The Return of the Native | Page 5

the mind adrift on change, and harassed by
the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had an ancient
permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular
sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is
renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields
changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon
remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by
weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the
exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently
to be referred to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by
long continuance--even the trifling 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 it overlaid
an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road 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 minor features of the heath,
the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.

2 - 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 a glazed
hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an
anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick,
which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground
with its point at every few inches' interval. One would have said that he
had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort 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 that vast 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 tract
that he had yet to traverse. At length he discerned, a long distance in
front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it
proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was
journeying. It was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and
it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. Its rate 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 in
shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. The driver walked
beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dye of that
tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face,
and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it

permeated him.
The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cart was a
reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with
redding for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct
in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during
the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a
curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of
life and those which generally prevail.
The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his
fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. The reddleman turned
his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones. He was young, and his
face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that
nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its
natural colour. His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain,
was in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as
autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed 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 was clothed
throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not
much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original
colour by his trade. It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure.
A certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor
for his degree. The natural query of an observer