Children of the Mist Part 79

Removed by brief distance in s.p.a.ce, the onlooker, without overmuch strain or imagination, might stride a pace or two backward in time and conceive himself for a moment as in the presence of those who similarly tended beacons on these granite heights of old. Then, truly, the object and occasion were widely different; then, perchance, in answer to evil rumour moving zigzag on black bat-wings through nights of fear, many a bale-fire had shot upwards, upon the keystone of Cosdon's solemn arch, beckoned like a b.l.o.o.d.y hand towards north and south, and cried danger to a thousand British warriors lurking in moor, and fen, and forest.

Answering flames had leapt from Hay Tor, from Buckland Beacon, from Great Mis Tor in the west; and their warning, caught up elsewhere, would quickly penetrate to the heart of the South Hams, to the outlying ramparts of the Cornish wastes, to Exmoor and the coast-line of the north. But no laughter echoed about those old-time fires. Their lurid light smeared wolfskins, splashed on metal and untanned hide, illumined barbaric adornments, fierce faces, wild locks, and savage eyes. Anxious Celtic mothers and maidens stood beside their men, while fear and rage leapt along from woman's face to woman's face, as some gasping wretch, with twoscore miles of wilderness behind him, told of high-beaked monsters moving under banks of oars, of dire peril, of death and ruin, suddenly sprung in a night from behind the rim of the sea.

Since then the peaks of the Moor have smiled or scowled under countless human fires, have flashed glad tidings or flamed ill news to many generations. And now, perched upon one enormous ma.s.s of stone, there towered upward a beacon of blazing furze and pine. In its heart were tar barrels and the monster bred heat enough to remind the granite beneath it of those fires that first moulded its elvan ingredients to a concrete whole and hurled them hither.

About this eye of flame crowded those who had built it, and the roaring ma.s.s of red-hot timber and seething pitch represented the consummation of Chagford's festivities on the night of Jubilee. The flames, obedient to such light airs as were blowing, bent in unison with the black billows of smoke that wound above them. Great, trembling tongues separated from the ma.s.s and soared upward, gleaming as they vanished; sparks and jets, streams and stars of light, shot from the pile to illuminate the rolling depths of the smoke cloud, to fret its curtain with spangles and jewels of gold atid ruby, to weave strange, lurid lights into the very fabric of its volume. Far away, as the breezes drew them, fell a red glimmer of fire, where those charred fragments caught in the rush and hurled aloft, returned again to earth; and the whole incandescent structure, perched as it was upon the apex of Yes Tor, suggested at a brief distance a fiery top-knot of streaming flame on some vast and demoniac head thrust upward from the nether world.

Great splendour of light gleamed upon a ring of human beings.

Adventurous spirits leapt forth, fed the flames with f.a.ggots and furze and risked their hairy faces within the range of the bonfire's scorching breath. Alternate gleam and glow played fantastically upon the spectators, and, though for the most part they moved but little while their joy fire was at its height, the conflagration caused a sheer devil's dance of impish light and shadow to race over every face and form in the a.s.semblage. The fantastic magician of the fire threw humps on to straight backs, flattened good round b.r.e.a.s.t.s, wrote wrinkles on smooth faces, turned eyes and lips into s.h.i.+ning gems, made white teeth yellow, cast a grotesque spell of the unreal on young shapes, of the horrible upon old ones. A sort of monkey coa.r.s.eness crept into the red, upturned faces; their proportions were distorted, their delicacy destroyed. Essential lines of figures were concealed by the inky shadows; unimportant features were thrown into a violent prominence; the clean fire impinged abruptly on a night of black shade, as sunrise on the moon. There was no atmosphere. Human noses poked weirdly out of nothing, human hands waved without arms, human heads moved without bodies, bodies bobbed along without legs. The heart-beat and furnace roar of the fire was tremendous, but the shouts of men, the shriller laughter of women, and the screams and yells of children could be heard through it, together with the pistol-like explosion of sap turned to steam, and rending its way from green wood. Other sounds also fretted the air, for a hundred yards distant--in a hut-circle--the Chagford drum-and-fife band lent its throb and squeak to the hour, and struggled amain to increase universal joy. So the fire flourished, and the plutonian rock-ma.s.s of the tor arose, the centre of a scene itself plutonian.

Removed by many yards from the ring of human spectators, and scattered in wide order upon the flanks of the hill, stood tame beasts. Sheep huddled there and bleated amazement, their fleeces touched by the flicker of the distant fire; red heifers and steers also faced the flame and chewed the cud upon a spectacle outside all former experience; while inquisitive ponies drew up in a wide radius, snorted and sniffed with delicate, dilated nostrils at the unfamiliar smell of the breeze, threw up their little heads, fetched a compa.s.s at top speed and so returned; then crowded flank to flank, shoulder to shoulder, and again blankly gazed at the fire which reflected itself in the whites of their s.h.i.+fty eyes.

