BOOK FIRSTTHE 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 embrowneditself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloudshutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for itsfloor.
The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth withthe darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon wasclearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance ofan instalment of night which had taken up its place before itsastronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrivedhereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, afurze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down,he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distantrims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in timeno less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its merecomplexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like mannerretard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of stormsscarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnightto a cause of shaking and dread.
In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll intodarkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, andnobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there atsuch a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen,its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeedinghours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its truetale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when nightshowed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could beperceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of roundsand hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in puresympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavensprecipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity inthe land closed together in a black fraternization towards which eachadvanced half-way.
The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when otherthings sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake andlisten. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; butit had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through thecrises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await onelast crisis--the final overthrow.
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved itwith an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns offlowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmoniousonly with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than thepresent. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolvea thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness,emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. Thequalifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with farmore dignity than is found in the facade of a palace double its sizelent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty ofthe accepted kind are utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happilywith fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftenersuffered from the mockery of a place too smiling for their reasonthan from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. HaggardEgdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recentlylearnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty calledcharming and fair.
Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodoxbeauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempemay be a gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves incloser and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombrenessdistasteful to our race when it was young. The time seems near, if ithas not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, asea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keepingwith the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately,to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what thevineyards and myrtle-gardens of South Europe are to him now; andHeidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps tothe sand-dunes of Scheveningen.
The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural rightto wander on Egdon: he was keeping within the line of legitimateindulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these.Colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright ofall. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch thelevel of gaiety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of thesolemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity wasoften arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. ThenEgdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, andthe wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; andit was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wildregions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us aboutin midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought ofafter the dream till revived by scenes like this.
It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man'snature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace,unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withalsingularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As withsome persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to lookout of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragicalpossibilities.
This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday.Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briarywilderness--"Bruaria." Then follows the length and breadth inleagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent ofthis ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the areaof Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "TurbariaBruaria"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relatingto the district. "Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of thesame dark sweep of country.
Here at least were intelligible facts regardinglandscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction.The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always hadbeen. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning ofvegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the naturaland invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerableone coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. Aperson on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more orless an anomalous look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest humanclothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive.
To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, betweenafternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of theworld outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled thewhole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything aroundand underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as thestars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, andharassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place hadan ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of aparticular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by themoon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The seachanged, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the peoplechanged, yet Egdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep asto be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims offloods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and astill more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almostcrystallized to natural products by long continuance--even thetrifling 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 itoverlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Westernroad 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 minorfeatures of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almostas clear as ever.