VI
The Figure against the Sky
When the whole Egdon concourse had left the site of the bonfire to itsaccustomed loneliness, a closely wrapped female figure approached thebarrow from that quarter of the heath in which the little fire lay.Had the reddleman been watching he might have recognized her as thewoman who had first stood there so singularly, and vanished at theapproach of strangers. She ascended to her old position at the top,where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living eyesin the corpse of day. There she stood still, around her stretching thevast night atmosphere, whose incomplete darkness in comparison withthe total darkness of the heath below it might have represented avenial beside a mortal sin.
That she was tall and straight in build, that she was lady-like inher movements, was all that could be learnt of her just now, her formbeing wrapped in a shawl folded in the old cornerwise fashion, andher head in a large kerchief, a protection not superfluous at thishour and place. Her back was towards the wind, which blew from thenorth-west; but whether she had avoided that aspect because of thechilly gusts which played about her exceptional position, or becauseher interest lay in the south-east, did not at first appear.
Her reason for standing so dead still as the pivot of this circleof heath-country was just as obscure. Her extraordinary fixity, herconspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of night, betokened amongother things an utter absence of fear. A tract of country unalteredfrom that sinister condition which made Caesar anxious every yearto get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind oflandscape and weather which leads travellers from the South todescribe our island as Homer's Cimmerian land, was not, on the faceof it, friendly to women.
It might reasonably have been supposed that she was listening to thewind, which rose somewhat as the night advanced, and laid hold of theattention. The wind, indeed, seemed made for the scene, as the sceneseemed made for the hour. Part of its tone was quite special; whatwas heard there could be heard nowhere else. Gusts in innumerableseries followed each other from the north-west, and when each oneof them raced past the sound of its progress resolved into three.Treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be found therein. The generalricochet of the whole over pits and prominences had the gravest pitchof the chime. Next there could be heard the baritone buzz of a hollytree. Below these in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voicestrove hard at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local soundalluded to. Thinner and less immediately traceable than the othertwo, it was far more impressive than either. In it lay what may becalled the linguistic peculiarity of the heath; and being audiblenowhere on earth off a heath, it afforded a shadow of reason for thewoman's tenseness, which continued as unbroken as ever.
Throughout the blowing of these plaintive November winds that notebore a great resemblance to the ruins of human song which remainto the throat of fourscore and ten. It was a worn whisper, dry andpapery, and it brushed so distinctly across the ear that, by theaccustomed, the material minutiae in which it originated could berealized as by touch. It was the united products of infinitesimalvegetable causes, and these were neither stems, leaves, fruit, blades,prickles, lichen, nor moss.
They were the mummied heath-bells of the past summer, originallytender and purple, now washed colourless by Michaelmas rains, anddried to dead skins by October suns. So low was an individual soundfrom these that a combination of hundreds only just emerged fromsilence, and the myriads of the whole declivity reached the woman'sear but as a shrivelled and intermittent recitative. Yet scarcely asingle accent among the many afloat to-night could have such power toimpress a listener with thoughts of its origin. One inwardly saw theinfinity of those combined multitudes; and perceived that each of thetiny trumpets was seized on, entered, scoured and emerged from by thewind as thoroughly as if it were as vast as a crater.
"The spirit moved them." A meaning of the phrase forced itself uponthe attention; and an emotional listener's fetichistic mood might haveended in one of more advanced quality. It was not, after all, thatthe left-hand expanse of old blooms spoke, or the right-hand, or thoseof the slope in front; but it was the single person of something elsespeaking through each at once.
Suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild rhetoricof night a sound which modulated so naturally into the rest that itsbeginning and ending were hardly to be distinguished. The bluffs, andthe bushes, and the heather-bells had broken silence; at last, so didthe woman; and her articulation was but as another phrase of the samediscourse as theirs. Thrown out on the winds it became twined in withthem, and with them it flew away.
What she uttered was a lengthened sighing, apparently at something inher mind which had led to her presence here. There was a spasmodicabandonment about it as if, in allowing herself to utter the sound.the woman's brain had authorized what it could not regulate. Onepoint was evident in this; that she had been existing in a suppressedstate, and not in one of languor, or stagnation.