Fitting the freakish antics of the red light, a carnival spirit, hard to rouse in northern hearts, awakened within this crowd of Devon men and women, old men and children. There was in their exhilaration some inspiration from the joyous circ.u.mstance they celebrated; and something, too, from the barrel. Dancing began and games, feeble by day but not lacking devil when pursued under cover of darkness. There were hugging and kissing, and yells of laughter when amorous couples who believed themselves safe were suddenly revealed lip to lip and heart to heart by an unkind flash of fire. Some, as their nature was, danced and screamed that flaming hour away; some sat blankly and smoked and gazed with less interest than the outer audience of dumb animals; some laboured amain to keep the bonfire at blaze. These last worked from habit and forgot their broadcloth. None bade them, but it was their life to be toiling; it came naturally to mind and muscle, and they laughed while they laboured and sweated. A dozen staid groups witnessed the scene from surrounding eminences, but did not join the merrymakers. Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, Doctor Parsons, and the ladies of their houses stood with their feet on a tumulus apart; and elsewhere Mr. Chapple, Charles Coomstock, Mr. Blee, and others, mostly ancient, sat on the granite, inspected the pandemonium spread before them, and criticised as experts who had seen bonfires lighted before the greater part of the present gathering was out of its cradle. But no cynic praising of past time to the disparagement of the present marked their opinions. Mr. Chapple indeed p.r.o.nounced the fire brilliantly successful, and did not hesitate to declare that it capped all his experience in this direction.

"A braave blaze," he said, "a blaze as gives the thoughtful eye an' nose a tidy guess at what the Pit's like to be. Ess, indeed, a religious fire, so to say; an' I warrant the prophet sat along just such another when he said man was born to trouble sure as the sparks fly up'ard."

Somewhat earlier on the same night, under the northern ramparts of Dartmoor, and upon the long, creeping hill that rises aloft from Okehampton, then dips again, pa.s.ses beneath the Belstones, and winds by Sticklepath and Zeal under Cosdon, there rattled a trap holding two men.

From their conversation it appeared that one was a traveller who now returned southward from a journey.

"Gert, gay, fanciful doin's to-night," said the driver, looking aloft where Cosdon Beacon swelled. "You can see the light from the blaze up-long, an' now an' again you can note a sign in the night like a red-hot wire drawed up out the airth. They 'm sky-rockets, I judge."

"'T is a joyful night, sure 'nough."

The driver ill.u.s.trated a political ignorance quite common in rural districts ten years ago and not conspicuously rare to-day. He laboured under uneasy suspicions that the support of monarchy was a direct and dismal tax upon the pockets of the poor.

"Pity all the fuss ban't about a better job," he said. "Wan auld, elderly lady 's so gude as another, come to think of it. Why shouldn't my mother have a jubilee?"

"What for? 'Cause she've borne a d.a.m.ned fule?" asked the other man angrily. "If that's your way o' thought, best keep it in your thoughts.

Anyhow, I'll knock your silly head off if I hears another word to that tune, so now you knaw."

The speaker was above medium height and breadth, the man who drove him happened to be unusually small.

"Well, well, no offence," said the latter.

"There is offence; an' it I heard a lord o' the land talk that way to-night, I'd make un swallow every dirty word of it. To h.e.l.l wi' your treason!"

The driver changed the subject.

"Now you can see a gude few new fires," he said. "That's the Throwleigh blaze; an' that, long ways off, be--"

"Yes Tor by the look of it. All Chagford's traapsed up-long, I warn 'e, to-night."

They were now approaching a turning of the ways and the traveller suddenly changed his destination.

"Come to think of it, I'll go straight on," he said. "That'll save you a matter o' ten miles, tu. Drive ahead a bit Berry Down way. Theer I'll leave 'e an' you'll be back home in time to have some fun yet."

The driver, rejoicing at this unhoped diminution of his labours, soon reached the foot of a rough by-road that ascends to the Moor between the homesteads of Berry Down and Creber.

Yes Tor now arose on the left under its cap of flame, and the wayfarer, who carried no luggage, paid his fare, bid the other "good-night," and then vanished into the darkness.

