The Return of the Native | Page 6

person of one of the Celts who built

the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. It
seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment before
dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race.
There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plain
rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose
the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped
elsewhere than on a celestial globe.
Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give to the
dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious justification of
their outline. Without it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it
the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied. The scene was
strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the upland, the barrow, and
the figure above it amounted only to unity. Looking at this or that
member of the group was not observing a complete thing, but a fraction
of a thing.
The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless
structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a
strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of that
whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of
immobility 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 descended on
the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud,
and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more
clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.
The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her
dropping out of sight on the right side, a new-comer, bearing a burden,
protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and
deposited the burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a
fourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with
burdened figures.
The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of

silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had
taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither
for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung by
preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more
interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth
knowing than these new-comers, and unconsciously regarded them as
intruders. But they remained, and established themselves; and the
lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at
present seem likely to return.

III
The Custom of the Country
Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow,
he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the
neighbouring hamlets. Each, as he ascended the barrow, had been
heavily laden with furze-faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of
a long stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily--two in
front and two behind. They came from a part of the heath a quarter of a
mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a product.
Every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying the
faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown them
down. The party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of sheep;
that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind.
The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in
circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was
known as Rainbarrow for many miles round. Some made themselves
busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in
loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others,
again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast
expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly
obliterated by shade. In the valleys of the heath nothing save its own
wild face was visible at any time of day; but this spot commanded a

horizon enclosing a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond
the heath country. None of its features could be seen now, but the
whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness.
While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in
the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and
tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round.
They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged
in the same sort of commemoration. Some