Far away down the valley the faint shine from the window of the innstill lasted on; and a few additional moments proved that the window,or what was within it, had more to do with the woman's sigh than hadeither her own actions or the scene immediately around. She liftedher left hand, which held a closed telescope. This she rapidlyextended, as if she were well accustomed to the operation, and raisingit to her eye directed it towards the light beaming from the inn.
The handkerchief which had hooded her head was now a little thrownback, her face being somewhat elevated. A profile was visible againstthe dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though sideshadows from the features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had convergedupwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggestingboth. This, however, was mere superficiality. In respect ofcharacter a face may make certain admissions by its outline; butit fully confesses only in its changes. So much is this the casethat what is called the play of the features often helps more inunderstanding a man or woman than the earnest labours of all the othermembers together. Thus the night revealed little of her whose form itwas embracing, for the mobile parts of her countenance could not beseen.
At last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the telescope, andturned to the decaying embers. From these no appreciable beams nowradiated, except when a more than usually smart gust brushed overtheir faces and raised a fitful glow which came and went like theblush of a girl. She stooped over the silent circle, and selectingfrom the brands a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal atits end, brought it to where she had been standing before.
She held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal with her mouthat the same time; till it faintly illuminated the sod, and revealeda small object, which turned out to be an hourglass, though she worea watch. She blew long enough to show that the sand had all slippedthrough.
"Ah!" she said, as if surprised.
The light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentaryirradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. Thatconsisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being stillenveloped. She threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, thetelescope under her arm, and moved on.
Along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed.Those who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitorwould have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters ofthe heath were at no loss for it at midnight. The whole secret offollowing these incipient paths, when there was not light enough inthe atmosphere to show a turnpike-road, lay in the development of thesense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-ramblingin little-trodden spots. To a walker practised in such places adifference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the crippledstalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the thickest bootor shoe.
The solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of the windytune still played on the dead heath-bells. She did not turn her headto look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from herpresence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about ascore of th
e small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. They roamed atlarge on the undulations of Egdon, but in numbers too few to detractmuch from the solitude.
The pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her abstractionwas afforded by a trivial incident. A bramble caught hold of herskirt, and checked her progress. Instead of putting it off andhastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stoodpassively still. When she began to extricate herself it was byturning round and round, and so unwinding the prickly switch. She wasin a desponding reverie.
Her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which haddrawn the attention of the men on Rainbarrow and of Wildeve in thevalley below. A faint illumination from its rays began to glow uponher face, and the fire soon revealed itself to be lit, not on thelevel ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, at thejunction of two converging bank fences. Outside was a ditch, dryexcept immediately under the fire, where there was a large pool,bearded all round by heather and rushes. In the smooth water of thepool the fire appeared upside down.
The banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formedby disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top,like impaled heads above a city wall. A white mast, fitted up withspars and other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against thedark clouds whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it.Altogether the scene had much the appearance of a fortification uponwhich had been kindled a beacon fire.
Nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved abovethe bank from behind, and vanished again. This was a small humanhand, in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire; but for allthat could be seen the hand, like that which troubled Belshazzar, wasthere alone. Occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and droppedwith a hiss into the pool.
At one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled any onewho wished to do so to mount the bank; which the woman did. Withinwas a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence ofhaving once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously creptin, and were reasserting their old supremacy. Further ahead weredimly visible an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings,backed by a clump of firs.
The young lady--for youth had revealed its presence in her buoyantbound up the bank--walked along the top instead of descending inside,and came to the corner where the fire was burning. One reason for thepermanence of the blaze was now manifest: the fuel consisted of hardpieces of wood, cleft and sawn--the knotty boles of old thorn treeswhich grew in twos and threes about the hillsides. A yet unconsumedpile of these lay in the inner angle of the bank; and from this cornerthe upturned face of a little boy greeted her eves. He was dilatorilythrowing up a piece of wood into the fire every now and then, abusiness which seemed to have engaged him a considerable part of theevening, for his face was somewhat weary.