He pa.s.sed between the sleeping farms, and only watch-dogs barked out of the silence, for Gidleigh folks were all abroad that night. Pressing onwards, the native hurried to Scorhill, then crossed the Teign below Batworthy Farm, pa.s.sed through the farmyard, and so proceeded to the common beneath Yes Tor. He whistled as he went, then stopped a moment to listen. The first drone of music and remote laughter reached his ear. He hurried onwards until a gleam lighted his face; then he pa.s.sed through the ring of beasts, still glaring fascinated around the fire; and finally he pushed among the people.

He stood revealed and there arose a sudden whisper among some who knew him, but whom he knew not. One or two uttered startled cries at this apparition, for all a.s.sociated the newcomer with events and occurrences widely remote from the joy of the hour. How he came among them now, and what event made it possible for him to stand in their midst a free man, not the wisest could guess.

A name was carried from mouth to mouth, then shouted aloud, then greeted with a little cheer. It fell upon Mr. Blee's ear as he prepared to start homewards; and scarcely had the sound of it set him gasping when a big man grew out of the flame and shadow and stood before him with extended hand.

"Burnish it all! You! Be it Blanchard or the ghost of un?"

"The man hisself--so big as bull's beef, an' so free as thicky fire!"

said Will.

Riotous joy sprang and bubbled in his voice. He gripped Billy's hand till the old man jumped and wriggled.

"Free! Gude G.o.d! Doan't tell me you've brawke loose--doan't 'e say that!

Christ! if you haven't squashed my hand till theer's no feeling in it!

Doan't 'e say you've runned away?"

"No such thing," answered Will, now the centre of a little crowd. "I'll tell 'e, sawls all, if you mind to hear. 'Tis this way: Queen Victoria, as have given of the best she've got wi' both hands to the high men of the land, so they tell me, caan't forget nought, even at such a time as this here. She've made gert additions to all manner o' men; an' to me, an' the likes o' me she've given what's more precious than bein' lords or dukes. I'm free--me an' all as runned from the ranks. The Sovereign Queen's let deserters go free, if you can credit it; an' that's how I stand here this minute."

A buzz and hum with cheers and some laughter and congratulations followed Will's announcement. Then the people scattered to spread his story, and Mr. Blee spoke.

"Come you down home to wance. Ban't none up here as cares a rush 'bout 'e but me. But theer 's a many anxious folks below. I comed up for auld sake's sake an' because ban't in reason to suppose I'll ever see another joy fire 'pon Yes Tor rock, at my time o' life. But us'll go an' carry this rare news to Chagford an' the Barton."

They faded from the red radius of the fire and left it slowly dying.

Will helped Billy off rough ground to the road. Then he set off at a speed altogether beyond the old man's power, so Mr. Blee resorted to stratagem.

"'Bate your pace; 'bate your pace; I caan't travel that gait an' talk same time. Yet theer's a power o' fine things I might tell 'e if you'd listen."

"'T is hard to walk slow towards a mother an' wife like what mine be, after near a month from 'em; but let's have your news, Billy, an' doan't croak, for G.o.d's sake. Say all's well wi' all."

"I ban't no croaker, as you knaws. Happy, are 'e?--happy for wance? I suppose you'll say now, as you've said plenty times a'ready, that you 'm to the tail of your troubles for gude an' all--just in your auld, silly fas.h.i.+on?"

"Not me, auld chap, never no more--so long as you 'm alive! Ha, ha, ha--that's wan for you! Theer! if 't isn't gude to laugh again!"

"I be main glad as I've got no news to make 'e do anything else, though ban't often us can be prophets of gude nowadays. But if you've grawed a streak wiser of late, then theer's hope, even for a scatterbrain like you, the Lard bein' all-powerful. Not that jokes against such as me would please Him the better."

"I've thought a lot in my time, Billy; an' I haven't done thinking yet.

I've comed to reckon as I caan't do very well wi'out the world, though the world would fare easy enough wi'out me."

Billy nodded.

"That's sense so far as it goes," he admitted. "Obedience be hard to the young; to the auld it comes natural; to me allus was easy as dirt from my youth up. Obedience to betters in heaven an' airth. But you--you with your born luck--never heard tell of nothin' like it 't all. What's a fix to you? You goes in wan end an' walks out t' other, like a rabbit through a hedge. Theer you was--in such a tight pa.s.s as you might say neither G.o.d nor angels could get 'e free wi'out a Bible miracle, when, burnish it all! if the Jubilee Queen o' England doan't busy herself 'bout 'e!"

"'T is true as I'm walkin' by your side. I'd give a year o' my wages to knaw how I could shaw what I think about it."

"You might thank her. 'T is all as humble folks can do most times when Queens or Squires or the A'mighty Hisself spares a thought to better us.

Us can awnly say 'thank you.'"

There was a silence of some duration; then Billy again bid his companion moderate his pace.