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.
Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole shining throng. It lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of the little window in the vale below. Its nearness was such that, notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended theirs.
This quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but no change was perceptible here.
“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