"I am glad you have come, Miss Eustacia," he said, with a sigh ofrelief. "I don't like biding by myself."
"Nonsense. I have only been a little way for a walk. I have been goneonly twenty minutes."
"It seemed long," murmured the sad boy. "And you have been so manytimes."
"Why, I thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. Are you notmuch obliged to me for making you one?"
"Yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me."
"I suppose nobody has come while I've been away?"
"Nobody except your grandfather: he looked out of doors once for 'ee.I told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the otherbonfires."
"A good boy."
"I think I hear him coming again, miss."
An old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the directionof the homestead. He was the same who had overtaken the reddleman onthe road that afternoon. He looked wistfully to the top of the bank atthe woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired,showed like parian from his parted lips.
"When are you coming indoors, Eustacia?" he asked. "'Tis almostbedtime. I've been home these two hours, and am tired out. Surely'tis somewhat childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long,and wasting such fuel. My precious thorn roots, the rarest of allfiring, that I laid by on purpose for Christmas--you have burnt 'emnearly all!"
"I promised Johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go outjust yet," said Eustacia, in a way which told at once that she wasabsolute queen here. "Grandfather, you go in to bed. I shall followyou soon. You like the fire, don't you, Johnny?"
The boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, "I don't think Iwant it any longer."
Her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear the boy'sreply. As soon as the white-haired man had vanished she said in atone of pique to the child, "Ungrateful little boy, how can youcontradict me? Never shall you have a bonfire again unless you keepit up now. Come, tell me you like to do things for me, and don't denyit."
The repressed child said, "Yes, I do, miss," and continued to stir thefire perfunctorily.
"Stay a little longer and I will give you a crooked six-pence," saidEustacia, more gently. "Put in one piece of wood every two or threeminutes, but not too much at once. I am going to walk along the ridgea little longer, but I shall keep on coming to you. And if you hear afrog jump into the pond with a flounce like a stone thrown in, be sureyou run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain."
"Yes, Eustacia."
"Miss Vye, sir."
"Miss Vy--stacia."
"That will do. Now put in one stick more."
The little slave went on feeding the fire as before. He seemed amere automaton, galvanized into moving and speaking by the waywardEustacia's will. He might have been the brass statue which AlbertusMagnus is said to have animated just so far as to make it chatter,and move, and be his servant.
Before going on her walk again the young girl stood still on thebank for a few instants and listened. It was to the full as lonely aplace as Rainbarrow, though at rather a lower level; and it was moresheltered from wind and weather on account of the few firs to thenorth. The bank which enclosed the homestead, and protected it fromthe lawless state of the world without, was formed of thick squareclods, dug from the ditch on the outside, and built up with a slightbatter or incline, which forms no slight defense where hedges will notgrow because of the wind and the wilderness, and where wall materialsare unattainable. Otherwise the situation was quite open, commandingthe whole length of the valley which reached to the river behindWildeve's house. High above this to the right, and much nearerthitherward than the Quiet Woman Inn, the blurred contour ofRainbarrow obstructed the sky.
After her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines agesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She vented petulant wordsevery now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and suddenlistenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch she againsauntered off towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did not go thewhole way.
Twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes and each time shesaid--
"Not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?"
"No, Miss Eustacia," the child replied.
"Well," she said at last, "I shall soon be going in, and then I willgive you the crooked sixpence, and let you go home."
"Thank'ee, Miss Eustacia," said the tired stoker, breathing moreeasily. And Eustacia again strolled away from the fire, but this timenot towards Rainbarrow. She skirted the bank and went round to thewicket before the house, where she stood motionless, looking at thescene.
Fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks, with thefire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the fire one stick ata time, just as before, the figure of the little child. She idlywatched him as he occasionally climbed up in the nook of the bank andstood beside the brands. The wind blew the smoke, and the child'shair, and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; thebreeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke wentup straight.
While Eustacia looked on from this distance the boy's form visiblystarted: he slid
down the bank and ran across towards the white gate.
