  "Yes."

  Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. Thereddleman 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'suneasy, and keeps dreaming."

  "A young woman?"

  "Yes, a young woman."

  "That would have interested me forty years ago. Perhaps she's yourwife?"

  "My wife!" said the other bitterly. "She's above mating with such asI. 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 harmcan I do to you or to her?"

  The reddleman looked in the old man's face. "Well, sir," he said atlast, "I knew her before today, though perhaps it would have beenbetter if I had not. But she's nothing to me, and I am nothing toher; and she wouldn't have been in my van if any better carriage hadbeen 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. Shedropped 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 vanwindow, and, without withdrawing them, said, "I presume I might lookin upon her?"

  "No," said the reddleman abruptly. "It is getting too dark for you tosee 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 orless 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 haveto part company. My ponies are tired, and I have further to go, and Iam going to rest them under this bank for an hour."

  The elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddlemanturned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, "Good night." Theold man replied, and proceeded on his way as before.

  The reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the roadand became absorbed in the thickening films of night. He then tooksome hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwinga 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 satdown, leaning his back against the wheel. From the interior a lowsoft breathing came to his ear. It appeared to satisfy him, and hemusingly surveyed the scene, as if considering the next step that heshould take.

  To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to bea duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for therewas that in the condition of the heath itself which resembledprotracted and halting dubiousness. It was the quality of the reposeappertaining to the scene. This was not the repose of actualstagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. Acondition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of deathis a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of thedesert, and at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those ofthe meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who thought ofit th
e attentiveness usually engendered by understatement and reserve.

  The scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascentsfrom the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. Itembraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other,till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still lightsky. The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, andfinally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow.This bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied theloftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained.Although from the vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlanteanbrow, its actual bulk was great. It formed the pole and axis of thisheathery world.

  As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that itssummit, hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, wassurmounted by something higher. It rose from the semi-globular moundlike a spike from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginativestranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the Celtswho built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from thescene. It seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a momentbefore dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race.

  There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plainrose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrowrose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mappedelsewhere than on a celestial globe.

  Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure giveto the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obviousjustification of their outline. Without it, there was the domewithout the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the masswere satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that thevale, the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only tounity. Looking at this or that member of the group was not observinga complete thing, but a fraction of a thing.

  The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionlessstructure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as astrange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic ofthat whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance ofimmobility 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 descendedon the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down abud, and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show moreclearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.

  The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her droppingout of sight on the right side, a new-comer, bearing a burden,protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, anddeposited the burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, afourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled withburdened figures.

  The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime ofsilhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who hadtaken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thitherfor another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clungby preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something moreinteresting, more important, more likely to have a history worthknowing than these new-comers, and unconsciously regarded them asintruders. But they remained, and established themselves; and thelonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not atpresent seem likely to return.