"Well?" said Eustacia.
"A hop-frog have jumped into the pond. Yes, I heard 'en!"
"Then it is going to rain, and you had better go home. You will notbe afraid?" She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into herthroat at the boy's words.
"No, because I shall hae the crooked sixpence."
"Yes, here it is. Now run as fast as you can--not that way--throughthe garden here. No other boy in the heath has had such a bonfire asyours."
The boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing, marched awayinto the shadows with alacrity. When he was gone Eustacia, leavingher telescope and hour-glass by the gate, brushed forward from thewicket towards the angle of the bank, under the fire.
Here, screened by the outwork, she waited. In a few moments a splashwas audible from the pond outside. Had the child been there he wouldhave said that a second frog had jumped in; but by most people thesound would have been likened to the fall of a stone into the water.Eustacia stepped upon the bank.
"Yes?" she said, and held her breath.
Thereupon the contour of a man became dimly visible against thelow-reaching sky over the valley, beyond the outer margin of the pool.He came round it and leapt upon the bank beside her. A low laughescaped her--the third utterance which the girl had indulged intonight. The first, when she stood upon Rainbarrow, had expressedanxiety; the second, on the ridge, had expressed impatience; thepresent was one of triumphant pleasure. She let her joyous eyes restupon him without speaking, as upon some wondrous thing she had createdout of chaos.
"I have come," said the man, who was Wildeve. "You give me no peace.Why do you not leave me alone? I have seen your bonfire all theevening." The words were not without emotion, and retained theirlevel tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes.
At this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl seemed torepress herself also. "Of course you have seen my fire," she answeredwith languid calmness, artificially maintained. "Why shouldn't I havea bonfire on the Fifth of November, like other denizens of the heath?"
"I knew it was meant for me."
"How did you know it? I have had no word with you since you--youchose her, and walked about with her, and deserted me entirely, as ifI had never been yours life and soul so irretrievably!"
"Eustacia! could I forget that last autumn at this same day of themonth and at this same place you lighted exactly such a fire as asignal for me to come and see you? Why should there have been abonfire again by Captain Vye's house if not for the same purpose?"
"Yes, yes--I own it," she cried under her breath, with a drowsyfervour of manner and tone which was quite peculiar to her. "Don'tbegin speaking to me as you did, Damon; you will drive me to say wordsI would not wish to say to you. I had given you up, and resolved notto think of you any more; and then I heard the news, and I came outand got the fire ready because I thought that you had been faithful tome."
"What have you heard to make you think that?" said Wildeve,astonished.
"That you did not marry her!" she murmured exultingly. "And I knew itwas because you loved me best, and couldn't do it... Damon, you havebeen cruel to me to go away, and I have said I would never forgiveyou. I do not think I can forgive you entirely, even now--it is toomuch for a woman of any spirit to quite overlook."
"If I had known you wished to call me up here only to reproach me, Iwouldn't have come."
"But I don't mind it, and I do forgive you now that you have notmarried her, and have come back to me!"
"Who told you that I had not married her?"
"My grandfather. He took a long walk today, and as he was coming homehe overtook some person who told him of a broken-off wedding: hethought it might be yours, and I knew it was."
"Does anybody else know?"
"I suppose not. Now Damon, do you see why I lit my signal fire? Youdid not think I would have lit it if I had imagined you to have becomethe husband of this woman. It is insulting my pride to suppose that."
Wildeve was silent; it was evident that he had supposed as much.
"Did you indeed think I believed you were married?" she again demandedearnestly. "Then you wronged me; and upon my life and heart I canhardly bear to recognize that you have such ill thoughts of me! Damon,you are not worthy of me: I see it, and yet I love you. Never mind,let it go--I must bear your mean opinion as best I may... It is true,is it not," she added with ill-concealed anxiety, on his making nodemonstration, "that you could not bring yourself to give me up, andare still going to love me best of all?"
"Yes; or why should I have come?" he said touchily. "Not thatfidelity will be any great merit in me after your kind speechabout my unworthiness, which should have been said by myself if byanybody, and comes with an ill grace from you. However, the curseof inflammability is upon me, and I must live under it, and takeany snub from a woman. It has brought me down from engineering toinnkeeping: what lower stage it has in store for me I have yet tolearn." He continued to look upon her gloomily.
She seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so that thefirelight shone full upon her face and throat, said with a smile,"Have you seen anything better than that in your travels?"
Eustacia was not one to commit herself to such a position without goodground. He said quietly, "No."
"Not even on the shoulders of Thomasin?"
"Thomasin is a pleasing and innocent woman."
"That's nothing to do with it," she cried with quick passionateness."We will leave her out; there are only you and me now to think of."After a long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth:"Must I go on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought toconceal; and own that no words can express how gloomy I have beenbecause of that dreadful belief I held till two hours ago--that youhad quite deserted me?"
"I am sorry I caused you that pain."
"But perhaps it is not wholly because of you that I get gloomy," shearchly added. "It is in my nature to feel like that. It was born inmy blood, I suppose."
"Hypochondriasis."
"Or else it was coming into this wild heath. I was happy enough atBudmouth. O the times, O the days at Budmouth! But Egdon will bebrighter again now."
"I hope it will," said Wildeve moodily. "Do you know the consequenceof this recall to me, my old darling? I shall come to see you againas before, at Rainbarrow."
"Of course you will."
"And yet I declare that until I got here tonight I intended, afterthis one good-bye, never to meet you again."
"I don't thank you for that," she said, turning away, whileindignation spread through her like subterranean heat. "You may comeagain to Rainbarrow if you like, but you won't see me; and you maycall, but I shall not listen; and you may tempt me, but I won't givemyself to you any more."
"You have said as much before, sweet; but such natures as yours don'tso easily adhere to their words. Neither, for the matter of that, dosuch natures as mine."
"This is the pleasure I have won by my trouble," she whisperedbitterly. "Why did I try to recall you? Damon, a strange warringtakes place in my mind occasionally. I think when I become calm afteryour woundings, 'Do I embrace a cloud of common fog after all?' Youare a chameleon, and now you are at your worst colour. Go home, or Ishall hate you!"
He looked absently towards Rainbarrow while one might have countedtwenty, and said, as if he did not much mind all this, "Yes, I will gohome. Do you mean to see me again?"
"If you own to me that the wedding is broken off because you love mebest."
"I don't think it would be good policy," said Wildeve, smiling. "Youwould get to know the extent of your power too clearly."
"But tell me!"
"You know."
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know. I prefer not to speak of her to you. I have not yetmarried her; I have come in obedience to your call. That is enough."
"I merely lit that fire because I was dull, and thought I would geta little excitement by calling you
up and triumphing over you as theWitch of Endor called up Samuel. I determined you should come; and youhave come! I have shown my power. A mile and half hither, and a mileand half back again to your home--three miles in the dark for me.Have I not shown my power?"
He shook his head at her. "I know you too well, my Eustacia; I knowyou too well. There isn't a note in you which I don't know; and thathot little bosom couldn't play such a coldblooded trick to save itslife. I saw a woman on Rainbarrow at dusk looking down towards myhouse. I think I drew out you before you drew out me."
The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in Wildeve now;and he leant forward as if about to put his face towards her cheek.
"O no," she said, intractably moving to the other side of the decayedfire. "What did you mean by that?"
"Perhaps I may kiss your hand?"
"No, you may not."
"Then I may shake your hand?"
"No."
"Then I wish you good night without caring for either. Good-bye,good-bye."
She returned no answer, and with the bow of a dancing-master hevanished on the other side of the pool as he had come.
Eustacia sighed: it was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh whichshook her like a shiver. Whenever a flash of reason darted like anelectric light upon her lover--as it sometimes would--and showed hisimperfections, she shivered thus. But it was over in a second, andshe loved on. She knew that he trifled with her; but she loved on.She scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and upto her bedroom without a light. Amid the rustles which denoted her tobe undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths frequently came; andthe same kind of shudder occasionally moved through her when, tenminutes later, she lay on her bed asleep.